# Record landings. Top ships.



## birgir

Greetings all.

The appearance in the gallery of a list of landings in 1960 brought to my mind the question about "records". Is there any list in existence about record sales? Was there a common UK record, or was there a special Hull record, Grimsby record, etc.

E.g. I read long time ago, that the Hull trawler "Earl of Shaftesbury H 815" broke the 1000 pound barrier back in 1907. Any other recorded milestones that you know of?

Of course, inflation skews the long term picture.

Any thoughts?

Birgir Thorisson


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## gdynia

Was there not a Golden Cod Trophy or something years ago for these vessels for record landings


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## K urgess

Silver Cod, Neville. (EEK)
There is a thread about it somewhere but I can't find it at the moment.
There is a picture of it in the gallery.
http://www.shipsnostalgia.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=119788

Cheers
Kris


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## gdynia

Cheers Kris i can remember reading about it in my Uncles Fishing News


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## mattarosa

There is a list of winners of the Silver Cod Challenge Trophy, which was awarded from 1954 until 1968 by the British Trawler Federation to the Skipper and Crew of the trawler with the largest total catch for the year, here

http://www.hullwebs.co.uk/content/l-20c/industry/fishing/trawling/silver-cod.htm#

Hilary


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## mattarosa

This is from the Times of 14 April 1909 about the Grimsby fish trade.

The returns record of the landings of fish for the Easter market are now to hand, and show that for the first four days of the week over 3,000 tons, valued at about £160,000 were landed, sold and despatched to the inland markets. This required a combined train of more than 1,000 wagons, and constitutes a record in the distributon of fish from Grimsby.


Hilary


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## mattarosa

On 29 December 1949, the Grimsby trawler Kirkness landed fish to the gross value of £18,074, thus breaking the record for a British trawler. Her total catch of 33,410 stones included 19,100 stones of plaice.

The trawler belonged to the Rinovia Steam Fishing Company, and she was away 27 days in the White Sea ground. The total catch, though heavy, was not exceptional in weight. Its record value was due to the high proportion of plaice, which is more profitable than the cod and haddock which usually make up catches from the distant grounds.

The world's record for both weight and value at this date was held by the Icelandic trawler Neptunus, which on May 7, 1948, landed at Grimsby 57,090 stones of fish, which was sold for £19,069.


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## mattarosa

Here's a sad story from the Times of 14 June 1962

Record fish catch brings loss
Hull, June 13
A Hull trawler, the Somerset Maugham, broke two records when she docked at Hull today. She brought back the biggest single fish catch of the year for a ship of her type - 47,390 stones - but she also had the largest amount of unsold fish from one catch that anyone can remember. There were no buyers for 28,000 stones of the catch, and although the fish she sold fetched £6,349 it was not enough to meet all her expenses. The owners estimated a £2,600 loss for the 21-day voyage. There were 54,000 stones of unsold fish at Hull today, mainly because the shortage of potatoes is restricting the fish fryers.


I can probably find a few more stories about landings and sales, if anyone is interested.

Hilary


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## gdynia

Good reading Hilary


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## birgir

How to compare records over time?

One way of normalizing sale records over a long time period, is to compare the amount to something else. I would suggest the price of the trawler as new (replacement cost at a given time), as reference.

1000 pounds for the Earl of Shaftesbury is about 1/7 of the price of the ship.

19.000 pounds for Neptunus or 18.000 for Kirkness, is about 1/5.5 or 1/6.5 (I don´t have exact cost of these ships, just a hearsay that a new trawler this size costs about 100-120 thousand pounds.

The biggest proportional sale I know of (in peacetime) is by St. Belgaum RE 161 in january 1925, 4870 pounds. Skipper/owner Thorarinn Olgeirsson had a new, bigger, trawler built at Beverley that year for 20.000 pounds. So the sale was at least 1/4 of the cost of Belgaum at the time. This sale is nowhere reported as a record however. WW1 must have seen even higher amounts in numerical terms.

Record figures for Freezers in recent years seem to be in the 1/10 range. (haven´t had a close look at it, so it may be even less).

Birgir Thorisson.


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## osta

3/46 a fwd skipper arthur lewis landed in ST BARTHOLOMEW maiden voyage from BEAR ISLAND 3wks 4330bxs 3000hadds 2160galls of liver oil record for quantity next day in GRIMSBY another fwd skipper james latham in NORTHERN SKY landed 4731bxs mainly hadds record for largest catch £14633 the hull ship grossed £17302 OSTA


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## nicolina

Birgir.
I do remember to have read once about the Icelandic trawler Mai that she once did land over 530 ton of Redfish in Hafnarfjørdur in the 60Thies all caugth during a trip to East Greenland.
There was a picture of her coming into port with an pile of fish on her deck as her hold was full up.
Do you know anything about this trip


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## mattarosa

Port records, not individual trawlers, but interesting nevertheless.

13 April 1927 - The heaviest arrival of fish for the year is anticipated at Fleetwood today. Last year's "record" of 900 tons for one day will be easily outdistanced, as 1,200 tons are to be unloaded from 40 steamers which have been fishing in the Scottish, Irish, Faroese and Icelandic areas. Tomorrow, further big supplies are expected. Already this week all previous "records" have been broken. Up to last night 1,100 tons of fish, principally hake, cod and haddock had been brought to Fleetwood and sold to internal markets.

25 March 1937 - The port of Hull set up a world's record yesterday for the landing of fish supplies at any single port on any single day. A fleet of the modern deep sea type of trawler reached Hull dock from the fishing grounds of Iceland, Bear Island, Faroe Isles, the West Coast of Norway and the North Sea landed 422,500 stones of fish... At Grimsby yesterday 2,020 tons of fish were landed, a record for the Easter market. During the last three days 4,633tons - a total which also beats all previous records for the port - have been put on the market.


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## mattarosa

1958 - top trawler of the Lowestoft fleet was Lowestoft Lady, which earned £37,733 during 1958, a record for the port.


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## mattarosa

Have posted a pic in the Gallery of Bill Turner of the Hull trawler Lancella who won the Silver Cod Trophy for landing 2,871 tons of first-class fish in 1956


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## mattarosa

1965 - Top trawler at Fleetwood was the 448-ton Captain Fremantle, which grossed £110,140.


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## tenterden

HAMMOND INNES landed 2-2-1974 = 4499 kit and made £73,000 fished malangan bank 22 day trip nearly all haddock


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## birgir

Thanks for the responses.

I wonder about the "records". Who kept them? Was it really up to the (recent memory) of the local (fishing) press to pay attention to unusually high landings/sales?

Jonleif. Sorry, I have never seen any references to the record trip by Mai in the sixties. However, my interest has been pretty narrowly focused on pre-WW2 era. 
Redfish has often been caught in prodigious quantities, the worst example is the start of dedicated redfish fisheries in Iceland in the thirties, when it was caught for the then new fishmeal factory in Patreksfjordur. Two trawlers, (Both later sold to the Faroes, the Gylfi (Gullfinnur) og Vordur, (?) caught ower 10.000 tons in five months in 1937, which averages 1000 tons each per month.)

General comments. 
a) A trawler, like Hammond Innes in 1974, is a totally different "kettle of fish" to the Earl of Shaftesbury of 1908. 
b) The nominal value of money has decreased throughout the century. 
c) Productivity increase should mean decrease in relative price of food. Ergo, Fish should be cheaper relative to wages in 1974, than in 1908.

This is why I suggested the value of the ship as a normalizing function.

Tenterden; How can we put Hammond Innes´ record in perspective? Do you any idea (or hunch) how many such landings would have been needed to pay for a new Hammond Innes?

Birgir Thorisson.


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## mattarosa

birgir said:


> How can we put Hammond Innes´ record in perspective? Do you any idea (or hunch) how many such landings would have been needed to pay for a new Hammond Innes?
> 
> Birgir
> 
> I think the value of the sales compared to the investment in the trawler would be a very useful measure to try and compare the success of different types of trawlers. I assume fishing companies kept records of both (outlay and income) but I don't know if any or enough still exist.
> 
> Hilary


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## mattarosa

I have a bound volume which I bought on ebay which records how much and what sort of fish trawlers landed. Unfortunately, there are no explanatory notes and it is quite hard to interpret. It covers the period from 1 July 1968 to 31 December 1968. There are 2 pages for every day. The first page says "RUSSELL'S HOME LIST" and records the Berth, Landing Time and Days at Sea for various vessels. There are also columns for Kits Landed and Value, but these are blank. So you can see the rest of the page, I have managed to scan an example, I can't get the whole page in my scanner. As you will see, there are totals for each trawler, as well as a breakdown of different types of fish. I don't know what the totals are though, whether they are kits, or boxes or stones?

The second page each day are market reports for other ports and are overall totals without naming the trawlers. This page is headed RUSSELL SERVICES LTD. I assume this is the company that kept the ledgers. Anyone know who they were?

I could possibly make a scan of whole pages when I go back to work on Monday as we have a bigger scanner there.

If anyone knows more about how to interpret these records, I would be very grateful. Even without knowing exactly what they mean, they are useful in demonstrating which trawlers were working, where they went and what sort of fish they caught.

Hilary


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## davetodd

Hilary
The thumbnail you have attached is a pre-market information for fish merchants, buyers etc.
Shows the amount and type of fish landed and from where.
Russell was an agency offering information services to the fishing industry.
At the top left on your image can be seen G.T.O.A.
Grimsby Trawler Owners Association.
Total fish shown landed that day was 4980 KITS =697,200lbs
1 Kit= 10 stone =140 lbs. (usually gutted but with heads on)
Russell's had a service for fisherman as well, a coded message book for crew to send telegrams.
Groups of four or five letters had fixed meanings shown in the code book.
e.g. ABCD= Happy birthday son,see you next week.
This was not a secret code but very much cheaper than getting Sparks to send a GPO telegram.
Regards
Dave


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## mattarosa

Dave
Thanks very much for interpreting this for me. It's very helpful. 

Obviously what I have covers 6 months of one year only. I wonder what happened to all the other years and months?

Happy Sunday from a very damp, cold and wet Hampshire.
Hilary


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## tenterden

the HAMMOND INNES was a (share) boat, the mortgage for the ship,ice, nets, food, ect, ect, came first, then the crew was paid,still in them days the best paid ship


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## birgir

Tenterden.

I think you misunderstood my point. What I was querying was what did 73.000 pounds amount to in 1974? That was an inflationary period, so I (we) have very little feeling for what the nominal amount buys. 

As a comparison; I can put the record sale of the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1908 into a context I know. The equivilant of 1000 pounds would buy you in Iceland e.g.; 2 cutters, (that is 80-90 ton ex-british smacks), or about 15 average size family farms, or 1/7 of a new steam trawler. For that money, you could pay a housemaids wages for 500 years!!, or an average inshore fisherman´s share for 60 years. 

Birgir Thorisson


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## nicolina

Birgir.
Regarding the big landing by Mai.
I did read it in a book called Mennirnir í brúnni.
The skippers name was Halldór Dóri Halldórsson
The amount landed after an normal trip was 530 Ton of iced Red fish and that must be a world record for an single fresh fish trip !!!!!!!!!
It equals 8500 Kits !!!!!


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## birgir

Jonleif.

How fallible the memory is. I have read that interview several times, but didn´t remember this factotum. I concur that this is most likely the fresh fish quantity record, since it was a large ship, and he mentions that he had about 100 tons of the catch on deck. But I find the average monthly catch of over 1000 tons by the Gylfi (Gullfinnur) and Vordur back in 1937 more impressive, because it was a much smaller ship. (336/314 tons compared to 987).

Birgir.


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## mattarosa

birgir said:


> What I was querying was what did 73.000 pounds amount to in 1974?
> 
> I tried this site
> 
> http://www.measuringworth.com/ppoweruk/?redirurl=calculators/ppoweruk/
> 
> which turns the question round. What is the value of £73000 of 1974 today.
> 
> The site gave me this answer (2007 is the latest year it calculates)
> 
> In 2007, £73,000.00 from 1974 is worth
> 
> £547,894.16 using the retail price index.
> £878,238.30 using average earnings.
> 
> I'm not sure if that helps!
> 
> Hilary


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## birgir

Hilary.

I followed the link and checked out how much 1000 pounds in 1908 is worth in 2007. It turns out that it is *74,862 *pounds using the retail index, but *394,099 *pounds using the average earnings index. The huge discrepancy is an indication of how difficult it is to "normalize" such numbers over a long time. Almost sevenfold difference between the indexes in one century. 

My guess is that a first class modern freezer trawler costs about 10 million pounds, (not the highest class of a football player!). That would indicate the relative price of the ship versus the catch has gone up over the century.

Birgir Thorisson.


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## tenterden

the average house price for 1974 was about £8,000


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