Wigan Album

This place went through several reincarnations before it closed, on of which was a Yates Wine Bar. I liked that one!

The Ship was nice when it was Yates's, it should have been preserved not obliterated.

It may have had a bad reputation but the Pub itself was fitted out with some fabulous Victorian woodwork and glassworks. I wonder what happened to it all?

In the late fifties, early sixties, as a Wigan Borough bobby, I was involved in several disturbances, that originated in The Ship, and finished up outside, in Millgate.

One night during one such disturbance, whilst arresting a drunken aggressor, he snapped his jaws on the base of my little finger, as I tried to extricate it, the flesh was pulling away, and I could start to see the bone. I did get my finger free, but I leave that to your discretion.

The doctor that attended to me, said. " There is only one worst way, of being bit by a human, and that is to be bitten by a camel."

When he appeared at court, he got fined £5-00.

It was Raffles before Yates.