Fiery Cross, Dittisham Creek

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Fiery Cross was a wooden fishing trawler built in Porthleven, Cornwall, in 1905. In her early years she was registered in Lowestoft, Milford Haven and Ramsgate, spending the majority of the war years fishing from the latter.

Many Ramsgate registered trawlers were subsequently lost to U-boats, but Fiery Cross survived and was bought in 1923 by a Brixham man who had himself survived the loss of his previous vessel when it was sunk by a U-boat. After years of faithful service, he sold her as a houseboat in 1937.

It appears that Fiery Cross was still afloat at the outbreak of the Second World War, but by the end of the 1940s was moored in Dittisham Creek in a derelict condition. By 1988 not much was left of the trawler but, when surveyed in 2016, the rudder was discovered to near perfectly preserved just beneath the muddy surface.