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Mike Covell investigates Sweet Fanny Adams and other tall tales about Hull

The abduction of Fanny Adams, as depicted by the Illustrated Police News.

A few years ago, I was taking a party on a ghost walk around Hull when they asked me about a number of stories that I had never heard of.

Intrigued, I discovered that a so-called “psychic” was responsible for these tales and had told them to a lot of people.

I decided to look into the stories to discover whether there was any truth behind them.

Hull has more than its fair share of myths and tall tales. It is a city full of weird and wonderful stories that are, nevertheless, nonsense, historically speaking at least.

So join me for a quick-fire tour of murders that didn’t happen, headless people who didn’t exactly lose their heads, lipless ladies, and the story of a polar bear being buried under a Hull road. Continue reading “Mike Covell investigates Sweet Fanny Adams and other tall tales about Hull”

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A deadly trek across the Great Silence of Russia’s White Sea

A seal-hunting ship navigates a semi-frozen White Sea in 1931 (National Archive of Norway)

The three men stumbled across the frozen surface of the White Sea. They were freezing, starving and close to exhaustion.

Through snow drifts, whipped up by cruel winds, they could occasionally see the dim beacon of a lighthouse. Desperately, they trudged on towards it, across the rough and treacherous ice, conscious that to stop might mean their deaths.

They were the last survivors of the crew of the SS Sappho, a Hull steamship which was sailing home from the Russian port of Archangel, when it became stuck fast in ice, miles from the safety of land, in December 1915. 

What happened next is one of the most tragic tales of courage and endurance in the history of Hull. Continue reading “A deadly trek across the Great Silence of Russia’s White Sea”