Shoals O' Herring

Tired of his day job, young Stevie joins the crew of a fishing trawler - but life at sea isn't as romantic as he expects:

It was November and it was cold, and I wasn’t getting along very well with the skipper. We’d only been away from port a few days, but I knew I never, ever, wanted to go to sea again.

You see, I’d read books and I’d seen films, and I loved all that romantic stuff about the ocean: bright summer days, the wind in your hair, nothing on the horizon but a clear blue sky, and me stood on deck all macho and handsome as I hunted for the shoals of herring. That was the life for me, I thought.