The work was repetitive and back-breaking — literally so in Guo’s case. Lugging the weight of the tamper boards used to soften the sands that held the cockles left him with a permanently damaged back. Hauling full cockle bags only made the injury worse. Despite this, his work record was impressive: some days he picked 13 bags, others he worked consecutive shifts. Sometimes he didn’t make it back to Liverpool for a kip but merely rested on the beach between shifts.
Yet however hard he worked Guo was always on to a loser. A gangmaster was deducting more than half his wages in return for finding the work and sorting out his board and lodgings. The money Guo ended up with proved insufficient even to cover the interest on his debts. In China his wife was forced to go back to her relations for more money.
The cockle harvest at Morecambe Bay that summer was the best in living memory. Three mild winters had allowed the cockles to grow big and fat. Local cocklers could not believe their luck. Nor could they believe it when 300 Chinese workers arrived. Tension between locals and newcomers was heightened when a massive new store of cockles was identified at Bolton-le-Sands, on the east side of the bay. Despite the introduction of a permit system to help conserve stocks, hundreds of cocklers charged down the beach when it opened on December 1, 2003. Locals spoke of a Klondike-style gold rush. Wholesalers set up on the beach paying on the spot for the produce, and large refrigerated lorries arrived from Spain. Guo and his compatriots did not arrive at this site for nearly two months. By the time they turned up in late January other workers were used to working without them. Fights broke out with local fishermen and a huge pile of cockles belonging to the Chinese was torched.
February 5 should have been a day to celebrate: it was the day of the Spring Festival marking the end of the Chinese new year. Yet, exhausted by their routine, Guo and his friends did little. To avoid confronting the English workers, they planned to arrive at Bolton-le-Sands at dusk. Guo had never been to the site before, although he may have known of its reputation.
Morecambe Bay looks like a beautiful wilderness. In reality, it is quite the opposite. Apart from cocklers and the occasional fisherman, its only regular visitors are dog walkers because of the dangers posed by a vast tidal estuary. Its geology is a series of contradictions that puzzles even the oldest locals. Rain and river water comes off the hills of the Lake District at the north end of the bay and forms rivers that meander around the shallows, creating a tortuous puzzle of winding rivers and oxbow lakes. The Keer River runs parallel to the beach at Bolton-le-Sands, before circling out across the bay to sea. Its neighbour, the River Kent, twists and turns another way.
In the centre lie some of the finest cockle beds in the world. But many of the sand banks containing the cockles lie above the level of the rivers. From these points it can be impossible to spot the rivers filling up. In addition, the bay has some of the world’s most dangerous quicksands. It is no wonder that locals compare the bay to a wild animal. They say the tide in the bay comes in faster than a galloping horse. As a coastguard member said: “One minute you’re out there in the Sahara. The next you are under water.”
The week of the disaster there was one further problem. It had been raining hard for several days and the water coming off the Lake District made the bay’s rivers deeper and colder than usual.
It is tempting to think that the complex geology and weather systems of Morecambe Bay might have foxed the Chinese gangmasters who “ran” the hapless cocklers on February 5, 2004. Yet, having independently arranged a huge deal with a wholesale buyer, they may have had other things on their minds. They had agreed to fill up two lorries, one at night and the other early the next morning. To do this they would need 70 people to work in the early evening before high tide, and then again in the early morning after the tide went back out.
The plans went awry before the Chinese reached the beach. Four or five minibuses rounded up the workers in Liverpool at lunchtime but at least two broke down. Calls to garages were to no avail, leaving the Chinese about 35 men short. Guo’s minibus arrived on schedule at dusk, but shortly afterwards a flatback truck taking workers on to the sandbanks sank in the mud. It was the latest of many vehicles to be swallowed whole by Morecambe Bay.
The weather was damp and windy and the tide was short, meaning that there would be only a few hours in which to fish. Nevertheless, by 5pm Guo and his compatriots had reached a prime cockling sandbank several miles out. There was no light other than a lamp in his helmet and the headlights of a nearby truck.
Only two other groups of cocklers were seen out that night: a team of two and a team of three. These were experienced local fishermen. By 6pm the trio had gone, fed up with the weather and the poor yield. An hour later and the Chinese were waving goodbye to the last group of two, who left because the wind had picked up, meaning that the tide would be in earlier than usual. As they sped past Guo and his friends, they tapped their watches, indicating that it was time for everyone to leave. Their lorry drove down the sandbank and across the River Keer, at that point only a small stream, and on to the relative safety of the beach. One hour later and the River Keer was a raging torrent that seized the vehicle driven by the desperate Chinese, who realised that they had left it too late to come back to shore. Only half the passengers survived but Guo was not one of them. He was left on the sandbank, calling for help that never came.
For his friends and relatives, Guo’s death was just the start of another nightmare. It would be months before they could retrieve the bodies, but by the time Guo’s body made its journey home his family had held another funeral. Unable to deal with the effect of her son’s final call, his mother one day took a fatal dose of poison and walked off into the countryside.
- Pip Clothier is the writer and director of the BBC drama documentary Death on the Beach
