Hastings fishing fleet

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The old town of Hastings has been home to a fishing fleet since before the Norman conquest of 1066. Unusually, it doesn’t have a harbour (there have been various harbours built over the years but none of them lasted very long in the face of the stormy seas) so it isn’t actually a port; the fishing boats have to be hauled up onto the beach after each trip. It’s hard to imagine how they can actually manage this, pushing the boats across the shingle and into the surf with the waves crashing down, or hauling them back in again before they get swamped. Nowadays there is a range of tracked vehicles on the site as well as cable winches but it still must be really difficult, and dangerous too on rough days. Obviously this limits the size of boats that can be based there so the fleet has always been made up of relatively small boats fishing fairly close to home. On shore they are just ‘parked’ (not sure what the proper term is; obviously not moored!) on the beach where anyone can just wander around. We wondered how the boats could repeatedly go through the launching and recovery process without being irreversibly damaged by being dragged over the shingle. I was interested to see that they had skids on the bottom so presumably they would slide over the stones like a giant toboggan. All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2026.