Does anyone on this site know how many trawlers steamed out of Hull in approx 1973ish. Also How many roughly where employed.
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- Thread starter Phinius T Bookbinder
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I tried searching, as I am sure you have, and I assume you found the same as me, which was nothing that answers your question, but a lot if interesting stuff about the history of it all.
Think an annual Trawler Day / Match by City would be a great idea and would help embed the club back in its West Hull setting.
I remember the triple trawler tragedy around 1968 and Hull City's quick response to the fund raising effort. We played Motherwell at Boothferry Park under the lights and raised a few bob for the lost trawlerman's fund. The game was arranged in very short time and Motherwell didn't hesitate in sending a team down to Hull.
There was no trumpets or showboating about the match, the club just did it and City fans supported it. Don't recall a lot else going on in the city except bucket collections in pubs and clubs.
Also remember the Gaul going down in 1974. I knew Johnny Haywood who was on it, and my mates elder brother, Bri Dudding who was John's mate. Both NHE lads.
When City played Man U later on that year the mystery surrounding the Gaul had kept it in the news and I remember Man U fans goading us about it.
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I always find it a bizarre concept, that there was recognition of the danger of going to sea, so the solution was to build an orphanage.
Millwall have a Dockers stand and annual Dockers Day.
Our club needs all the help it can get to build bridges locally- it would cost little and resonate with tens of thousands locally
Hull Fishing Heritage Centre may have records, hopefully year specific. They do keep quite a comprehensive number of crew manifests. The job probably needs someone to sit down at a database and enter everything for easy cross reference.
The work was on a casual labour basis. You signed on before the trip, and signed off on docking. I sailed with the same people, more or less, trip after trip. But the time at home was unpaid. Usual complement 24 ish.
Those indirectly employed, shore based, must have been several hundred, if not into the thousands. Engineering, electricians, riggers, net makers and menders, icehouse, bobbers, office staff etc etc.
Aha, another memory. At sea evaporators were used to make boiler feed water from sea water. The distillate pump seals often needed replacing. Pull fuse, disconnect three wires, remove inlet/outlet piping, remove four bolts, carry to workshop, split pump and motor, replace seal and reverse what you had just done. It has taken me longer to type this than do the job. That is how it went at sea. Now for the fun bit.
Electrician, pull fuse, disconnect wiring
Plumber or brass smith pipework
Nuts and bolts, fitter
Labourer carry to main deck
Crane, lift off deck onto lorry
Think they spun a coin as to who actually split the pump, half being motor, electrical, half mechanical, but brass so plumber or brass smith.
Demarcation in the dockyards. Yep, worked out well.
The work was on a casual labour basis. You signed on before the trip, and signed off on docking. I sailed with the same people, more or less, trip after trip. But the time at home was unpaid. Usual complement 24 ish.
Those indirectly employed, shore based, must have been several hundred, if not into the thousands. Engineering, electricians, riggers, net makers and menders, icehouse, bobbers, office staff etc etc.
Aha, another memory. At sea evaporators were used to make boiler feed water from sea water. The distillate pump seals often needed replacing. Pull fuse, disconnect three wires, remove inlet/outlet piping, remove four bolts, carry to workshop, split pump and motor, replace seal and reverse what you had just done. It has taken me longer to type this than do the job. That is how it went at sea. Now for the fun bit.
Electrician, pull fuse, disconnect wiring
Plumber or brass smith pipework
Nuts and bolts, fitter
Labourer carry to main deck
Crane, lift off deck onto lorry
Think they spun a coin as to who actually split the pump, half being motor, electrical, half mechanical, but brass so plumber or brass smith.
Demarcation in the dockyards. Yep, worked out well.
Chapeau.
An all too rare example of someone with first hand knowledge rather than googling or wikipedia like so many on here do..
Got the programme for the Motherwell game but have no recollection of attending it.
Have very little memory of the triple trawler tragedy but my Mum, sister and myself were homeless at the time and staying with a family off Hessle Road. My sister remembers the worried and sombre mood at the time.
I'm amazed at how little known this disaster is in general.
Living up in the North East the folk memories are all about mining disasters (not surprisingly) but whenever they come up in conversation I always mention the terrible days of January and February 1968. In 30 years only one person I've talked to had heard of the triple trawler tragedy. Her Dad was a trawler man sailing out of North Shields.
On the 50th anniversary a couple of years ago, I walked a long section of the North East coast remembering those who perished in the cold, inhospitable North Sea.
God bless them and rest in peace lads.
When you look on YouTube at Hull trawlers especially in stormy seas it makes you think good and hard how tough it was.
Every word true. If you are ever in Hull pay a visit to Holy Trinity and in the corner there is a memorial to the all those lost at sea sailing out of Hull over the years.
I recall another one, Christmas 1965, the St Finbar lost at sea off Newfoundland with 15 lives lost, one a 15 year old cabin boy. This was the same year we got over 40,000 for a 3rd div home game v Millwall, day after Boxing Day from memory and I don't recall even a minutes silence for those lads.
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It's definitely a fact, there's a memorial service every year to mark the loss of 6,000 between 1835 and 1980.
I knew that and I'm not from Hull. Told that to someone at work a few years ago who was from a mining community and disputed it when I said fishing, not mining, was the most dangerous profession, and that more trawlermen from Hull alone had died than all the miners in the history of mining in this country. To his credit, when he went home and looked it up and apologised in front of everybody as it had become quite a heated argument.
Someone I know from Brid should have been on one of those but missed the sailing for some reason. A few years later a a problem on the railway meant he missed his connection to, I think, Grimsby for another trawler that went down. He decided that he wasn't pushing his luck anymore and emigrated to Canada.
I once ended up drinking in a pit village pub, and got into conversation with the locals. I've never set foot on a trawler, and told them so, but they still saw me as a representative of a fishing community, and they had massive respect for deep sea fishermen.
It was interesting, because it was mutually respectful, as they were adamant that they would much rather go to the pit face, than face the perils the trawlermen risked at sea. I readily admitted that I would avoid either, but certainly wouldn't be comfortable underground.
Communications then were not quite what they are now. Information would have been sent by telegram and contained the basic facts. The trawler owners were aware, and also the Seaman's Mission who had the responsibility for knocking on the door. Details of those lost, and those surviving would not have been known the time the game was played.
The chief engineer was to become mentor and friend to a young lad. He told me about that day. I will leave it at that.