The Fishquay, Fleetwood

On our 1960 holiday in Lytham my father decided he wanted to visit Fleetwood. I accompanied him full of expectation, but when he stood quite still for ages sketching on the edge of the harbour I got very bored. The smell of fish was unpleasant and overpowering and there was nothing for me to do. Nine years later he must have looked at the sketch and felt he could turn it into a painting. By then I had married and left home to live in Switzerland so didn’t see this result at the time but I love it now!

The sketch below of Jacinta is almost certainly the ship in the painting but seen on a slipway.

On a web search we found references to three fishing trawlers named Jacinta sailing out of Fleetwood over the years. Richard has sketched and painted the middle one, registrated as FD21, which was replaced in the early 1970s by the more famous Jacinta FD159 arctic freezer trawler. See histories here and here.