Every now and again I meet up with tough Russian sailors and fishermen who visited Falmouth in the mackerel klondyking days of the 1970s and 80s.

This weekend I boarded the Russian fish carrier Rigor where I met Captain Yuriy Melnik, master of the small fish transport vessel, who last came to Falmouth in 1981.

Yuriy told me that he had endured storms almost daily for two weeks since leaving the rich fishing grounds of the Barents Sea where his ship had loaded prime fish from a Russian trawler.

Carrying 350 tonnes of frozen cod and haddock, the Rigor has been running between the Barents Sea and the Spanish fishing port of Marin, Finisterre, since last October.

Battle hardened and bruised from the ravages of Arctic weather the rust streaked little ship still sported the brackets on her funnel that once carried the infamous hammer and sickle emblem of the USSR symbolising the tools of the peasantry and the industrial proletariat.

At the height of the Cold War piloting Communist ships was somewhat strange. Standing next to the captain would be the much reviled political officer.

Soviet seamen lived in absolute fear of the political officers who were assigned to each vessel in the vast Russian merchant and fishing fleets.

Their official title was pompolit. Many Russian seamen nicknamed them the "pompa," the Russian name for pump, as these much despised individuals had the task of keeping everybody on the ship in line with Soviet doctrine whilst at the same time pumping communist propaganda into the sailors' minds.

On the completion of each voyage the commissar would submit so-called "political reports" on each member of the crew to the Maritime Division of the KGB.