Whitby Sights

Lifeboat History

Whitby and it's surrounding region is exceptionally rich in lifeboat history. At Redcar, you can see the oldest lifeboat in the world - the Zetland. Built at South Shields by Henry Great-head, the inventor of the lifeboat, she served at the resort from 1802 to 1882, saving 500 lives. Further down the coast, Whitby proudly displays the last rowing lifeboat used in Britain. In the ten years before her withdrawal in 1957 she was auxiliary to Whitby's motor lifeboat, putting to sea 11 times and saving 16 lives. In 1974 she was taken on a national tour as part of the RNLI'S 150th anniversary.

The rocky coast bordering the North York Moors has also produced a remarkable number of lifeboat epics. In 1881 the Whitby lifeboat carried out a dramatic overland launch when a brig, the Visitor, foundered in a blizzard off Robin Hood's Bay. Fifty pairs of horses, supplied in relays by farmers along the route, shared the task of hauling the boat the 6 miles from Whitby to the Bay. Women and children held lanterns as men hacked at the snowdrifts, and the boat was finally manhandled down an icy slope into the sea. The first rescue attempt failed when a wave smashed seven of the lifeboat's oars. But the boat set out again and brought the brig's crew to safety.

This rescue and a comparable one at Lynmouth, Devon, in 1899, are part of lifeboat folklore. But surprisingly little has been written about the very first overland launch, also by the men of Whitby. On 28 April 1834, a Newcastle smack, William, was seen drifting mastless towards rocks near Robin Hood's Bay. One of Whitby's two lifeboats was launched but was unable to cross towering waves at the harbour mouth. It is interesting to recall that this boat used to be suspended from two stone stanchions that can still be seen on Tate Hill Pier. 

With the first boat beaten back, Whitby's second boat, stationed at Upgang 1 mile north of the town, was yoked to six horses. Within 45 minutes she arrived at the Bay. Unfortunately, 'night had drawn its sable curtain over the sea', as a contemporary report poetically noted. But at dawn the Whitby men achieved a difficult launch. After rescuing two women passengers they returned to the smack and helped the crew navigate to Scarborough.

Almost 100 years later another Whitby boat made a possibly unique inland rescue. When the Esk flooded its banks on 4 September 1931 (virtually repeating a similar flood of 23 July 1930), two elderly women became marooned at Ruswarp. Once again three pairs of horses hauled the Whitby boat through the local streets and lanes. The boat was launched on the Esk just below Ruswarp church, 2 miles from the sea. During the rescue a lifeboatman was swept into the river, but he managed to scramble back into the boat.

In March 1901 the neighbouring Runswick Bay lifeboat was launched by the village women. An impending storm caught the lifeboat crew at sea in their fishing cobles. Apart from the women, only old men and children were left on shore. 'If you can man the boat we can launch her,' the women told the old men. And so it was. Wading waist deep into a turbulent sea, the women gamely tackled a job normally undertaken by twenty vigorous men. Soon the heavy boat was afloat, giving the imperilled cobles a safe escort home.

All these deeds, however, are overshadowed by the stories of the Rohilla and Whitby's 1861 Lifeboat Disaster.

The Rohilla, a hospital ship, struck rocks at Saltwick Nab, south of Whitby, on Friday, 30 October 1914. Of the 229 people on board, including doctors and nurses, 84 died. The efforts that saved the other 145 were truly heroic. These too began with an unusual launch. High waves at the harbour mouth again prevented the Whitby boat reaching the open sea. The boat was therefore levered through the so-called Spa Ladder, the bridge linking the east pier to the cliff. The ladder takes its name, incidentally, from a mineral spring that once flowed from the cliff at this point, although today's 'Spa' is on the opposite side of the harbour.

Launched from the shore, the lifeboat made two trips and saved thirty-five lives before being forced to retire with holes in her hull. Teams of horses hauled the Upgang boat the 2 miles to Saltwick, but the boat was unable to approach the wreck. Scarborough's lifeboat, towed to the scene by a steam trawler, was similarly helpless, and the Teesmouth motor lifeboat was forced to put back when she was damaged as she left the estuary. A rescue attempt had to be entrusted to the new Tynemouth motor boat, Henry Vernon, which faced a 44-mile battle through raging seas even to reach the distressed vessel. The boat accomplished this mammoth task, finally landing survivors 48 hours after the Rohilla had foundered. RNLI gold medals were awarded to the Tynemouth cox, Robert Smith, and to his colleague, Captain H. E. Burton, responsible for the brilliant night-time navigation down the largely unlit coast. One of the six medals earned over the years by Whitby lifeboatmen-the largest number for any lifeboat station in the country-went to the Whitby cox Thomas Langlands.

The last survivor of the Whitby crew, John Richardson, died in 1969 aged eighty-one. The Rohilla's steering-wheel and one or two other relics are preserved in the town's lifeboat museum, and in 1972 a Whitby teenager was allowed to keep a silver-plated Rohilla coffee jug that he had picked up on the rocks at Saltwick. Most of the vessel was salvaged soon after the disaster, but in 1973 a team of divers recovered the ship's two reserve propellers, kept in the hull. What a splendid monument one of these would have made, mounted on the harbour-side or the cliffs at Saltwick-but sadly both went for scrap. Worth seeing in Whitby cemetery, however, is the memorial to the Rohilla dead, dominating a long communal grave.

While the loss of the Rohilla is undoubtedly the biggest tragedy to have struck Whitby, a deeper impression on the life of the town was made by the 1861 Lifeboat Disaster, which arrived in the teeth of a tremendous gale on Saturday, 9 February. At 5am a Sunderland brig, the John and Anne, was driven ashore near Sandsend Ness. Rowing to the endangered ship, the Whitby lifeboatmen rescued the crew. Soon afterwards a Newcastle collier, Gamma, was flung aground. The Whitby boat made a second successful rescue, followed by a third, to the Prussian barque Clara; a fourth, to the brig Utility; and a fifth, to the schooner Roe.

Then, at about 3pm, amid driving snow and sleet, a sixth vessel, the schooner Merchant, went aground below the Royal Hotel. It was almost high tide and the sea was mountainous. 'Are you going off?' harbourmaster William Tose asked steersman John Storr. 'Aye, we're going off,' replied Storr. But as the lifeboat approached the schooner's stern, a huge wave surged around the stricken vessel. The wave broke with full force on the lifeboat, which immediately capsized. In the words of a report written soon afterwards: 'Then was beheld by several thousand persons, within almost a stone's throw but unable to assist, the fearful agonies of those powerful men, buffeting with the fury of the breakers, till one by one 12 out of the 13 sank, and only one is saved.' The survivor was Henry Freeman, the only man to wear the RNLI'S newly-introduced cork lifejacket.

Freeman told the inquest that tots of rum helped to sustain the men during the long and arduous day. Suggestions that these had rendered half the crew drunk were bitterly resented in Whitby. When a temperance advocate, Thomas Whittaker, suggested that alcohol, offered in 'mistaken kindness', had caused the men to lose 'that self-control and sobriety essential to safety in such a storm', an effigy of him was carried through the town, accompanied by men thrashing it with a whip. The effigy was burned before a cheering crowd on the West Cliff sands.

This barbarism was not the worst of the aftermath. The disaster created ten widows and left forty-four children fatherless. Through an appeal launched with a letter to The Times, £5,000 was quickly subscribed. But the widows were given tickets instead of cash, to use in local shops. Inevitably they became known as the 'ticket women'. The grown-up daughter of one of these later recalled that her mother was once sent to a Church of England priest, to have her shoes inspected to see if she deserved another ticket. When the fatherless children reached fourteen, they were given £2 and left to make their way in the world.

The family names of some of the lifeboatmen are still found in Whitby - Harland, Leadley, Storr. A picture of the burly Freeman, wearing his lifejacket, hangs in the Pannet Park Museum, and there is a rather impersonal memorial, in the form of a miniature temple, in the porch of St Mary's Church. The most eloquent monuments are the gravestones of several of the lifeboat crew by the cliff edge in St Mary's Churchyard, overlooking the sea whose challenge they did not hesitate to meet.