Dick was a Mate aboard the Joan Margaret, Filey’s second fishing tragedy of the war which claimed the lives of five Filey fishermen.  The Joan Margaret was a fishing vessel commandeered at the start of the war into the government’s newly formed Fishing Fleet, like many of the other ships and cobles around Filey.  She was registered at Grimsby with a crew of six, all of whom were Filey men born and bred.

          Over the course of the first two years of the war the Joan Margaret and her crew fished in the North Sea catching some of the vitally needed supplies to feed the nation, but on a cold March morning met her fate.

          It is thought that she struck a mine several miles offshore in the Humber estuary, according to the boats only survivor, Jimmy Bright . 

          Like all the fishermen lost at sea during the Second World War and who have no known grave, Dick Haxby and his crew of four are remembered on the Tower Hill Memorial.