From inshore shrimper to head skipper on offshore wind crew transfer vessels, Wally Saunders turned generations of his family’s love and living from the sea to a future in the industry harvesting wind to power the UK’s future.

For generations, the Saunders family looked to the sea off Great Yarmouth and Gorleston for their living. In all weathers, great grandfather, grandfather, father and sons hauled shrimp, herring, cod and Dover sole onto boats owned by the family through the decades, and on to the deep-sea trawlers, fishing smacks and herring drifters where the older generations worked as deckhands and mates.

For decades, their inshore hauls were sold on to local shops and wholesalers before being taken by rail to London’s Billingsgate market, other London customers and King’s Lynn.

Wally Saunders couldn’t wait to join his father fishing full-time, and left school early at 15 for a pre-apprenticeship course at Lowestoft, which took him on board a deep-sea trawler for 12 days as a career taster.

“Out of the 30 boys taken out on trawlers, only five came back to the course,” said Wally. But seven days of seasickness in harsh conditions didn’t put young Wally off.

“We were a well-known fishing family in the area, and I never wanted to do anything else.

“My grandfather Richard Saunders ran the shrimp shop at the top of Gorleston High Street and fishing was what we did.
“We were inshore and longshore shrimpers. It was seasonal and ran to the end of November and sometimes there was herring fishing with cod in the winter.

“We went out of Gorleston from Riverside. Our boats were behind the Sack and Bag company almost opposite the shrimp shop, and we lived on Riverside by the pilot station.

“My grandfather worked on trawlers and herring boats as a deckhand and ship’s mate before he set up the shop. He was a real character. His living room was behind the shop. If he recognised a voice, he would call them into the back to tell old seafaring stories.”

Richard Saunders’ stories were so legendary, he was recorded for the British Sound Archives in the 1970s.

The shrimp shop was run by Wally’s auntie Elsie with another aunt, Marjorie, next door.

“Elsie’s daughter went over to Lowestoft to buy the fish. When she got married, her and her husband took over Jones’ fish shop in Lowestoft.

“When my grandfather died, my cousin Diane ran the shop with her husband. They closed the shop when they retired and did it up to be a front room. Diane lived there until she died recently in September 2022.”

The family had many boats over the years. When Wally’s grandad bought the shrimp shop in 1930, he was looking for
a supplier and was told to get a boat and do it himself, so Wally’s uncle Dick and father, Walter, went and got a boat called ‘The Try’.

“My father came back from the war on minesweepers, and bought a boat called ‘The Try’,” said wally. When The Try was written off by a gas supply boat, he bought a new boat, ‘Walisa’ – a combination of Wally, his mother Isabella and sister Sarah’s names.

“I worked on Walisa during the school holidays and whenever I could until joining him at 15 in 1971 to 1981.”

Wally’s father died in 1981 when Wally was 25, leaving him with Walisa. Wally went into partnership with Peter Richards and they had the ‘Red Rose’ built by Goodchild Marine at its first yard at Runham Vauxhall, Great Yarmouth, which they sold after two years to buy the bigger ‘Our Seafarer’.

Wally sold Our Seafarer to his partner and bought the ‘Roannah’ in 1986, which is a combination of his children’s names, Rory and Hannah.

Wally followed seasonal shrimping work, with long-line trawling for Dover soles in the summer. When he was in his 40s, fishing quotas started to squeeze his income.

“I wondered too often where the next penny was coming from,” he said. “I decommissioned Roannah in 1997 because of all of the [European Union] fishing restrictions and got a 10m boat, which was also called Roannah, because smaller boats could fish. Then the quotas came in for smaller boats and it became impossible to make a living from fishing.”

The early offshore wind farms developing on the south coast offered a new career, which combined his love of the sea and boats and the need for a regular income.

For the past 17 years, Wally has been head skipper for crew transfer vessels taking turbine technicians out of Ramsgate and Whitstable to the 130 turbines on Vattenfall’s Thanet and Kentish Flats offshore wind farms.

His break came in 2005 when Lowestoft fisherman and fishing campaigner Paul Lines was using his fishing boat as a guardship.

“Paul bought a bigger boat in Oban, Scotland. I went up with him to sail it down. We sailed all down the west coast and along the south coast and back to Great Yarmouth. The boat started to work on wind farms.”

Wally headed to Kent as head skipper taking cable jointers out of Whitstable during the construction of Kentish Flats for former North Sea Logistics.

Whitstable became home, and when CWind took over the contract for the cluster, he transferred to the business
and has worked out of Ramsgate since, on 14 consecutive 12-hour shifts, then 14 days off.

One of eight CWind skippers at Ramsgate, Wally spent six years on the 23m aluminium catamaran ‘CWind Tempest’, then the 22m resin-infused composite catamaran ‘CWind Artimus’. He is now preparing to skipper another CWind vessel ‘Hurricane’.

So deep is his love for the sea, the 66-year-old has just bought ‘The Dominator’, a Starfish 10 fishing and leisure boat, for his “retirement” when he plans to take anglers and sea trippers out.

Wally says he is privileged to have spent his life at sea.

“My great grandfather was hit on the head by a mast falling over at sea and was blinded and had to stop going to sea. He used to sell matches outside the ABC.”

The Dominator is moored at Ramsgate, where Wally and his wife moved to in the summer from Whitstable, ready for his next chapter running sunset cruises and fishing and windfarm viewing trips.

On his days off, he can be found out fishing on The Dominator.

“It’s in my blood and what I love.”