Tom Compton knows the name of every captain he has fitted with a beacon. He knows how they take their tea. He knows which boats were named after wives, daughters, and grandmothers, and which were named after qualities their owners hoped to possess. He has written it all down in a notebook he bought from Fowler’s Books for one florin eighty.

He is twenty-three years old. He learned his trade from his uncle, Reg Compton, at the Harbourfront boatyard. He has been fitting beacons to the fishing fleet for three weeks — thirty-four vessels completed as of Saturday — and in the course of that work he has noticed something that the notebook makes plain.

The fleet is old.

Not the boats. The boats can be repaired, refitted, maintained. The captains.

“The average age is fifty-seven,” said Compton, who calculated it from his notebook entries. “Twelve of the thirty-four captains I’ve fitted are over sixty. Five are over sixty-five. Captain Anders Grip is sixty-eight and says he’ll retire when his knees do. Captain Dalgleish is the youngest I’ve done, and he’s forty-four.”

On Friday, Compton submitted a petition to the City Council — not through a solicitor, not through a trade association, but through the front desk at the Municipal Chamber, in an envelope addressed to the Clerk. It bore twelve signatures: Compton’s own and those of eleven other young tradespeople — boatwrights, riggers, net-makers, a marine electrician — who work in or around the harbour but have no formal qualification, no structured training programme, and no clear path to becoming the next generation of vessel masters.

“I learned from my uncle,” Compton said. “Not everyone has an uncle.”

The petition requests the establishment of a formal marine trades apprenticeship programme — a two-year structured curriculum covering boat-handling, navigation, engine maintenance, safety certification, and the various skills that a working vessel master requires but that no institution in Bobington currently teaches in any organised fashion.

Wilfred Poole, secretary of the Fishermen’s Benevolent Association, endorsed the petition on Saturday.

“The boy is right,” said Poole, who is sixty-one. “I’ve been saying this for a decade, but I say it in committee rooms where everyone agrees and nothing happens. Tom wrote it on paper and took it to the Chamber. That’s better.”

Patrick Seldon of the Docklands Workers’ Association — who has not met Compton but was shown the petition by a reporter — described it as “exactly the kind of initiative the transition fund was designed to support.”

“Marine trades, electrical trades, cable-laying — the city needs skilled hands,” said Seldon. “If there’s a programme to build, we’ll help build it.”

The petition has been referred to the Labour and Skills Committee, chaired by Alderman Miriam Sefton. A Committee spokesperson confirmed receipt and said it would be reviewed “in due course.”

Compton, meanwhile, has returned to the boatyard. Beacon number thirty-five is scheduled for Tuesday — Captain Moira Hennessy’s Sea Thistle, in for a hull scrape. He will note the installation in his book.

“Wilfred wants the notebook in the annual report,” he said. “I told him it’s just names and tea orders.”

It is rather more than that.