Tom Compton’s notebook is three-quarters full. It is a blue hardcover exercise book, purchased from the stationer on Threadneedle Street, and in it he has written the name of every vessel, the date of fitting, the serial number of the beacon unit, and any notes on the installation — which bracket was used, whether the aerial mount required shimming, whether the captain offered tea or merely stood watching with folded arms.

Fifty-eight vessels. Fifty-eight entries. Thirty-two to go.

The programme, which began on 24 March when Compton and his uncle Reg fitted the first beacon to Percy Dalgleish’s Northern Light, has settled into a rhythm that is roughly the rhythm of the harbour itself. Each morning, two or three vessels are brought to the fitting berths — one at the Harbourfront boatyard, the other at Millgate Pier, where the Ashwater Rowing Association generously offered their repair cradle for the duration. By late morning, the beacons are calibrated, the aerials trimmed, and the captains given a laminated card explaining how to read the signal light.

“It’s a morning’s work per boat,” Reg Compton said a month ago. It is still a morning’s work per boat. The difference is that Tom, at twenty-three, has become remarkably efficient at it.

On Monday, Captain Donal Bray brought the Evening Star alongside at 7:15 AM. Bray is fifty-nine years old. He has fished from Bobington harbour for thirty-one of those years. His vessel is a fourteen-metre wooden-hulled trawler of a design that was old-fashioned when he bought her and is now simply venerable. The Evening Star’s navigation equipment, prior to Monday, consisted of a compass, a chart, and Bray’s memory.

“I know where I am,” Bray said, watching Compton drill the mounting bracket into the wheelhouse roof. “I know where the rocks are. I know where the fish are. But I won’t pretend I’ve never been somewhere my wife wished she’d known about.”

The beacon was operational by 10:40 AM. Bray examined the signal light — a small amber indicator on the unit’s face — and tapped it once, experimentally.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Tom said.

“Thirty-one years,” Bray said, “and that’s the best morning’s work I’ve seen.”

The programme is funded from the maritime safety reserve, authorised by the Council Maritime Affairs Committee on 19 March in a 5-2 vote chaired by Alderman Cole. The Ashwater Signal Works manufactured the units. Compton coordinated the fitting schedule. As of Monday evening, fifty-eight of ninety registered vessels have been fitted. Fifteen more are scheduled this week. The remaining seventeen are expected by the final days of April — ahead of the original “late April” target.

Tom Compton’s notebook, when complete, will contain the name of every working fishing vessel in the Bobington fleet. It will be the most accurate fleet registry the city has produced since the Harbour Authority’s last complete survey in 1994. Compton did not set out to compile a registry. He set out to fit beacons. The registry is what happens when a twenty-three-year-old boatwright writes things down.

His uncle watches from the next berth, a mug of tea in one hand and a torque wrench in the other, and says nothing about it. Which, from Reg Compton, is the highest form of approval.