This film is part of Free
£250,000 Blaze
Hull's new fish market suffers a catastrophic fire
Overview
This suitably sombre Topical Budget newsreel surveys the charred ruins of Hull's fish market. The camera's slow pans across the skeletal remains speak volumes, as do the tight smiles of the men. Mercifully there was no loss of life, but the fire consumed not only the new landing stage - completed just a week earlier - but also 150 railway fish vans and several trawlers. Miraculously, though, much of the fish stock in the trawlers' holds survived, saved by the ice that covered them.
The estimated £250,000 cost of the damage (that's some £14 million in today's money) was probably optimistic. The landing stage alone had cost between £150,000 and £200,000, and the impact on the trade and the local jobs that depended on it was vast.
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