It is rare to see potted shrimps on a restaurant menu but the sort of clubs I go to invariably have them on their menus. I mean the sort of clubs where one eats in the coffee room, although sometimes it’s the only room where coffee isn’t served.
But I digress. In 1805 when things were hotting up for the Battle of Trafalgar, it is sometimes pronounced Traf-al-Gar with the emphasis on the last syllable (pupils of Kidson will know), Elizabeth Martha was selling fish by a pier in Greenwich. She wed William Young in 1811, whose Thames-based family had been fishing since the 18th century. Today those with MBAs would applaud this vertical integration (having sex standing up?). The union was productive and in no time they had a business catching and selling fish from trawler to table. They became the leading suppliers of potted shrimps.
But somebody somewhere can always do it better and up north on the Humber the Ross family were building a similar bur larger fish and food business. The Ross Group bought Young’s in 1959 and it too was the subject of multiple takeovers, owned today inevitably by a private equity firm. One prominent reminder of the company sixty years ago is Ross House, built in 1964, on the Humber.
Sometimes it’s a bit sad to see family firms like Young’s and Ross swallowed up by big business but it’s capitalism in action and if the Ross family still were in control there would be no Carphone Warehouse – founded by David Ross, grandson of Carl Ross.
Humber Bridge song is marvellous!
Generally speaking all our major infrastructure projects have to overcome bags of opposition but once completed we wonder how we ever managed without them.
I think The Humber Bridge is the solitary exception – a vanity project of John Prescott which, 45 years later, still doesn’t have enough traffic to justify its construction.
Loved the song, adore the bridge, have crossed it years ago, many times great works are an expression of national pride a call to the next generation to do better.