The Hastings Trawler – a treasure chest for HOT readers

Hastings Online Times is proud to present the complete collection of The Hastings Trawler, a magazine which with its eclectic mix of historical pieces, poetry, fiction, cartoons and other contributions from local characters set its mark on Hastings for an all-too-brief period in 2005 and 2006.

The motivation for the mag was disenchantment with the council, though politics was only part of its coverage. Modelled on The New Yorker, it was bankrolled by Graham Frost, owner of Boulevard Books in the Old Town, and edited by Francisco Ferrer I Guardia, the pseudonym for another well-known man-about-town.

“We had a couple of good muck-rakers on the opening pages,” Sr Ferrer I Guardia tells HOT. “But we also celebrated life in Hastings. We had contributions from Julie Christie and the last ever articles written by George Melly, along with short stories by Whitbread and Guardian prize-winning novelist Pauleen Melville, cartoons from Les Prince, postcards from Judges, and extraordinary covers drawn by local artists, including Robert Sample who produced, among others, memorable portraits of former Hastings resident Aleister Crowley and the even more sinister Sion Jenkins.

“Let me also draw your attention to the investigative articles on the Freemasons, the Da Vinci Con and the early days of cinema when Hastings was the film capital of Britain.”

All this and a lively letters page too!

There was some advertising and sales were regular, but printed colour publications are expensive, and after just 9 issues, the Trawler was beached for the last time, probably to a few sighs of relief in certain quarters. A few remaining highly collectible copies can still be acquired at Boulevard Books.

But thanks to the marvels of digitisation, the magazine has been kept alive and made available to HOT readers by Mssrs Ferrer I Guardia and Frost, to whom we are grateful. We would like to think that in its way HOT carries on the Trawler tradition.

Hastings Trawler Issue 1
Robert Tressel cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 2
Aleister Crowley cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 3
Liane Carroll cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 4
Hastings Observer Building cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 5
Catherine Cookson cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 6
Jack-in-the-Green cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 7
The Windfarm cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 8
The Sion Jenkins cover

Hastings Trawler Issue 9
The Fishing Fleet cover

 

 

Also in: 1067 & All That

« Over-50s free learning
Austin and BHLR »