103 years of age and even grandparents over 70 could and did play useful parts in fishing and ancillary occupations.
Baiting up on the long-liners, helping to haul in the nets on the purse-seiners, and assisting in the drying of nets and fish children often performed these tasks and helped in many others. At 10 a child could be a useful hand, by 16 a fully fledged adult worker, and marriageable to boot.7
The opening of the Fishermen's Children's School in 1958 brought some change. On my return to Kau Sai in 1959-60 I was surprised to see boys and girls 12 years old and upwards still attending classes. There were even some 15 and 16 year olds. As school was held in the daytime a number of these older pupils went out fishing with their purse-seiner parents at night. They must have suffered seriously from lack of sleep. Liners, being daytime fishermen and returning less regularly to the anchorage, tended not to leave their children so long in school. By 11 or 12 enough had usually been learned to make future attendance at the coxswains' and engineers' course run by the Fisheries Department possible; thenceforward the economic advantage of keeping a boy or girl at school was felt to be problematical.6
If a child of 10 or so could be a useful hand so, of course, could an experienced adult of even advanced years. Only 3 of the old people in Kau Sai in 1953 were over 70, and one of them died that year. The remaining 15, all in their sixties, were all economically active in various ways; three of them still unretired masters of their junks. One employee was a woman of 68. She helped with the domestic work and baiting-up on the medium long-liner (a rather bigger boat than any of the others) on which her son, who had neither boat nor other relatives of his own, worked as a hired-hand. In return she received board and lodging and a nominal, irregular wage. The oldest woman I knew died in 1967 at the age of 93. Until three years before she had lived her entire life on purse-seiners.
Thus, although, as we shall see, 60 (59 for women) was a social landmark of some importance, and marriages seldom if ever took place before the age of 16 for boys or 15 for girls, the ages