12 PORTS: HULL – THE STORY OF A UNIQUE PORT CITY

Though the place is some twenty-five or so miles up the Humber estuary, Kingston upon Hull, or Hull as it is more commonly known, has always been psychologically orientated towards the sea. The broad brown-mud estuary is crucial to this unique port-city’s story. Its tributaries, and later canals provided access to the heart of England, carrying goods to and from some of the powerhouses of the world’s first industrial nation whilst, downstream, it provides a link to the rest of the world. The sea was the first world-wide web and for countless generations Hull people and ships have voyaged down the Humber on their way to do their business in great waters.

The oldest part of the port is the Old Town, founded by the monks of Meaux Abbey to dispatch wool then the staple product of England’s overseas trade. The early medieval settlement, which can still be discerned in the area’s street layout, grew up where the western bank of the River Hull entered the great Humber estuary. The lower reaches of lesser river are known as the Old Harbour and have long been home to a congregation of quays – known locally as staiths. Here countless generations of merchants conducted their commerce, transhipping at one time or another almost every kind of maritime cargo.

Just behind this waterfront is the High Street which winds its way along one side of an otherwise typical medieval gridiron of narrow lanes. This was the original main thoroughfare and follows the broadly north-south weave of the River Hull as it approaches the Humber estuary. Much of the eastern side of this street was eventually fronted with fine merchant dwellings behind which lay commodious warehouses and all important private staiths. It was a busy place, a congested clutter of fine houses, humble dwellings, taverns, shops and warehouses. Even today, despite having confronted the combined ravages of the World War Two Blitz and misguided post-war planning projects, the cobbled streets and ancient buildings of this tightly built area still convey somewhat of a scenically sea stained essence of its maritime heyday and retains a number of these fine old houses and museums.

The port’s first dock was built in the 1770s and when it was opened it was the largest such facility in the country – nearly eleven acres, dug out by hand with pick axe, shovel and wheelbarrow. It was followed by a series of other docks, following the line of Hull’s old medieval walls. By 1830 the Old Town was an island bounded on every side by water: in some places by these docks and in others by the River Hull or the actual estuary of the Humber. Kingston upon Hull was granted city status in 1897 and in the early twentieth-century the port already stretched a long way beyond the confines of the medieval Old Harbour, having spread along the north bank of the great Humber estuary. Seven miles of docks and warehouses fronted the Humber or the River Hull, handling vast amounts of international trade. The commodities they handled were many and various, worked by lumpers and raff yard workers, deal porters, coal heavers and trimmers, corn porters and bobbers - the latter of whom unloaded fish.

Many famous ships were built in the port, not least the Bethia, better known as the Bounty. Others include the Alexander, part of the First Fleet to Australia, HMS Boreas, Nelson’s long-time command in the West Indies, and HMS Hecla, the famous Polar exploration ship used by Parry on four expeditions. Talking of all things Polar, five members of Shackleton’s famous 1914-1917 expedition were from or linked with Hull, more than from any other place, and a decade or so earlier, in 1902-4, Hull’s Captain William Colbeck, with a crew consisting substantially of Hull seafarers, aboard the ship Morning, played a crucial role in rescuing Scott and the Discovery when they were trapped by ice in the McMurdo Sound. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Hull was the largest whaling port in the country and its sailors had an unrivalled knowledge of Arctic waters. In the Great War, the steam trawler Viola, built to supply London with fish from the North Sea, was one of hundreds of Humber steam fishing vessels that were requisitioned and armed by the Admiralty. Viola sailed off from its home port with its crew of local trawlermen in September 1914 and during more than four years of active service on the maritime front line it sailed many more miles on patrol than any dreadnought and was involved in numerous actions with enemy vessels and the sinking of at least two U-boats. Now, one of only four ships left which saw action in the Great War, it has yet to return to its home port from that Great War voyage, Today Viola lies at the old whaling station of Grytviken in South Georgia after an eventful career that encompassed much of the long Atlantic Ocean, a Viola Trust has been formed in Hull to recover the vessel and hopefully return it to its home port. Indeed, ripple the surface of many stories of the sea and you will come across Hull people and ships.

We sometimes forget that by the early twentieth century, when Britain was the largest and most powerful maritime nation in the world, Hull was already known as the country’s Third Port. It was not only one of the world’s leading fishing ports, its trawlers reaching as far afield as Iceland and the Barents Sea, but it was also of global significance in terms of trade and commerce. One of the most important Hull shipping firms of the Edwardian epoch was Thomas Wilson, Sons and Company which had become, according to The Times, the largest privately owned shipping company in the world and in 1917 the company was acquired by Hull-born Sir John Ellerman, often considered to be the richest person who has ever lived in Britain; afterwards, called Ellerman’s Wilson Line, the company was for years a household name.

Because the port enjoyed many close connections with the continent, it played a significant role in the great movement of peoples from Europe to the New World. Between 1840 and 1914 more than 2.2 million migrants passed through Hull en-route to west coast ports for onward voyages to America. Ellis Island in New York, the portal through which many of these migrants eventually entered the United States, is now a museum. In Hull this remarkable movement of people is marked with a statue close by the Humber.

Large numbers of Hull seafarers and ships were lost during both world wars and in the 1982 Falklands War more Hull civilian ships were taken up for active Admiralty service than were requisitioned from any other British port. During the Blitz, Hull probably suffered proportionally more bomb damage than any other British city. We are lucky that so much survived.

Though the City was adversely affected by the decline of the British shipping industry in the second half of the twentieth century and by the loss of most of its once world-famous distant water fishing fleet after being on the wrong side of a series of Cod Wars with Iceland, it remains a resilient place. Time and again over the centuries, as town and city alike, its people have demonstrated an independence of spirit and outlook whilst at the same time making the most of opportunities offered across an ever-changing world. The modern city contains one of the most effective and efficient European ports and the ferries which ply daily between Hull and the continent are amongst the largest and most modern to be found anywhere in the world whilst the recent arrival of the Siemens Turbine factory has added a significant new dimension to its maritime portfolio.

In 2009 Hull hosted the Round the World Clipper Race and in 2017 the place revelled in its UK City of Culture status, attracting visitors from far and wide. Today, commercial shipping is increasingly concentrated along the port’s eastern waterfront whilst the Old Town docks have been variously converted into great gardens, a striking shopping centre built on stilts in the water and spacious marinas. A walk around its streets and waterfront areas will reveal many hidden gems, not least Hull Trinity House, which this year celebrates 650 years since its foundation, and Wilberforce House on the ancient High Street which was once home to the man who played such an important role in the abolition of slavery.

Hull lies in a landscape of huge skies, set amongst flat green fields many miles from other English cities. It is not at the end of the line as some landlubbers would tell you but is a portal to the wider world. It could be argued that over the epochs, Hull’s distinctive geographical situation has permeated the attitudes and personalities of so many of its people and encouraged an independence of outlook, and a taste for freedom which has found an outlet in so many ways, not least in its unique white telephone boxes, its distinctive local dialect, or by actions such as closing its gates on St George’s Day, 1642 to bar an authoritarian Charles I from the town – even before the start of the English Civil War - or in the many, many stories of individual lives of its townsfolk, particularly on the high seas..

Hull’s has a remarkable maritime history and yet remains an important player in the world of modern global maritime commerce. Building on the legacy of its 2017 City of Culture status, the place is set to make much more of its extensive and priceless maritime assets and singular global story through its recently announced Yorkshire’s Maritime City Project which, with Heritage Lottery Fund support, intends to transform the existing maritime museum and open up important waterfront assets – including the port’s historic ships – and to create new displays with the intention of swelling the increasing number of visitors who travel to this unique port-city each year.

Dr Robb Robinson

Blaydes Maritime Centre

The University of Hull