This photograph, which I thought was one of the more evocative in the museum, shows a group of Cromer fishermen in 1900, standing beside their boats, ropes and traditional crab or lobster pots on the beach. These would have been hard times and being a fisherman was a dangerous and rather unglamorous job. There weren’t many safety arrangements, certainly no risk assessments and no-one popping around from the council to check the electrical safety certificates.
Cromer did not have the protection of a proper harbour, so fishing boats had to be launched directly from the beach and brought back through the surf. The small open boats in the photograph were practical working craft rather than anything designed for comfort and the fishermen caught crabs and lobsters, but also worked for herring, cod, plaice and other fish depending on the season.
The photograph appears to have been posed, but it still gives a strong impression of the working beach. Some of the men look directly at the camera, while others seem slightly less convinced that photography is an adequate reason to stop what they are doing, something which I have a lot of sympathy for. There are a range of expressions suggesting that nobody had been instructed to look cheerful for tourism purposes, but I imagine that it would have been an interesting distraction. The central figure has the air of a man who has spent many years dealing with both the sea and other people, and has reached no particularly flattering conclusions about either.