She started as a North Sea trawler, designed for the long Hull-to-Iceland fishing runs that defined the British distant-water fleet. In October 1939 the Admiralty requisitioned her, renamed her HMT Arctic Pioneer with pennant number FY164, and sent her off to do what trawlers were doing all over Britain - acting as patrol vessels, minesweepers, anti-submarine ships, anything to fill the navy's enormous gap in small craft. She patrolled off Dunkirk during the May 1940 evacuation, though no record places her among the famous Little Ships ferrying soldiers home. Two years later, on 27 May 1942, German aircraft caught her outside Portsmouth Harbour and sank her. Seventeen men died. Her wreck was blocking the harbour entrance, which was the only reason anyone bothered to refloat her. After a 1947 refit at Hartlepool, she went back to the fishing fleet, renamed Arctic Viking and operating again out of Hull.

On 27 May 1956 - the same date, oddly, as her wartime sinking fourteen years earlier - the Arctic Viking collided with the British trawler St Celestin off the east coast of Iceland. The St Celestin's chief engineer later described what happened: the Arctic Viking practically sliced his ship in two, and water was waist-deep in seconds. By any normal standard this should have been a disaster. Instead it became a rescue. The Arctic Viking's crew threw lines and pulled all 19 St Celestin men aboard before the other ship went down. The Hull trawler crews knew each other; they fished the same grounds; they rescued each other when the chance came. The Arctic Viking saved nineteen lives that day, after probably causing the wreck herself.

On 30 April 1959, during the First Cod War, the Arctic Viking was fishing in waters that Iceland had unilaterally declared off-limits to British trawlers. The Icelandic patrol boat Thor came alongside and ordered her to stop. She refused. Thor fired warning shots, then aimed shots that hit her mast and damaged her communications. This is when the situation went from a fisheries dispute to an actual naval engagement: the British destroyer HMS Contest, providing protection to the British fleet, opened fire on Thor with star shells, lighting up the Icelandic vessel and effectively warning her off. Thor retreated. The Arctic Viking - holed in her mast but afloat - kept fishing. The incident reached the British Parliament, where it was discussed in Hansard. Cod War history records very few moments where shots were exchanged. This was one of them.

She was operating for the Boyd Line, pennant H452, returning from a 22-day trip to the White Sea when she met the storm of 18 October 1961. The Met Office records 50 mph winds and what the surviving crew called mountainous seas. Skipper Phillip Garner watched her start to list and could not get her back. By 8:30 in the morning her mast and funnel were touching the water; the crew abandoned ship. Other trawlers in the area radioed updates: she's on her side at 10:30; she's gone at 11:08, 38 minutes later. Five of her men did not get away. The storm was so severe that the trawler Derkacz - which had been nearby - could not enter Hull for two days. Hull lost trawlers regularly through the long history of its distant-water fleet. It made every loss feel ordinary, which was its own kind of cruelty.

In 2009, divers located the wreck of the Arctic Viking on the seabed, more than 70 metres down, off Flamborough Head - 20 miles offshore, almost exactly where the last sightings had placed her. They recovered the wheelhouse telegraph and found it set to 'full steam ahead'. Skipper Garner had been driving her forward, trying to power through the rolls, right up until the moment she went over. The relatives of the five lost men - including the grandson of one trawlerman - were notified. After 48 years of uncertainty, Hull knew where its men lay. The Hull fishing industry is mostly gone now; the distant-water fleet collapsed in the 1970s. But the city still remembers its lost trawlers in the Triple Trawler Tragedy memorial and in the Hull Daily Mail's continuing coverage. The Arctic Viking has her place in that long list.