50 years on ..Pain of the Gaul still runs deep
Dark cloud looms large again as a city grieves
The hurt of the Gaul trawler tragedy still cuts deep in Hull. For decades, the unforgiving seas held tightly to the secret of its sinking while continuing to inflict untold pain on the families of the 36 men lost on board.
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Gaul’s downing, causing the dark cloud the disaster cast over the East Yorkshire city to loom large once again.
On the morning of February 9, 1974, Hull learned its state-of-the-art ship had disappeared in “the worst ever singletrawler tragedy”.
For 10 days, the families around the shipping hub of Hessle Road hoped for news. Then, the impossible. A Mission of Seamen representative walks into a working men’s club and declares all had been found safe and well.
It was a moment of elation for those in The Phoenix Club... until he was exposed as a fraudster.
The vessel had sunk to the bottom of the Barents Sea in fierce Norwegian waters, taking the lives of all 36 crew and affecting those of many more on land who would spend the following decades trying to find answers to the mystery. Why and how did it happen? Some thought the Soviet Union torpedoed the vessel because it suspected it was being used for spying, others backed a less sinister version of events in which heavy seas scuppered the Gaul.
Expert Dr Brian Lavery, author of The Headscarf Revolutionaries and The Luckiest Thirteen, says: “Once the Gaul was reported missing, a search involving the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and Norwegian air and sea forces began – but they found no trace of the missing vessel. A perfect storm for decades of conspiracy theories was created almost immediately. Some were credible, some crazy.
“They included the crew being captured by the Soviet Navy while spying, nets being dragged under by a submarine and the vessel being sunk by the Russians after hitting an undersea ‘listening cable’.
“For years, some relatives held on to the belief that their men were being held in a Soviet labour camp – or that both ship and crew were being held.
“It had been known for trawlers to be tracked by the Russians, so this didn’t entirely lack credibility.”
Yesterday, the names of the lost – 30 from Hull, another six from North Shields, where the trawler was previously based – were read out at a ceremony in Hessle Road, where a minute’s silence was observed to mark the sad anniversary. The ship’s bell, which was recovered from the wreck, was also tolled at the start of a four-day series of events commemorating the tragedy.
A new mural by local artist Neil Deanes was unveiled on Hull Fishing
I have always had the sense it could have been me ERNIE SUDDABY WHO OPTED OUT OF VOYAGE
Heritage Centre, capturing the Gaul in all its glory.
The deep sea factory ship, designed for extended trips, set sail from Hull’s St Andrew’s Dock on January 22, 1974, for Norwegian fishing grounds.
At some time on the night of February 8 and the early hours of the following morning, it went down in heavy seas north of Norway.
The late Ernie Suddaby had been the skipper of the Gaul for a year but chose
not to embark on the fateful voyage, having led his men on a trip battered by horrendous weather just before Christmas. Instead, his good friend Peter Nellist took the wheel.
Ernie said of the ill-fated trip: “I have always had the sense it could have been me. I knew think about them. A day never goes by when I don’t think about the Gaul and the men on board.
“I couldn’t take it in when I first heard the Gaul had gone missing. I knew there must have been something seriously wrong. We came back just before Christmas in dreadful weather, so I had
The gossip mill spun in Hull’s community and beyond
DR BRIAN LAVERY ON CONSPIRACY THEORIES
a sense of what they would have faced. My friends were on that ship and there was nothing I could do.”
Over the years, the theories over its sinking gained much traction, none more so than the belief the ship might have been engaged in Cold War espionage. While the Ministry of Defence eventually acknowledged the use of trawlers for spying against Russian ships, it maintained the practice had ceased in 1967.
The wreckage of the Gaul was finally located in 1997, following a search of the Barents Sea commissioned by filmmaker
Norman Fenton for an independent documentary.
The discovery compelled the Government to open a fresh public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding its demise and the fate of her crew.
A Government-funded survey conducted at the wreck site in 2002 corroborated the presence of human remains on board. And while examining the wreckage, investigators found two hatches secured in an open position on the right side of the factory deck. The reopened public inquiry in 2004 concluded the Gaul had succumbed to stormy weather exacerbated by the open hatches, resulting in it capsizing. The report dismissed the notion of deliberate sabotage or sinking.
But for many, questions remained. Why did it take so long to find the wreck? Why did the Government not do more to find it?
Dr Lavery adds: “Why did the three-day, 177,000 square-mile air-sea search find nothing? Surely the Royal Navy search fleet, led by HMS Hermes and assisted by UK trawlers, would have found something? And why, after a light was spotted by the Hermes, was nothing found when spotter planes went? “There were at least 17 UK fishing vessels in the area at the time. There was also a NATO exercise, being observed by the Soviets, whose submarines were based nearby. Yet no one saw the Gaul go. How could this modern vessel, with automatic mayday distress signals, disappear without an SOS? “The Gaul also had life-saving gear for 50 as well as lifejackets, a lifeboat, six inflatable rafts and four lifebuoys.
“And if a mine had been struck, there would have been an oil slick yet no flotsam was found. “Many people refused to believe that the Gaul could have disappeared with neither trace nor communication.
“The gossip mill spun in Hull’s fishing community and beyond. It was eventually accepted that the vessel had simply been overwhelmed by atrocious weather – but the years of campaigning in the wake of the tragedy would help to expose how the Government had covered up the British fishing fleet’s involvement in Cold War espionage for decades.”
In 1996, campaigner Beryl Betts, whose 26-year-old brother Billy Jones died in the tragedy, said she finally accepted the Gaul had probably been taken by the atrocious weather, adding she no longer thought there was “anything sinister”.
The final inquiry also reiterated that the Gaul was never a spy ship.
But the vessel’s story and the focused campaigning that followed were instrumental in ending a 30-year Government cover-up and recognising the role of a group of patriotic British fishermen during the Cold War.