Located in Thurso Bay, and sheltered by Holburn Head to the northwest and Dunnet Head to the northeast, Scrabster harbour has long occupied a fairly unique position in the UK fishing industry. Its geographical location in the Pentland Firth meant…
John Addison looks back to the end of an era in the 1960s that saw the last of the highly successful dual-purpose boats built in northeast Scotland, that alternated between drift-netting for herring and seine-netting for whitefish. Above: The Fraserburgh boat…
For more than 20 years, the Scottish west coast port of Ullapool was one of the busiest landing centres in the UK on a seasonal basis. Ullapool’s rise to prominence coincided with the growth of mackerel fishing, when a large…
The 39ft motorboat Star returned to her home port of Grimsby earlier this month, after visiting some of her former fishing locations, including The Moray Firth and the west coast of Scotland, when owner Gordon Gee also passed through the…
John Addison summarises a succession of anchor-seiners built at Buckie boatyards, Herd & Mackenzie, Jones, and Thomsons, between 1949 and 1976 Traditional Danish-style anchor-seiners regularly worked out of Buckie harbour when fishing in the Moray Firth between October and March…
For decades Fleetwood was one of the UK’s main fishing ports, headed only by the dominant Humberside duo of Grimsby and Hull. A diverse fleet of FD-registered vessels returned to Wyre Dock with continual supplies of whitefish. This enabled the…
Situated against the dramatic backdrop of the Mountains of Mourne in Co Down, Kilkeel harbour today is home to a predominantly shellfish-orientated fleet of prawn trawlers and scallop dredgers. Highly restrictive fisheries management measures for the Irish Sea led to…
Fifteen years ago this week, 168 Scottish boats formed a huge flotilla; a remarkable sight as it steamed under the world-famous rail and road bridges spanning the Firth of Forth. Carried out with military precision, the highly visual demonstration was…
In the latest of an occasional series, Defending Britain, remembering the crucially important role fishermen immediately took on a century ago, John Worrall explains how fishing boats were frequently deployed hundreds of miles from their home ports in support of…
John Addison looks back on a trend-setting succession of anchor-seiners built at Herd and Mackenzie’s boatyard at Peterhead between 1954 and 1961. During the late 1940s and the early 1950s, a number of traditional Danish anchor-seiners from Grimsby and Esbjerg…
