A New Exhibition At Hull's Maritime Museum Aims To Shed Light On The 'Russian Outrage' Of 1904 When Hull Trawlers Were Attacked In The Baltic... Shell-Shocked!

On October 21 1904, 45 ships of Hull's Gamecock Fleet were fishing 200 miles off Dogger Bank, when they came under fire from the Russian Baltic Fleet.The Russian Outrage or North Sea Incident, as the event became known, directly resulted in the sinking of one trawler and the deaths of two British fishermen.Perhaps less well known are the exact circumstances surrounding the event and the fact that it almost led to war between Britain and Russia.

Now, an exhibition to mark the centenary of the Russian Outrage at Hull's Maritime Museum, is aiming to fill in the gaps.

RARE FILM

It brings together many of the artefacts, collected by the Museum over the years, including the shell-damaged companion way of the Mino, one of the Hull ships involved, as well as contemporary press reports, commemorative postcards and a rare fragment of cine film showing the stricken Hull fleet back in port.

There are also explanations of the trawling practices used at the time. "The Hull trawlers were part of a box fleet, which was an industrialised form of fishing developed in the mid-nineteenth century," explained museum keeper Arthur Credland, who has written a new book, The North Sea Incident, to accompany the exhibition.

"They fished in a tight group and then unloaded to a fast cutter, which would take the catch to market while it was still fresh."

On the night of October 21, the ships were fishing under lights when their rocket signals caught the attention of a twitchy Russian Fleet, which had just set sail from St Petersburg to relieve the Russian garrison at Port Arthur on China's Manchurian coast. Arthur Credland said: "At the time Russia was going through a time of major political upheaval, with demonstrations at home and a naval war against Japan, which was just starting to assert itself as an imperial power.

CIRCULATING RUMOURS

"In that atmosphere, there were rumours circulating, deliberately encouraged by the Russian secret service, that Japanese torpedo boats were lying in wait in the Baltic." The Russian fleet, which would later be convincingly defeated by the Japanese at the Battle of Tsu Shima, had been hastily prepared for sea. Including only a small number of real warships, its ships' crews consisted mainly of poorly trained peasants straight off the land.

"When they saw the rockets going up from the trawlers, they panicked," said Mr Credland. "They opened fire and within 20 minutes they had fired several hundred shells." Artists' impressions of the event show Hull trawlermen desperately holding up fish to try to draw the Russians' attention to their mistake.

The barrage left one trawler, The Crane, crippled. It sank within minutes, giving just enough time to evacuate the crew to one of the accompanying vessels. The Crane's skipper, George Smith, and Third Hand, John Leggott, were killed in the attack and six others seriously injured. A further casualty was Walter Whelpton, skipper of the Mino, who died of shock six months later.

The shooting was so wild, the Russians even damaged one of their own vessels, the Aurora, which would later become famous for firing the first shots of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Disastrous though the attack was, it could have been much worse, according to Arthur Credland.

LYING LOW

Propaganda: a doctored postcard of damage to the Mino.

"The damage to the Hull trawlers was limited by the fact that they were lying low in the water, which meant that the Russians couldn't turn their big guns on them. Otherwise, they would have been blown out of the water." Still, the consequences for relations between the two countries were bad enough.

By the time the trawlers had limped back to Hull on October 25, the Royal Navy had already been put on full alert and a squadron sent to shadow the Russian fleet. The press was full of articles calling for decisive action and even picture postcards, the craze of the day, were being used in the propaganda war.

One of the cards on display at the exhibition shows a photo of the Mino, which has been doctored to exaggerate the extent of the shell damage. "There were lots of heated comments in the press, lots of sabre rattling," said Arthur Credland. "The initial plan was to arrest the Russian fleet but the Royal Navy held off.

As the diplomats assessed the situation, they took a more cautious line." This was because, at the time, Britain was engaged in a naval arms race with its imperial arch rival, Germany. To counter Germany's growth as a military power, Britain had developed a complex web of alliances with its other European neighbours, including Russia - alliances it was at pains to preserve.

As a result, war was averted. The following year, an international tribunal in Paris ordered the Russians to apologise and pay the considerable sum of £66,000 in compensation to the trawler company and the families of the dead Hull men. They were buried, with great ceremony, next to each other in Hull General Cemetery on Spring Bank West and a marble monument, the Fishermen's Memorial, erected in their honour on Hessle Road.

PLEA FOR MERCY

The statue, showing George Smith has since become something of a de facto memorial to all those in Hull's fishing industry who have lost their lives at sea. "The casualties in the North Sea Incident were tiny for the standards of the fishing industry of the day," said Arthur Credland.

"In the Great Storm of 1883, for example, 250 men were lost in one night. It was just the unexpectedness of being under attack by warships, rather than by the forces of nature.

"It just goes to show that when major powers are contending on the world stage, there's no telling what the fall-out is going to be for ordinary people."