Page 68 - KBHA BULLETIN 6

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me about collecting their pay in their hats as they did not want paper money, and boastfully

they would place golden half-sovereigns in each ear as they came back home.

With the introduction of small engines in fishing boats skippers / owners would also go to
Cape Town to order and pay for their fuel, which would be sent here in paraffin tins in

railway trucks and collected at the Goods Shed.

A few houses were also built at the Point to accommodate some of the fishing community

and I had the privilege as a young man to chat to an old Kalk Bay fisherman Haaron
Emandien, now deceased, who grew up as a boy in one of those houses. As a small boy I was

taken for walks by my grandmother to the "Kompanie" and played there on what were the

remaining foundations of those houses.

The Point was also used by the fishermen as an area for "blooding" their Irish cotton fishing
lines. This was done with congealed ox-blood which could be bought at the Glencairn

abattoir for a shilling a bucket or tinfull. Lines were blooded in order to preserve and stiffen
them so that they were not limp and easily tangled. The procedure would be to stretch new

lines the full length (30ft. or 180ft.) between poles already placed there for that purpose,

place a clot of congealed blood on a cloth and, closing cloth and blood around the line, work
it smoothly up and down on the line, allowing the first coat to dry in the south-east wind, and

then repeat at least three coats. When completely dried in the sun and wind they would be
neatly coiled up and taken home. There a paraffin tin would be filled with some water, small

flexible leafy branches placed above the water to act as a grid on which to place the coiled
lines, and the whole closed over with a wet bag. Then a fire would be got going around the

paraffin tin and the steam would harden the blood almost like a coat of enamel paint.

After extensive use some to the blood would gradually start chipping off as the line was

pulled up over the gunwhale of the boat and the lines would have to be re-blooded. Then they
would have to be soaked for hours and, by using a soft piece of wire (bronze picture wire)

bent double and with the line stretched out, the old blood would be gently scraped off. In

places where lines had been damaged and knotted as a running repair these knots would be

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