(Thanks to Kingston Historian, Kath Smith for calling into the Kingston Museum today with this information and reminding us ‘how it was’ not so long ago) Kingston Fishing Fleet Communications- from Carrier Pigeon to Satellite. A remarkable achievement by Kingston locals, Eric and Vie Backler who were pioneers of this service. “Fishing has always been a very important part of Kingston’s history. The Backler brothers, Eric, Ray and Viv started fishing in the early 1920’s. Eric fished for shark during the winter months and stayed out to sea for several days at a time. The problem was to alert his wife Vie of his estimated time of arrival and the size of his catch. Eric would attach a message to the leg of one of his pigeons, and on release the pigeon would circle the mast three times and then head for the coast. Eric often doubted the intuition of the pigeon as they would be fishing far from sight of land, but a compass check would prove the pigeon to be correct. On the pigeons arrival home Vie would remove the message and notify the buyer of the size of the catch and the arrival time at the jetty. Eric held an Amateur Wireless Operators licence since 1936 so he worked on the idea of a base and radio to be workable between his boat and his home. In 1948 he pioneered the first ship to shore radio. His call sign was VH5AB. For 12 years Vie manned the shore based radio for Eric and then for other boats who installed radios. She would call the boats at 9am, 1pm and 5pm so her days revolved around the scheduled times. This was a voluntary service that she provided to all fishing boats who followed Eric’s example to install ship to shore radio. These days radios, satellite navigation and mobile phones are all taken for granted by our fishing fleets. (Kingston Museum Photos)
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 07:48:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015