BEN NORMAN

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Watchet, Somerset, 1918

LIVED: Watchet

RECORDING MADE: 1999

RECORDING LENGTH: 1 hour 20 minutes

Ben Norman comes from a family of master mariners. His eyesight wasn't good enough to be a sailor himself, so he went into the building business. He founded the museum over 20 years ago and has published several books about Watchet. He was brought up on stories of ships and as a boy used to sail across to Wales with his father to pick up coal for the paper mills. Eventually sailing ships died out but the old sailors lingered on and he spent many hours talking to them.

In those days the harbour was alive, with steamships queuing to come in. They brought esparto grass and wood pulp from Sweden, or timber from Portugal, while tractors and scrap iron were exported. Watchet was also a bustling garrison town. The first troops came there in 1925. Planes zoomed up and down and people on night shift at the paper mill complained about the noise of the guns. They were exciting times.

Ben Norman died in January 2008.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury