After four years, two bronze fishermen arrive in St Ives

Walk to the end of Smeaton’s Pier in St Ives and you will soon meet two men who never speak a word to each other, and never will. They sit face to face over a basket of fish, hands buried in a net that will never need mending again, cast whole in bronze. Four years after the idea was first raised, the St Ives Mariners Memorial is ready to be unveiled.

📷St Ives Mariners Original Model. Credit: Tom Leaper

A different kind of fisherman’s memorial

The life-size bronze, created by Cornish sculptor Tom Leaper, depicts two fishermen seated opposite one another, absorbed in the familiar task of working their nets. Leaper chose not to show the men as heroic figures gazing out to sea. Instead he wanted something quieter and more familiar: two working men concentrating on the job in front of them, capturing the skill, companionship and repetitive labour that filled everyday fishing life in St Ives for generations.

“I hope that in years to come people will walk along Smeaton’s Pier, come across these two fishermen working away at their nets, and be reminded that long before St Ives became internationally known for its art, this was a working fishing town,” Tom said.

📷St Ives Mariners Fundraising Maquette. Credit: Tom Leaper

Four years, and not a penny from a major grant

The project began around four years ago, when members of the St Ives fishing community approached Tom with the idea of a permanent sculpture celebrating the town’s fishermen and maritime heritage. It grew into an extraordinary community effort. Roughly £70,000 was raised without any major external grant funding.

Much of that came through an edition of 50 small bronze maquettes, sold through the Penwith Gallery in St Ives. The Gallery took no commission on the sales, so every penny went straight towards building the full-size memorial.

📷St Ives Mariners Workshop. Credit: Tom Leaper

Made almost entirely in Cornwall

Wherever possible, the work stayed within the county. The specialist bronze casting was carried out by Fabrication Facility at Longdowns, while LaserMaster produced the precision laser-cut components.

The finished sculpture was built from around 50 individual bronze castings, assembled, welded, dressed and patinated before installation. Its bronze-clad plinth was engineered specifically to withstand the exposed marine environment out on Smeaton’s Pier.

“There is something very appropriate about using the skills of people working in Cornwall today to create a memorial celebrating the skills and working lives of generations who came before them,” Tom said.

📷St Ives Mariners Memorial Completed. Credit: Tom Leaper

A pattern with deep St Ives roots

The project carries some unexpected threads back through the town’s history. The original full-size pattern was made in the former Methodist Chapel opposite the Penwith Gallery, a fitting location given the long relationship between Methodism and the fishing families of St Ives.

The Penwith Gallery itself occupies buildings once associated with the Pilchard Press, another direct link to the town’s fishing past. Those same buildings later became an important centre of the St Ives modern art movement, and today house the Penwith Society of Arts. Fishing, community, craftsmanship and art all meet in the one memorial.

Not the Newlyn memorial

The St Ives Mariners Memorial is deliberately different in character from Tom’s earlier Newlyn Fishermen’s Memorial, unveiled by HRH The Princess Royal in 2007. Where the Newlyn piece is concerned with remembrance and those lost at sea, the St Ives memorial is a celebration of the working fishing community: the fishermen, their skills, boats and nets, and the industry generations of St Ives families built their lives around.

📷St Ives Mariners Memorial Installation Day. Credit: Tom Leaper

The unveiling

The memorial will be formally unveiled by Lord and Lady St Levan at 2pm this Saturday, 19 September, on Smeaton’s Pier, as part of the St Ives September Festival. Sea shanties will precede the unveiling, followed by a blessing from Reverend Derath Durkin, before the ceremony closes with further shanties from Cornish group Cork and Barbor. The unveiling is also expected to be filmed by Channel 5 for a forthcoming television programme.

Once unveiled, the St Ives Mariners Memorial will remain permanently on Smeaton’s Pier, a lasting marker of the generations of fishermen and mariners whose working lives helped build the St Ives known today.

A helicopter from RNAS Culdrose is expected to mark the occasion with a flypast, though that, organisers say, depends on operational requirements on the day.

📷St Ives Mariners Memorial Completed. Credit: Tom Leaper