This is just the beginning! Our collection holds over 300 years of history, including rare newspapers, obituaries, marriage records, birth records, and so much more—most of which you won’t find anywhere else!
Icelandic Fishing Fleet Milestones Through 1974
The record outlines Iceland's early modern fishing fleet growth from 1905 with 151 km steamers to 1974. It notes 35 ships by 1925, 28 deep-sea trawlers under wartime and postwar buildouts, 48 by 1950, 47 by 1960, plus 39 built or acquired by 1973. It details government plans to expand to about 49 ships, foreign-builds in Spain, Poland, Japan, and Norway, and mentions numbers for ship tonnage, ages, and foreign purchases. It emphasizes gradual domestic shipbuilding, risks of reliance on imports, and a long-term push to reach roughly 50 ships by 1950s-70s with 13 new trawlers and one reused vessel by the early 1970s.