22 August 2022
By Ron Wilkinson, Chair of STAND and former trawlerman
For more than 150 years Hull was renowned for being a major fishing port and in the 1950s through to the mid-1970s St Andrews Dock was recognised as the home of the world’s largest distant water fleet of deep-sea trawlers.
From the early 1950s through to the mid-1970s Hull’s distant water fleet developed from old pre-war coal burning side trawlers to crude oil, then diesel electric power culminating in the introduction of stern trawling factory vessels.
Many of the older vessels were scrapped and, with the oil price increase in the 1960s, the scrapping of vessels accelerated.
In 1975, St. Andrews Fish Dock was closed, and operations moved back to Albert Dock, the original home of the fleet. In 1976, the last of the oil fuelled vessels, the Arctic Ranger, was withdrawn from service.
