Tragedy in Grimsby

As day after day passes and no tidings arrive of the missing Grimsby smacks, it is beginning to be realised that the gale of the 9th ult. will prove one of the most disastrous to the Grimsby fishing trade on record. Altogether nearly a dozen fishing vessels, carrying between 60 and 70 hands, are missing. Most of these vessels were only provisioned for eight or nine days, and many of them have been out over a month. Of the safety of seven of them all hope has now been abandoned… This calamity in a single port is one of the most appalling on record.

The year of 1889 was particularly bad for the English fishing trade. Above, the Hull Times (March 2) marks the loss of some fifteen vessels from the large port town, Grimsby. William Delf, a local fisherman, had a knack for penning verses to memorialize local tragedies, and his broadsheets were sold “in aid of the widows & orphans”. His Ballad in Memory of the Fishermen from Hull and Grimsby who lost their lives in the Gale of 8 and 9 February 1889 became by far his most famous work, and it has entered the popular folk tradition as Three Score and Ten.

Pictured: The Fishermen’s Memorial in St. James Square, Grimsby, erected 2005.