Leading Humber figure in Honour's List – Fishupdate.com
Leading Humber figure in Honour’s List Published: 31 December, 2007
FORMER Hull deep sea trawler owner Tom Boyd has been awarded the OBE in the New Year’s Honours List for services to the fishing industry and his local community.
His company, the Boyd Line, operated a large fleet of distant water trawlers until the last Cod War and the advent of the European Common Fisheries Policy.Ironically, it was bought by an Icelandic firm about five years ago.
Tom Boyd is a member of a well known Hull fishing dynasty and his father Tom Boyd senior, a key figure with the British Trawlers Federation (BTF) won the DSO for his part in the daring commando raid on the German naval base at St Nazaire in 1942 when the Campbeltown, an old ship packed with high explosives, was rammed into the dock gates. He was one of the few Royal Marines to safely make it back to Britain after the attack.
Tom Boyd junior was a key figure with the Hull fishing industry for many years. He has been a trustee of the Ocean Youth Trust and the Fish Trades Boys Club and served as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding. He is also honorary Norwegian Consul for Hull and Humber region.
The Boyd Line ships had a distinctive red and white triband flag on the funnels of its ship. The company was started in the 1930s with three distant water trawlers and finished with a fleet of over 20 vessels at its peak – all bearing the prefix Arctic.
Although adversely affected by 200 mile fishing limits and EC membership, the company was still in operation after the Millennium fishing in the North Atlantic with two filleter/freezer trawlers and supplying white fish to food processors and retailers.
One of its earlier vessels, the sidewinder Arctic Corsair, built in 1960, is now a floating fishing museum in Hull, attracting 20,000 visitors a year and managed by some of her former deckhands.
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