‘The Last Trip’ Memorial

Smales are proud to have been able to lend their support to The Last Trip – a striking, permanent memorial installed in Hull city centre, which commemorates the 6,000 men who set sail from St Andrew’s Dock in Hull but never returned home.

Designed by the son of a Hull trawlerman, the sculpture includes 90 polished steel replicas of ship’s bows to symbolise the number of ships that were lost and also has the name of every job done on board a fishing trawler engraved & illuminated all around it.

Speaking after the unveiling ceremony, Lee Smales said “We are delighted to be able to support this wonderful and long overdue, monument to Hull’s lost trawlermen.  The Smales story began on the Hull docks when my grandfather, Tim Smales, set up a small business selling seafood to local businesses and along with my father, Colin, they saw the boom, and subsequent decline, of the deep sea fishing industry in the city.  As a company, to continue delivering quality fish to over 3,000 fish & chip shops per week, we have had to spread our routes of supply further afield to countries such as Norway and Russia, but we will never forget that the very foundations of our business were built on the hard and perilous work of Hull’s brave trawlermen.  It is extremely pleasing to see that those who went to sea and never returned now have a place they can be acknowledged and remembered.”