As the place where around 6,000 men left land only to perish at sea, what remains of Hull’s St. Andrew’s Dock is a sorry sight.

The last deep-water trawler left the dock 50 years ago when the city’s rapidly-shrinking fishing industry moved to a new home in Albert Dock.

Since then, it’s sadly become a textbook example of what half a century of slow but steady urban decline looks like. The real tragedy is that despite the handful of surviving wrecked buildings, the overgrown lockpit and the silted-up eastern end of the dock itself, the place still holds a special place in many peoples’ hearts for obvious reasons.

All that marks this unimaginable loss of life across generations is a small memorial on the dock’s bullnose. It’s still regularly covered with flowers and messages while the immediate area around it is kept spotless thanks to the regular voluntary efforts of Hessle Road legend Tommy Rhodes, whose father in law was lost at sea in 1968.

The lack of any will to regenerate the dock over the last couple of decades has been shameful but perhaps after too many false starts to mention there’s a little bit of hope on the horizon.

Built in 1870, the hydraulic tower and pump house is the only nationally listed remaining building on the dock and was originally designed to provide the power to operate the lock gates. Now city council officers are recommending applying to Historic England de-list it.

If ultimately agreed, de-listing would remove any future requirement to apply for listed building consent to demolish it. By doing so, it potentially clears one of the many obstacles standing in the way of breathing much-needed new life into the waterfront site.

A new report floating the idea also refers to ongoing discussions between the council and Historic England over a potential new masterplan and a scheduled review of the Conservation Area status covering the eastern end of the dock as designated by the council in 1990. Historic England currently class the Conservation Area as being “at risk” because of its “very bad” condition.

If I was a betting man, I’d wager that all this is gradually preparing the ground for a compulsory purchase order on all the privately-owned buildings and land at the dock in a belated effort to bring the site under single ownership and remove another current obstacle to progress there. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the Conservation Area designation itself might be scrapped at some point in the future.

Like the neighbouring former Lord Line trawler company office and the equally derelict Boston Building, the hydraulic tower and pump house is owned by one of the myriad companies associated with North Ferriby businessman Philip Akrill under the umbrella of his Manor Property Group.

I hesitate to describe Akrill as a property developer as his extensive track record of non-development in recent years suggests otherwise. Here’s a quick reminder.

Anderson Wharf: proposed residential development in Wincolmlee - site still derelict; proposed call centre and offices in the former city centre Co-op department store - didn’t happen, derelict building due to be demolished. Manor Mill: proposed 23-storey hotel and residential development in St Peter Street, site still derelict; proposed hotel in Anne Street, site still derelict; proposed Lord Line student campus at St Andrew’s Dock, site still derelict; proposed Lord Line residential development, building still derelict; proposed energy centre at the dock’s hydraulic tower and pump house, building still derelict.

That’s just what hasn’t happened in Hull. Numerous Akrill-promoted schemes have similarly failed to get off the ground elsewhere but it’s not just the issue of non-delivery that follows him around.

Back in 2007 the High Court agreed to grant an injunction sought by Hull-based antiques company boss Melvyn Anderson against Akrill and one of his companies relating to a dispute over land in Wincolmlee mentioned above which Anderson partly owned and Akrill wanted to buy.

The judgement by Mr Justice Briggs - now Lord Briggs, a justice of the Supreme Court - can still be found online and makes fascinating reading.

As well as finding in favour of Anderson, the court ruled Akrill not only breached statutory legal requirements relating to Land Registration Act but also failed to provide “credible evidence” to support his claim that the two men had verbally agreed a £2m deal sealed with a handshake allowing him to by the land during a late-night meeting held at Akrill’s house.

In his evidence, Anderson denied any such deal was struck. Akrill, on the other hand, not only claimed it did happen but was supported his then fiancé, now wife, who gave evidence saying she overheard the conversation even though she was not in the same room at the time. In court, Anderson said Akrill had told him she was upstairs asleep.

Mr Justice Briggs appeared unimpressed. “It is common ground that drink flowed on that occasion. There is a complete conflict, otherwise, as to what happened.” The judge finally accepted Anderson’s version of events saying Akrill had failed to mention anything about the supposed £2m deal during a subsequent tendering process in which he submitted a £1.5m bid for the land.

In 2013 Akrill was back in the High Court this time facing a claim that he had failed to comply with two personal guarantees on a £3.6m loan and a £400,000 overdraft which had been called in by a bank in a dispute over his proposed high-rise Manor Mill development in St. Peter’s Street.

Having initially agreed the loan to fund the purchase and demolition of the former Clarence Mill to clear the site for development, the bank - Leumi UK - took action when an agreed date for the full repayment of the loan came and went without any payment.

The court was told a surveyor was subsequently instructed by the bank to value the still-standing Clarence Mill and reported it was worth only £1.2m. As a result, the bank “decided that its relationship with the Manor Group must be brought to an end”.

His Honour Judge Jarman found in favour of the bank which had described Akrill’s evidence against it as “misleading, opaque and incomplete”. However, he later won the right to appeal on technical grounds and this application judgement is still available online. It again makes fascinating reading.

One of Akrill’s arguments was based on a claim that he was misled by the bank’s regional manger over the extent of his liabilities relating to the two personal guarantees. In a repeat of the earlier Anderson case, his wife also gave evidence saying she had heard the bank manager giving the same misleading assurances to her husband. This time she wasn’t in another room, she was in the passenger seat of their car as Akrill spoke on a hands-free phone.

The bank manager denied making any of the comments Akrill attributed to him and Appeal Court judge Lord Justice Kitchen ruled what he described as “a sharp conflict of evidence” should be resolved through cross-examination in a full hearing, adding: “In all these circumstances, I have come to the conclusion that Mr Akrill’s case, though improbable, is not wholly implausible.”

During the hearing, the businessman also argued that any action by the bank to recover funds would leave him financially exposed.

The judge summed it up this way: “The defend submits that although he has many assets, none of them can be realised at full value quickly or easily and that, if the defendant were forced to liquidate his assets, which he describes as ‘nest eggs’, he would be substantially prejudiced and would suffer long-term harm, and that any condition therefore should not require him to realise any of his assets.

“His evidence is that, while he holds assets with a value of £20m (or thereabouts) he has no income and currently lives and funds his defence of this claim on what he has been given by others or on smaller assets which he realised some time ago.”

If there’s a better summary of landbanking than this, I’ve yet to see it.

Fast forward a decade and the remaining trio of derelict buildings on St Andrew’s Dock appear to the last physical elements of the Manor empire still standing.

Last year Akrill was declared personally bankrupt by a court order after a creditor’s petition was submitted by a Lancashire-based finance company specialising in develoment finance and bridging loans.

In April this year Westpark Woodgates Ltd. was dissolved via a complusory strike-off. The last recorded planning application in relation to the hydraulic tower and pump house in 2020 was submitted by Westpark Woodgates Ltd. On the Companies House register for the company, Akrill is listed as the single person with significant control over its affairs. A handful of companies under the Manor umbrella remain technically active but the majority have been dissolved.

Previously awash with computer generated images and videos of developments which never happened, the Manor Property Group website also no longer exists.

The last time I interviewed Akrill several years ago he was on the warpath over bloggers criticising him on a long-running online forum covering development projects in Hull, dismissing them as “keyboard warriors”. Unfortunately for him, they’re still around.

“He used to have two fancy cars with pricey number plates coming in and out of his driveway,” wrote one recently. “ Both plates are now on retention. Neither plate seems to be for sale. Probably hidden I guess!”

Back at the dock, I wandered down to have a look at what’s left of the tower and pump house earlier this week.

Unlike the beautifully refurbished equivalent on Alexandra Dock which was repaired as part of the planning consent for the Green Port Hull project, the St Andrew’s Dock pump house looks beyond salvation although with a bit of TLC the tower could be preserved as a landmark.

Whoever ends up being responsible, it would make a fitting memorial to the brave men who once sailed by but never saw it again.