Perhaps not the greatest of paintings, but this deep-sea trawler has important place in wartime history

                                                                       

This 1938 study by George Gill of the deep-sea trawler Ayrshire GY 520 could attract bidding interest when it goes under the hammer at a sale to be conducted by auction house John Taylors of Louth next Tuesday March 11. Although the watercolour is perhaps of no great artistic merit, the ship - which belonged to the Grimsby fleet of the Ayrshire Fishing Company - has a place in wartime history because of her heroic deeds in the 1939-45 war, notably off the coast of Iceland, after she had temporarily been converted to an anti-submarine vessel. She was scrapped in 1966.