Peter Mortimer travelled where Cod and End of the Line followed. He was the first writer to travel and work on the boats themselves. Peter worked with the fishermen – on six different boats –on journeys ranging from 18 hours to 10 days, in working conditions not seen on land for 200 years – i.e. men working with unprotected machinery in appalling conditions, sometimes up to 18 hours a day. A harsh, macho and dangerous world of thirty-foot long rust buckets with exposed decks covered in fish blood and guts all day long. Nobody sees fishermen once they leave port, so nobody knows what happens on board. Fishing is dangerous and unpredictable. Lives are often lost in this harsh environment about which most of us know nothing. Peter Mortimer lived the life – winning respect from the fishermen and developing his own respect for a group of workers whose working conditions are primitive, and job security is non-existent. The Last of the Hunters has been hard to find but in demand since it went out of print. This new edition brings us up to date with the distinctive and close-knit North Shields fishing community, and how the changes in fisheries' policy have affected them. Peter Mortimer was born in Nottingham and lives in the North East where he edits Iron Press and runs Cloud Nine theatre group. He also writes regular columns for The Chronicle. Peter Mortimer's Broke Through Britain became a best-seller. His play Cool for Qat and travel book of the same name document the origins of the disastrous 1930s North-East riots and their relevance to the Western attitude to Muslims today.
...As the title of Mortimer's books suggests, commercial fishing is a form of hunting, an activity that appeals to impulses hard-wired into the brain. Combine an indulgence of the hunting instinct with the comradeship inseparable from shared danger and it is not so surprising that fishermen become irresistibly wedded to their way of life...
Richard Shelton
Peter Mortimer's evocative prose is filled with anecdotes, insights and tales from the fishermen themselves. It will be of interest to seasoned fishermen and an eye-opener for any layman who is fortunate (and curious) enough to read it.Fishing News
Twenty years ago the Cullercoats writer Peter Mortimer went to sea with the fishermen of North Shields, experiencing at first-hand one of the toughest ways of earning a living. Peter's book, described as "a minor classic", was first published in 1987 to coincide with the first North Shields Fish Quay Festival. It went out of print but was still in demand - which is why they have brought out this new edition.
David Whetstone
“His account of experiences so remote from most people’s idea of normality sometimes read like what you would expect from Lemuel Gulliver if his sea travels had been as bizarre as the places he visited. The strength lies in Mortimer’s ability to get under the skin and into the minds of fishermen.”
“A fine testament to a little-known way of life. So powerful is the writing that we hunger for more of the Mortimer style. Moving, evocative.”
"Not just the work of a poet and an effective creative writer, it is also the work of a first-class reporter telling the story in simple clear terms. A book of stark honesty — no-one else could have written it quite this way.”
“Both starkly graphic and descriptive as the moment demands. A compelling book.”
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