Posts

Showing posts from June, 2026

Heroes and Rebels in the Family Tree—The sinking of the fishing trawler Rupee

Image
  Heroes and Rebels in the Family Tree—The sinking of the fishing trawler Rupee   Information below is extracted from the blog site Historic England On October 30, 1915, a group of eight fishing vessels, the Coriander, Fitzgerald, Achieve, Venture, Athena, Quest, Prospector and Strive , all from Lowestoft, were captured, scuttled, and sunk while out fishing in the North Sea. This was by no means the first attack on Lowestoft smacks, as all eight were, or any British fishing fleet. The situation had been escalating since the start of hostilities, but became very marked in July 1915 with the Lowestoft fleet coming under attack on several occasions. In fact, the wartime toll on the fishing fleet was such that a separate section of the official 1919 HMSO publication Merchant Shipping (Losses) was devoted entirely to ‘Fishing Vessels Captured or Destroyed by the Enemy’, running to 25 pages. According to Table B in this publication, for July 1915 alone 36 British fishing...