U-boat victim among rare trawler auction paintings

A rare painting of a Hull trawler sunk by a U-boat in World War One has sold at auction for £500.

The watercolour portrait of the Nil Desperandum, Latin for never despair, was painted by Alexander Harwood in 1911.

The Victorian trawler was among the paintings by marine artists from Hull and East Yorkshire included in the auction at David Duggleby in Scarborough on Friday.

Dominic Cox, from the auctioneers, said paintings of old trawlers had been "thrown away over the years" but the Nil Desperandum was saved by a local enthusiast, and was now seen as "very rare – and very collectable".

The painting of Nil Desperandum depicts the 140-tonne screw steamer several years before the World War One attack on the North Sea fishing fleet.

The trawler was built at Cook, Welton and Gemmell's shipyard in Hull in 1889 for the Humber Steam Trawling Company and sailed out of Hull for a quarter of a century before it was sold to Scarborough's Progress Steam Trawling Company in 1913.

In 1916, the vessel was in a fleet of trawlers fishing 20 miles (32km) off the Yorkshire Coast when they were attacked by a German submarine.

Disaster struck with 11 Scarborough trawlers, five from Grimsby and others from Hull, Hartlepool and Whitby, being sunk after the crews were ordered to abandon ship.

Cox said: "No one died in the attack but it devastated the Scarborough trawling fleet and resulted in all fishing operations off the Yorkshire coast being halted."

He described the painter Harwood as a "self-trained artist, who actually spent years as a dockworker".

"He was prolific but much of his output has been lost – sold by the fishing families or even thrown away over the years when interest in pictures of old trawlers waned," he added.

Adrian Thompson's painting from 2004 of the Dogger Bank Incident of 1904 was sold for £200.

It captures the moment when the Russian navy mistook Hull fishing trawlers for Japanese navy torpedo boats and fired on them during the Russo-Japanese War.

Also going under the hammer was a view of Hull Docks in Victorian times by Henry Redmore, which went for £800.

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