Amazing treasure trove of pictures from 1885 sees light of day for first time in half a century

The glassplates bought by an East Yorkshire man from a junk shop in London over forty years ago includes a poignant picture of the ill-fated Hull fishing vessel Industria, alongside a local trawler Seal, peacefully moored in Scarborough Harbour.

Just a few years later both would be sunk to the bottom of the North Sea by U-boats in WW1.

The work dating from 1885 to 1910 by the unknown photographer is highly unusual - snapping working harbours rather than pretty landscapes or family portraits.

Industria was possibly one of the most-accident prone trawlers ever to set to sail from Hull.

Built in 1887 at the famous Cook, Welton, and Gemmell shipyard in Beverley, she suffered one calamity after another.

In one spectacular mishap in 1889 she steamed into the harbour at Milford Haven at midnight at great speed, piled into the dock wall and promptly sank, having to be recovered by a specialist team and divers.

She hit the headlines again in 1893 when she ran aground in Clew Bay, County Mayo, after the skipper went ashore for a drink with friends, leaving a junior crewman in charge.

Whilst another fishing vessel mounted an operation to pull her off, the stranded skipper went back to wait in the pub.

The Industria was successfully refloated but by then the skipper was so drunk he couldn’t find his way out of the harbour and they had to be towed out to sea by another ship.

Sadly there was no happy ending for the Industria and her crew of nine - including John Acum, a lad of just 17, from Gillett Street, Hull, when war broke out.

John, whose job was a trimmer, who bought coal from the bunkers to the ship's boiler room, was lost alongside his crewmates, including deckhand Peter Carney, 42, from the same street, after Industria was stopped and scuttled by German submarine UC-75 in March 1917.

Seal suffered the same fate - one of 19 fishing vessels sunk in two infamous days between September 24 and 25 in 1916, however U-boat commander Carl-Siegfried Ritter von Georg spared all 126 lives.

The glass plate showing the Industria moored in the harbour at Scarborough is one of almost a hundred going under the hammer at the Antiques and Fine Art Auction at the Exchange Saleroom in Driffield on Friday August 28. The estimate is just £500 to £800.

Others show a busy harbour full of boats on their keels at Newlyn, with men waiting to take away the catch with their horse and donkey-drawn wagons.

The one-piece bathing suits of the time were shown off by one family enjoying a day out on the beach in another classic shot, while the messy graft of tarring ropes goes on in another.

Auctioneer Andy Spicer said: “Our vendor never got round to doing anything with them, so the pictures we’ve had produced from some of the plates is the first time they have been seen in at least half a century, possibly a lot longer than that.

“The quality of the photography is exceptional but more unusual still is the project.

"Whilst most photographers of the day were snapping pretty landscapes or family portraits, our man was working his way round the fishing harbours of England, from Cornwall to North Yorkshire, creating a wonderful record of these places and their communities. It was really, really unusual.

“The photographs are a wonderful find, without a doubt the best collection from this period that we have ever seen in the saleroom.”

The full catalogue is available on the Internet (www.spicersauctioneers.com).

The viewing sessions at the Exchange Saleroom in Driffield are on Wednesday and Thursday (26th and 27th August) 10am – 4pm and on Friday (28th) from 9am until the start of the auction at 10 o’clock. It will be webcast live on the Internet via thesaleroom.com and easyliveauctions.com.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson