U-boat’s conquests caught on camera in peaceful harbour
Doomed vessels feature in glassplate treasure trove heading to auction
AN amazing photographic treasure trove showing life in harbours from North Yorkshire to Cornwall a century ago has finally seen the light after 50 years.
The glassplates, bought on a whim by an East Yorkshire man from a London junk shop over 40 years ago, include a poignant picture of the ill-fated Hull fishing vessel Industria, alongside a local trawler, Seal, peacefully moored in Scarborough Harbour.
Just a few years later both would be sunk to the bottom of the North Sea by U-boats in WWI.
The collection dating from 1885 to 1910 by the unknown photographer is highly unusual – snapping working harbours rather than pretty landscapes or family portraits – and is going under the hammer on Friday in Driffield.
Industria was possibly one of the most accident-prone trawlers ever to set to sail from Hull.
Built in 1887 at the famous Cook, Welton & Gemmell shipyard in Beverley, she suffered one calamity after another.
In one spectacular mishap in 1889, Industria steamed into the harbour at Milford Haven at midnight at great speed, piled into the dock wall and promptly sank. She had to be recovered by divers and a specialist team.
There were more headlines in 1893 when she ran aground in Clew Bay, County Mayo, after the skipper had gone ashore for a drink with friends, leaving a junior crewman in charge.
Whilst another fishing vessel mounted an operation to pull her off, the stranded skipper went back to wait in the pub.
The Industria was successfully refloated, but by then the skipper was so drunk he couldn’t find his way out of the harbour and she had to be towed out to sea by another ship.
Sadly there was no happy ending for the Industria and her crew of nine – including John Acum, a lad of just 17, from Gillett Street, Hull, when war broke out.
The youngster, whose job was a trimmer, who shifted coal from the bunkers to the ship’s boiler room, was lost alongside his
crewmates, including deckhand Peter Carney, 42, from the same street, after the Industria was stopped and scuttled by German submarine UC-75 in March 1917.
Seal suffered the same fate – one of 19 fishing vessels sunk in two infamous days between September 24 and 25, 1916. However U-boat commander Carl-Siegfried Ritter von Georg spared all 126 lives.
The glassplate is one of almost a hundred entered in an auction at the Exchange Saleroom in Driffield on Friday.
Auctioneer Andy Spicer said: “Our vendor never got round to doing anything with them, so the pictures we’ve had produced from some of the plates is the first time they have been seen in at least half a century, possibly a lot longer than that.
“The quality of the photography is exceptional but more unusual still is the project.
“Whilst most photographers of the day were snapping pretty landscapes or family portraits, our man was working his way round the fishing harbours of England, from Cornwall to North Yorkshire, creating a wonderful record of these places and their communities. It was really, really unusual.”