y's long-lining
(for cod, haddock, etc.) to bring in seven or eight pounds. Shrimps and
soles fell victims to the longshoremen's trawls, and altogether there
were a hundred fish to be caught to one in these days. Moreover, before
steam made coast traffic independent of wind, the sand-banks outside the
roads were a great source of profit to the beach men, who went off in
their long yawls to such craft as "missed stays" coming through a "gat,"
or managed to run aground on one of the sand-banks in some way or other.
The methods of the beach men were sometimes rather questionable, and
Colonel Leathes, of Herringfleet Hall, tells a tale of a French brig,
named the _Confiance en Dieu_, which took the ground on the Newcome Sand
off Lowestoft about the year 1850. The weather was perfectly calm, but a
company of beach men boarded her and got her off, and so established a
claim for salvage. As a result she was kept nine weeks in port, and her
skipper, the owner, had to pay 1200 pounds to get clear.

All things considered, it is probable that a Lowestoft longshoreman, in
the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century, could make a very
good living of it, and even now, now when poverty has fallen on the
beach, no beach man, unspoilt by the curse of visitors' tips, would bow
his head to any man as his superior.

FitzGerald always took a humorous delight in the business of "salwaging"
(as the men call it), and in his _Sea Words and Phrases along the Suffolk
Coast_ (No. II), he defines "Rattlin' Sam" as follows: "A term of
endearment, I suppose, used by Salwagers for a nasty shoal off the Corton
coast." In the same publication (I) he defines "saltwagin." "So
pronounced (if not _solwagin_') from, perhaps, an indistinct implication
of _salt_ (water) and _wages_. _Salvaging_, of course."

Posh tells how his "guv'nor" would clap him on the back and laugh
heartily over a "salwagin'" story. "You sea pirates!" he would say. "You
sea pirates!"

In the spring of 1866 FitzGerald stayed at 12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft,
in March and April, and passed most of his time with Posh. In the
evenings he would sit and smoke a pipe, or play "all-fours." In the day
he liked to go to sea with Posh in the latter's punt, the _Little
Wonder_. The _Scandal_ was not launched that year till June, and
although he "got perished with the N.E. wind" (_Two Suffolk Friends_, p.
101), he revelled in the rough work.

{12 Marine Terrace, Lowestoft: p