Ethelwulf

The loss of the Ethelwulf was particularly cruel because it happened after the fighting of the First World War had ended.

On 1 December 1918, only three weeks after the Armistice, Ethelwulf was fishing with other vessels from the North Shields fleet northeast of the Tyne. At about 3am, two large explosions were heard, and Ethelwulf and another trawler, the T.W. Mould, were seen engulfed in flames. Both vessels are believed to have struck mines left in the North Sea during the war. When the fleet regrouped, the two trawlers were missing; a search at first light found no survivors.

The tragedy hit North Shields especially hard. Contemporary reporting described 12 local families mourning husbands and sons from the two vessels. Fishing families lived close together and many of the men knew one another; surviving records show Ethelwulf crew families living around places such as Dockwray Square, Dockwray Street, Church Street and Tyne Street.

What made the loss especially poignant was that the community had every reason to believe the worst of the war was finally behind them. The Armistice had been signed on 11 November, yet thousands of mines remained in the North Sea and continued to threaten fishermen returning to their normal livelihoods. Ethelwulf herself had actually served as a Royal Navy minesweeper during the war, before returning to fishing – only to be lost to a mine in the weeks after the fighting stopped.

So the sinking wasn’t simply the loss of a fishing boat. Two North Shields crews disappeared on the same morning, leaving widows, children, parents and neighbours grieving together and demonstrating that, for maritime communities such as North Shields, the dangers of the First World War did not end when the guns fell silent.