Birth recorded
The Edward Kent crew note gives his date of birth as 28 August 1923.
Crew biography · Lost at sea · Second engineer
Edward Kent
Edward Kent was part of the Arctic Viking's engine-room crew. The main crew lists record him as second engineer, while one later summary names him as a fireman. He was thirty-eight when the ship was lost.
Life and work
The engineer from Hessle Road
The Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault records Edward Kent as an engineer aboard Arctic Viking H452. His crew note gives his birth as 28 August 1923, his age at the time of the loss as thirty-eight, and his address as 51 Hessle Road, Hull.
The crew lists describe him as second engineer, a qualified watchkeeping engineer junior to the chief engineer. Another summary in the vault refers to him as a fireman. Rather than forcing one wording to erase the other, this page treats him as part of the engine-room staff and records the role difference openly.
Engine-room work was central to the life of a steam trawler. While the deck crew handled fishing gear and the bridge kept the ship under command, the engineers and firemen kept the machinery turning below, often in heat, noise and difficult conditions.
Back to crewA second engineer was part of the machinery life of the ship: below the deck, close to the engine, and essential to getting her home. Summary from the Arctic Viking crew and trawling terminology notes
18 October 1961
Lost from the engine-room side of the story
Edward Kent was one of the five men lost when Arctic Viking capsized off Flamborough Head. The crew-location note places him in the engine-room side of the ship's working life, and records him as lost.
The surviving accounts of the final minutes focus most strongly on the bridge, the men escaping from accommodation spaces and the survivors who reached the life raft. For Edward Kent, the record is quieter. There is no surviving personal account from him and no settled narrative of his exact final movements.
That absence should not make him invisible. His work was part of what made the vessel function, and his death was part of the same sudden disaster that overtook men on the bridge, in the accommodation, forward on deck and below.
Engine-room work
The hidden labour of keeping steam
On a steam trawler, the engine-room crew carried a different burden from the men on deck. Their work was enclosed and mechanical, tied to boilers, engines, watches, heat and constant responsibility. The ship's ability to answer the bridge depended on the machinery below.
In the final Arctic Viking story, this matters because the engine-room men can easily disappear behind the more dramatic bridge testimony. Edward Kent's page keeps that part of the vessel in view: the men who worked below were just as much in the path of the disaster.
His role also links him to Chief Engineer Joseph Thomas Bartle and Fireman David Craft. Bartle survived and gave evidence; Craft and Kent were lost. Together they remind the reader that the Arctic Viking was a working system of men, machinery and judgement before she became a wreck and a case file.
Record trail
What the surviving notes preserve
Engineer aboard Arctic Viking
The crew lists record Edward Kent, age thirty-eight, of Hessle Road, Hull, as second engineer aboard the final voyage.
Lost at sea
Edward Kent was one of the five men lost when Arctic Viking capsized and sank on the homeward passage.
Role wording compared
The vault preserves both the second-engineer wording from the main crew lists and a separate summary that mentions him as fireman.
Sources used include the Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault note for Edward Kent, the combined and MOC crew lists, the crew-location note, the trawling terminology note for second engineer, and later summary material that also mentions him as fireman. Where the record is incomplete, the page avoids inventing detail.