Still stormbound
Reports say Derkacz, heading for the Humber, is still riding out strong gales with the fourteen survivors aboard.
Final voyage · 20-21 October 1961
Return to Hull
Derkacz brought fourteen Arctic Viking survivors home through the Humber after nearly two days of stormbound waiting. Hull received living men, thanked their Polish rescuers, and began to face the absence of the five who would not return.
After the rescue
Still held by the storm
The rescue by Derkacz did not immediately end the ordeal. Once the fourteen survivors were aboard, the Polish lugger still had to live with the same weather that had capsized Arctic Viking.
Reports say Derkacz could not safely turn for port at once. A later maritime summary records that a message from her skipper said he was riding out the storm and dared not turn his small vessel towards Hull until the weather moderated. The survivors were therefore saved, but not yet home.
For nearly forty-eight hours, the men remained aboard Derkacz while she rode out strong gales in the North Sea. The Polish crew gave up bunks, clothing, blankets and medical supplies. The rescued men were exhausted, sick from salt water and oil, and carrying the shock of the capsize and the knowledge that five shipmates were missing.
The wait must have been its own kind of punishment. The men had survived the sea, but they were still surrounded by it. Hull was close enough to be imagined and too far away to reach.
20 October 1961
Coming up the Humber
By Friday 20 October 1961, newspapers reported that the survivors were landed at Hull from Derkacz. One account describes the Polish lugger coming up the Humber while people waited on the dockside to see her anchor in mid-river.
The return was public, but the men themselves were not returning in triumph. Skipper Philip William Garner was described as pale as he stepped ashore. He told reporters that it had been over in less than two minutes. His words carried the speed of the disaster into the dockside reception.
For families, owners, dock workers and the wider fishing community, Derkacz's arrival brought relief and grief together. Fourteen men were alive. Five were still gone. The return to Hull made the loss visible on land.
There was also uncertainty in early reporting. On 19 October, while Derkacz was still stormbound, one report said the survivors were expected to be landed either at Hull or Grimsby. By the following day, Hull had become the point of return.
The return to Hull was not the end of the story. It was the moment the sea handed the tragedy back to the families, the dock, and the city. Interpretive summary from the Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault
Back on land
Fourteen living men, five absences
The survivors who came ashore had already told parts of the story aboard Derkacz and to reporters. Garner spoke of the two huge waves and the ship turning over. David Cressey spoke as the helmsman, describing getting out, helping the galley boy, and the ship turning over before sinking. Raymond Dodsworth described swimming beneath the ship through oil and debris.
Those accounts were not polished memories. They were fresh, shocked fragments from men who had just come through a disaster. They carried practical details: who was in the raft, who was missing, how the Polish vessel reached them, what it felt like to be in the water, and what the Polish crew had done for them.
Newspaper reports also noted that the disaster left children orphaned. That detail belongs on the return page because it shows how quickly the story moved from sea rescue to family consequence. The dockside was a place of rescue, but also the threshold of bereavement.
For David Cressey, the return to Hull became part of a much longer silence. The family story records that he rarely spoke in detail about the sinking. The public reports captured him immediately after the event; the private cost lasted much longer.
Recognition
The dock ceremony with Tom Boyd
After Derkacz reached Hull, the return became more than a landing. On the dockside, Tom Boyd, managing director of Boyd Line Limited, formally met the Polish crew who had brought fourteen of his men home. The ceremony was simple, public and freighted with grief: a ship had been lost, five men were dead or missing, and the rescuers were standing in the port whose families had been waiting for news.
Boyd thanked the men of Derkacz for the risks they had taken in the gale. The newspaper accounts record him presenting a pair of binoculars to the Polish skipper, Ryszard Sleska, whose name appeared in British reports as Sleska, Sleczka or Sleezka. The gift was practical and symbolic at once: an object of seamanship given to the man whose lookout, judgement and crew had made the rescue possible.
Boyd's remembered phrase was the "brotherhood of the sea". In one account, he contrasted the practical brotherhood shown by the Polish fishermen with the failures of politicians to practise the same spirit. The phrase was later repeated in letters and commentary, becoming part of how the rescue was remembered in Hull.
The dock ceremony also included a minute's silence for the drowned. That silence is important. Even in the moment of thanking Derkacz, the five lost men were present in absence. The public gratitude to the rescuers did not cancel the mourning; it stood beside it.
One later vault summary also records a civic reception at the Guildhall on 21 October, with additional gifts from the Lord Mayor and Boyd Line. That detail is retained here as a research note because it appears in the vault summary, while the newspaper accounts read directly for this page most clearly support the dockside presentation of binoculars and the minute's silence.
After landing
Rest before celebration
The Daily Mail account from 21 October presents a small but telling domestic detail. Once Derkacz was tied up, her crew put on their best clothes and prepared for a night out in Hull. Skipper Sleska refused to let them go ashore that night. They were too tired. They would rest and go ashore the next day.
That decision brings the story back from ceremony to bodies: men who had battled a gale, hauled survivors from a raft, given up their bunks and gone without sleep. Their heroism was not theatrical. It was work, exhaustion and discipline.
Derkacz was expected to remain in Hull for several days while minor engine repairs were carried out. The Polish crew had been away from home for a month, attached to a herring fleet based on the mother ship Kasuby, and now found themselves part of Hull's fishing memory.
The return to Hull therefore became a layered event: a rescue homecoming, a public expression of thanks, a moment of mourning, and the beginning of the long aftermath for families, survivors, owners and investigators.
Return chronology
20-21 October 1961
Derkacz reaches Hull
Newspaper accounts report the survivors landed at Hull from the Polish lugger. People wait on the dockside as she comes up the Humber.
The first public accounts
Garner, Cressey and Dodsworth describe the capsize, raft and rescue while the loss of five men becomes known ashore.
Tom Boyd thanks the rescuers
Boyd honours the Polish crew, presents binoculars to their skipper, and a minute's silence is held for the drowned.
Derkacz tied up at St Andrew's Dock
The Daily Mail reports Sleska in his cabin after berthing; his exhausted crew are told to rest before going ashore.
Sources used include How We Capsized in a Cruel Sea, Death of a trawler-By her skipper, Arctic Viking sank in two minutes, Proud To Know The Men He Saved, Calendar Of Courage In Winter's Storms, Brotherhood of the sea, Helicopters pluck 9 men to safety off drifting ship, and the Arctic Viking Obsidian research vault summary Built as the Arctic Pioneer. The directly read newspaper accounts are strongest for the Humber/dockside return, Boyd's presentation of binoculars, and the minute's silence; further civic-reception details are retained as a vault note.