IT IS often said that today's news is tomorrow's fish and chip paper. There are exceptions, however. Sometimes old press cuttings survive. Whether forgotten in an attic or treasured as a precious heirloom, their rediscovery decades later can open a real window onto the past.

So it is with a newspaper cutting from the Yorkshire Evening Press dated Friday June 5, 1942, discovered by Vic Scott.

Vic, from Bishopthorpe, is the grandson of Thomas Henry 'Tommy' Air, who for many years ran a boat rental and boatbuilding business on the River Ouse.

Thanks to Vic, we have been able over the last year or so to publish several photographs of Tommy and his boats - and even of workmen building boats in the Air workshop on Cumberland Street (where Silvano's used to be).

But the newspaper cutting Vic managed to dig up contained a whole lot more information about the family and the businesses they ran.

The cutting - which carries the dramatic headline 'Saved 50 people from drowning: Boat builder recalls York river thrills' - was written to mark 60 years of the Air/ Metcalfe family running the Ship Inn on King's Staith. But it gave Tommy Air and his sister Lily Metcalfe the chance to reminisce about the family, about life as publicans, boat-builders and waterme. - and about the dangers of the River Ouse.

It was Tommy Air's grandfather, also Thomas, who first took over the licence of The Ship in 1882. By the time of the YEP article in 1942, Lily was running the pub. The pair remembered the 'greatest flood in their recollection', in 1892. But Tommy Air admitted that the flood which most stuck in his mind was that of March 6, 1933 'of which he has a constant reminder by a mark on the wall of his house'.

"Sightseers from all parts of the city flocked to the Ship Inn that day to be served by waiters in bare feet," wrote the anonymous reporter who penned the piece for the newspaper. "They walked from room to room on planks and drank their beer while sitting on boxes with water lapping round their feet and with chairs and stools floating across the room." Now there's a wonderful example of flood resilience at work...

Lily recalled days when they were woken up at six o'clock in the morning to serve beer to bargees on the river at 2 1/2d a pint. "Bargees were lined up two or three abreast in those days waiting to be unloaded," she said. "Grain, coal and timber were being brought up then."

In addition to his boat-building business, Tommy Air was also paid to rescue people who got into trouble on the river - and, where necessary, pull dead bodies out of the water. Oddly, as we have reported before, he was paid 20 shillings for pulling them out on the King's Staith side of the river, and 30 shillings for pulling them out one the Queen's Staith side. No prizes for guessing which side of the river he favoured....

But he also rescued many people who got into trouble. In one week alone, he managed t pull three people alive out of the river on three consecutive nights.

"The following night he was working at the other side of the river when a fourth person fell in and lost his life," the reporter wrote. "He has rescued about 50 people from the river."

Tommy also re-told the story of one of the greatest disasters on the river - "that at Newby hall, when hunters being taken across the water by ferry stampeded and the boat was capsized. Many of the animals were drowned, and notable Yorkshire followers of the hunt lost their lives."

Along with the faded newspaper clipping, Vic also found some more photos of the Air boatbuilding business, which we reproduce here. And he dug out the Air family tree, together with records of the Freemen of the City of York showing that the Airs had been Freemen since barber surgeon Richard Air became one in 1743.

The first Air to become a waterman on the Ouse was Richard Air of Friargate, who became a freeman in 1865.

Stephen Lewis