The notebook cost one florin eighty centimes from Fowler’s Books on Threadneedle Street, which is closing at the end of the month. It is leather-bound, cream-paged, and approximately the size of a man’s hand. Tom Compton, twenty-three, apprentice boatwright, carries it in the inside pocket of his work jacket. It contains forty-two entries.

Each entry follows the same format. Vessel name. Captain’s name. Tea preference. One detail.

Entry number one: Northern Light. Captain Percy Dalgleish. Two sugars. First man to say yes.

Entry number forty-two: Harbour Quay. Captain Dennis Firth. Black, no sugar. Carved the tiller himself from Greymoor oak. The grain, he says, runs the right way.

Between them, forty vessels and forty captains, each one fitted with an Ashwater Signal Works position-reporting beacon — a waterproof transmitter the size of a biscuit tin that sends location updates every four minutes at a range of twenty-two nautical miles. The programme, funded by the Council Maritime Affairs Committee at 19,800 florins from the maritime safety reserve, is on track for completion by late April. Forty-two of ninety harbour vessels are now transmitting.

The fittings take approximately two and a half hours per vessel. Compton works with his uncle, Reg Compton, the boatwright who offered to do the installations at cost. They arrive at the harbourfront boatyard at seven each morning. Most days, two vessels are fitted. On a good day, three.

Entry number thirty-eight is the one Compton keeps returning to.

Morning Calm. Captain Beatrice Shale. Milk, no sugar. Sister-in-law of Dermot.

Beatrice Shale is fifty-one years old and has fished from Bobington harbour for twenty-six years. Her husband’s brother is Captain Dermot Shale, whose vessel Lady Maren went missing in March after a crankshaft failure left the crew drifting without radio for two days, nineteen nautical miles northeast of the harbour mouth. All four crew were found alive by the coastguard cutter Resolute. The incident catalysed the Fishermen’s Benevolent Association’s unanimous demand for mandatory position-reporting beacons.

Captain Beatrice Shale requested that Compton fit her beacon personally.

“If my brother-in-law had had one of these,” she said, standing on the Morning Calm’s foredeck while Compton drilled the mounting bracket, “Bridget wouldn’t have spent two nights on a chair in the Port Authority.”

She watched him work for the full two hours.

“You’re careful,” she said. “Good.”

Compton wrote the entry that evening. Tea preference: milk, no sugar. One detail: She watched the whole time.

Wilfred Poole, secretary of the Fishermen’s Benevolent Association, has been following the programme closely. He wants the notebook in the Association’s annual report.

“It’s a record,” Poole said. “Not of equipment — of people. That boy is documenting the fleet, one captain at a time.”

He has also raised the possibility of a permanent harbour technician position for Compton once the beacon programme is complete — someone to maintain the transmitters, replace batteries, and keep the fleet’s safety equipment in working order. The proposal is with the Harbour Authority.

“He’s twenty-three,” Poole said. “He’s good with his hands and he listens. Those are not qualities that grow on trees.”

Forty-eight vessels remain. At two per day, the fleet will be fully fitted by the last week of April. The first thirty beacons continue to transmit reliably — position updates every four minutes, range twenty-two nautical miles, no failures reported.

Tom Compton was asked whether he would miss the work when it was done.

He did not answer immediately. He was writing in the notebook.

“Entry forty-three tomorrow,” he said.