The sixty interviews listed below are those used for all tabulations and aggregated data. Interviews 3015, 3025, 3029, 3033, 3034, 3047, 3048, 3049, 3050, 3051, 3053, 3054, 3055 and 3060 are supplemented by another person. Usually this is another member of the family such as sister, son, aunt, nephew and these directly supplement the main interview. If used for qualitative information, the interview number is followed by ‘B’. There are also ten untranscribed interviews which are cited as ‘Spare (untyped)’. The interviews were conducted by the author during the period 1974 to 1976 with the exception of interviews 3031, 3038, 3034B, 3054B and the initial interview with 3034A which were conducted by Paul Thompson. They were collected as part of the Social Science Research Council project HR 2656/1 ‘The Family and Community Life of the East Anglian Fishermen’, directed by Paul Thompson.

The tapes were transcribed by Janet Parkin and the tapes and transcripts are in the Essex Oral History Archive, director Paul Thompson.

The interview schedule was the one developed by Paul and Thea Thompson for use in the Social Science Research Council supported project ‘Family Life and Work Experience before 1918’ but modified for this particular occupational group and region. All interviews were open-ended and designed to encourage the informant to volunteer information. The interviews average three hours of tape with individual ones varying from one to five hours. In some cases this variation is due to the life experience of the informant.