legends · 4 min read ·
Catch Record, Margaret Tall
A fishing charter's log follows a dark shape under the boat and the shoe it keeps bringing back.
**Charter vessel MARGARET TALL · Skipper: Gil Ansell · Logbook, Season 2026**
**Home port:** Skerry Harbour · **Clients:** per trip · **Permitted catch:** per licence
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**Trip 14, 2 Aug.** Clients: 4 (Hughes party). Wind SE 3. Sea calm.
Catch: 23 mackerel (14.2 kg), 2 pollack (3.1 kg), 1 conger (eel, 9 kg).
Sightings: a dark shape under the boat at 11:40, about the size of a dinghy. Did not show on the echo sounder.
**Trip 15, 9 Aug.** Clients: 3 (Ansell family). Catch: 41 mackerel (22 kg), 4 pollack. Sightings: the same dark shape at 11:40, closer to the surface. Client asked whether it was a whale. Told her no.
**Trip 16, 16 Aug.** Clients: 2. Catch: 8 mackerel. Sightings: dark shape, 11:40, facing the boat. A pale line along its back, like a seam. Client photographed it. Photograph shows nothing but water.
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**Trip 19, 30 Aug.** Clients: 5 (angling club). Catch: 16 mackerel, 1 wrasse, 1 crab, 1 shoe. The shoe was a woman's, black leather, with a buckle. It was caught on a hook on the seabed, half buried in weed. Returned it to the sea. The club secretary asked me to keep it. I didn't.
**Trip 20, 6 Sept.** Clients: 2. Catch: nothing. Sightings: dark shape, 11:40, very close, alongside the boat. It put one fin on the gunwale, grey and smooth, with no fingers, and held there for a while, and then slid off.
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**Logbook entry, 13 Sept (Gil Ansell, handwritten)**
We've been fishing the same ground for twenty years and it has always given. This season it's taken. Every trip I've been coming back with less, and the sea's been getting closer to the boat, always at 11:40.
I've started to think the dark shape is not hunting us. It's following the line. It's been following for a long time, the way a dog trails the one who fed it. Whatever is on the other end of the line, it has wanted someone to bring it home.
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**Trip 24, 20 Sept.** Clients: 0. Crew: G. Ansell, sole. Catch: none. Sightings: dark shape alongside, 11:40. It was rising. Its back broke the surface and I could see the seam now, a long pale line, and in the seam, very small, the shape of a face.
I threw the line over. It went in. The shape turned.
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**Harbour master's report (Skerry, 22 Sept)**
MARGARET TALL returned to harbour at 14:20, under power, with no crew on deck. Engine running. Two lines out over the stern, taut, both running down toward the seabed.
The boat was secured. There was no catch in the hold. A wet coil of rope lay on the deck, and beside it a black leather shoe, buckle undone, with the sole worn through at the toe.
*Harbour master's note: the echo sounder shows a large object under the vessel's hull, tracking the boat into harbour at roughly walking pace. It has not been identified. It has not been surfaced.*
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**Trip log (MARGARET TALL, 25 Sept, skipper's entry in a different hand)**
I'm Gil's brother Tom. Gil's gone out on the boat and hasn't been back. I went down to the harbour this morning to look for him and found the logbook in the wheelhouse, open at the last page.
Gil was right. It's not hunting us. The seam is a line of teeth, very small, all in a row, and each one is a name. I've counted nineteen. Gil's is on the end, and it's still wet.
I've taken the boat out. I'm following the line. I've got the shoe in my pocket and I'm going to give it back.
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**Harbour master's report (Skerry, 28 Sept)**
MARGARET TALL found drifting 6 nautical miles south-east, with one crewman on board. Crewman: T. Ansell, uninjured, dehydrated, asleep in the wheelhouse with his hand around a fishing line that runs out over the stern and down into the water.
The line is taut. It has no hook. Attached to its end, a small black leather shoe, buckle done up, tied to the line with a neat double knot.
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**Final logbook entry (MARGARET TALL, 4 Oct, skipper's hand)**
Clients: 0. Catch: 0. Sightings: none at 11:40.
The sea's gone flat. The boat's clean. I've lowered the nets and the lines are in the water and nothing is pulling on them. I think the thing has finally got what it wanted: the line, the boat, the people who once fished for their living here. It's taken them down to the ground where the fish don't go.
*Harbour master's note (later): MARGARET TALL was sold at auction in December. The buyer, a retired schoolteacher, painted the hull white and renamed her. The logbook is in the harbour museum, open at the last page, behind glass.*