Harold Keates Hales (22 April 1868 – 7 November 1942) was a British shipping magnate, politician and founder of the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband award for the ship with the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing.
[2] He was born in Manchester in 1868, to Lewis George Hales, a draper, and Sarah Elizabeth Keates.
In 1935, he inaugurated the Hales Trophy for the Blue Riband award for the ship with the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing.
The trophy is almost four feet (1.2 m) tall, almost one hundred pounds (45 kg), made of solid silver, onyx and heavy gilt, showing Victory, Neptune and Amphitrite upholding a globe and topped by a figure called Speed urging a liner into the face of a figure called the Force of the Atlantic.
An enameled blue ribbon surrounds the middle of the prize, and there are memorials to past record-holders, with Harold Hales's name at the base.