David Skardon
David comes from a long line of boatmen based on the shingle beach of Deal at the north end of the English Channel. While primarily earning a living by fishing, the boatmen in this area were also involved in rescues of ships grounded on the notorious Goodwin Sands just offshore, and taking advantage of the salvage that occurred in North Sea gales. David has also become an enthusiastic collector of images of Deal through the ages, and has drawn on them to make informative videos which can be seen on YouTube.
Visit his website for much more on this fascinating corner of the world.
Books by this author
Tom’s Adventures at Sea
Feel the salt spray in your face as you join young Tom as he learns the off-shore fishing trade in this semiautobiographical story. Davis Skardon uses his lived experience to provide graphic detail of an imaginary young boatman struggling to make a living off the Deal coast in Victorian times. Journey with Tom not only through the hazards of fishing from an open boat, but also in his many adventures in saving ships’ crews and salvage off the notorious Goodwin Sands.
While the story is set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the conditions were not much different to the 1950s when David was himself learning his trade on the very same beach.
Oldcroft Publishing 