Win a copy of Ernest Suddaby's Fishing Explorer!

Win a copy of Ernest Suddaby’s Fishing Explorer: The Final Visit to the Gaul!

Ernest Suddaby is famous for the trip he did not skipper. He had arranged to have the first trip of 1974 ashore, and it was relief skipper Peter Nellist who was in command when his vessel Gaul H 243 was lost with all hands off the North Cape of Norway on 8 February.

But in a lifetime at sea, Ernest Suddaby fished the North and South Atlantic and earned himself a reputation as a skipper who ran an efficient and successful ship, before going on to command offshore standby vessels. Fishing Explorer, published in 2006, is his story.

The book – by turns entertaining, informative and challenging, and extensively illustrated – combines three strands: an account of the Falklands trip he skippered late in his career on the Fishing Explorer PH 343, which gives the book its name; sections looking back at his fishing career in Hull’s trawling heyday; and an account of the survey trip he took part in to gather evidence for the second Gaul inquiry in 2004.

The conclusions of that inquiry largely vindicated what Skipper Suddaby had maintained all along: that there was no sinister espionage explanation for the tragedy, and that the vessel had simply been the victim of bad luck and even worse weather.