About us
May 2013 in a telephone call between two ex Hull trawlermen Jerry Thompson & Ray Coles took place we were talking about our once great fishing industry, and the loss of 6.000 trawlermen from our fishing community, along with the lack of interest into our heritage that was not happening, so we decided to create the HULL BULLNOSE HERITAGE GROUP formed by Jerry Thompson, Ray Coles, David Smith, and Laurie Dixon.
Over the last 9 years our achievements are the memorial benches dedicated to the 1968 Triple Trawler Tragedy & the Headscarf Women who campaigned for better safety standards after 58 gallant men from our fishing community were lost at sea, Today on Hessle road can be seen 5 large murals depicting the fishing industry & 8 Bethel boards that show every lost trawlerman`s name date & ship.
In April 2019 we opened the HULL FISHING HERITAGE CENTRE at 270 BOULEVARD HU3 3ED where our trustees Jerry Thompson, Ray Coles, Ray Hawker, Dave Smith, George Gibson & Gary Walsh are our tour guards with over 150 years experience in our fishing industry.
At our Heritage Centre we have vast archive of the trawlermen and family history along with many trawler models & artefacts and over 100.000 photographs of the industry & every day life in the community.
An example recently :- We had a 72 year old gentleman visit the Centre one day, telling us his father had been lost overboard when he was 2 months old such a tragic incident, we said to him with him been 2 months old, he would not have a memory of his father , he said "memory I have never seen a photo of him" we said turn around and look at the computer screen behind you, the gentleman you can see is your father! well the guy started to cry after a long 72 years he finally got to see his father, we printed 3 photos and with tears and a proud smile he was off to show his wife, children & grandchildren his fathers precious photo, this is one of many achievements we at the Hull Fishing Heritage Centre now have on a regular basis.
We also have 3 Facebook pages that carry 1,000s of photographs of the trawlermen at sea and ashore they are "New Hull Fisherman's History", "The Hull Trawler Group" & "Friends Of The Hull Fishing Heritage Centre "and it has been a huge success with over 50,000 members in a very short time.
Our time and dedication is free to everybody wanting our help after all "OUR HERITAGE IS YOUR LEGACY"
History of St Andrews Dock
St. Andrew’s Dock was originally designed for the coal trade but by the time it opened in 1883 it was earmarked solely for the use of the fishing industry which, with the development of steam powered trawlers and of the railway network, was undergoing a period of rapid expansion. The dock extension was opened in 1897. By the 1930s road transport was challenging rail and the last fish train ran in 1965. The last boom period in the industry was in the early 1970s, but by this time the fish market buildings on the north side of the dock were in need of repair. With the expansion of the freezer trawler fleet it was decided to move the fish docks to new buildings at Albert Dock in 1975 and St. Andrew’s Dock was closed. This move unfortunately coincided with the declaration by Iceland of a 200 mile limit, the outbreak of the last Cod War, and a decline in the industry from which it has never recovered. During the 1980s several factors led to changes in the use of land in the St. Andrews Dock and Dock extension areas, such as containerisation and the concentration of port activities in King George and Queen Elizabeth Docks to the east, the construction of Clive Sullivan Way as the major road into the city from the west and the sudden prominence that this gave to the western docks area, and the trend with increased car ownership towards out of town shopping and leisure uses previously concentrated in the City Centre. Filling of the dock itself began in the late 1980s. The small dock-related industries located mainly on the south side of the dock either followed the fishing industry to Albert Dock or closed altogether, although a small nucleus of industries remained for some time at the eastern end of the dock, associated mainly with the ship-repair activities still taking place in William Wright Dock. As buildings become vacant they were quickly vandalised, tendering to encourage the remaining firms to move out. As outlined above, the history of St. Andrew’s Dock is very closely associated with the history of the deep-sea trawling industry, and as the dock itself began to disappear through the development of the site for retail and leisure uses, many Hull people felt that a part of their history was also disappearing, a history with which many of them had close family ties. A strong campaign was therefore launched to save something of the dock and its surroundings, both to explain to future generations what the industry was about and to preserve the memory of the many people who had sacrificed their lives to it. In December 1990 the area in the vicinity of the lockpit was designated a Conservation Area. This was considered to be the part of the dock area which had retained the strongest links with the previous uses and where there was the best opportunity to preserve what remained of the buildings and features of interest.