CORNER OF YORKSHIRE Hull Fishing Heritage Centre

THE 50th anniversary next week of the sinking of Hull super-trawler FV Gaul will focus attention on the city’s remarkable history as one of the world’s biggest deep-sea fishing ports. The vessel’s sinking in heavy seas off Norway on February 8 1974 with the loss of 36 lives was the last in a long line of tragedies to hit the tight-knit community of trawlermen and their families on Hull’s Hessle Road, and it is there that the Hull Fishing Heritage Centre has been established.

Set up in 2019 and run by ex Hull trawlermen with more than 150 years fishing experience between them, the centre is a fascinating museum that records all aspects of the industry, including many artefacts from famous trawlers as well as paintings and painstakingly reproduced models of vessels. One of the most popular attractions is a model by one of the centre’s volunteers, John Crimlis, showing the heart of the industry, St. Andrew’s Dock, as it looked in the 1950s, complete with trawlers landing catches and trains waiting to transport the fish to all parts of England.

There is also a constantly updated database of documents and photographs relating to more than a century of deep sea fishing in Hull, including more than 100,000 photographs and newspaper articles.

The centre’s location at the major junction of Hessle Road with one of the area’s other main thoroughfares, Boulevard, has become a memorial to lost trawlermen. There is a bench dedicated to those aboard the FV Gaul while others remember 58 men who perished in the 1968 triple trawlers tragedy off Iceland.