Tag Archives: St Finbarr
The Christmas Day trawler tragedy which killed 12 Hull men
It rocked the city on a day which should have been among the happiest of the year. On Christmas Day, 1966, 12 crew of the St Finbarr trawler died in an explosion off the coast of Newfoundland. With only 13 survivors, Hull families did not know in the immediate aftermath whether their loved ones had survived, plunging much of the city into confusion and despair. It was one of the biggest disasters of modern times – but only two years later would be woefully overshadowed by the Triple Trawler Tragedy of 1968, which led to the rise of Lil Bilocca and her Headscarf Revolutionaries. Here, Brian W. Lavery , author of The Luckiest Thirteen which recounts the tragedy, remembers the lives lost on that fateful day 52 years ago. Rest in Peace, Fishermen. >click to read<19:35
A Christmas Day disaster
St Finbarr’s final trip was plagued by bad luck from the start. She took 14 days battling atrocious weather to get to Newfoundland’s Grand Banks – a trip usually done in half that time. Electrical faults reported from previous trips caused three delays before she even set sail from Hull’s St Andrew’s Dock on November 16th, 1966. On her maiden voyage in late 1964, St Finbarr, the most expensive Hull trawler ever at £500,000 (£13m in today’s money), smashed the national record hauling in 488 tons and 17 hundredweight, and had continued to do so since. click here to read the story 14:25
