Whitby Sights

Whitby Whalers

The daily scene on Whitby fish quay, with boxes of cod or crab being landed from modest inshore fishing boats, makes it hard to imagine a time when broad-beamed whaling vessels keeled into the port to unload their gargantuan catches. But between 1753 and 1837, 577 whaling voyages were made from Whitby, which was one of Britain's foremost whaling ports.

A leading Whitby skipper, William Scoresby, came to be regarded as the most daring and successful of all whaling men. The son of a farmer at Cropton, near Pickering, he made thirty trips and captured 533 whales-more than any other European whaler. Seeking better means of sighting the whales he invented the crow's nest. The first was introduced in 1807 and consisted of a wooden frame covered with leather and canvas. It included space for a telescope, a compass, signal-flags, a speaking trumpet, and a musket. A movable screen was provided to protect the sailor on look-out.

Scoresby's catches were usually two-and-a-half to four times greater than those of rival skippers. His skill as a navigator, allied to a unique sailing technique, enabled him to reach the whaling grounds before the rest of the fleet. Scoresby put his trust in exceptionally heavy ballast. Once the ship was moving, the ballast tended to impel the vessel forward under her own momentum. It also helped Scoresby's ship to sail more successfully against the wind than any other vessel. Rival skippers, while ready to copy some of Scoresby's other ideas, including modifications to sails and spars, feared that heavy ballast would worsen any collision with the ice. Their timidity meant that on one occasion Scoresby caught fourteen whales before his fellow whalers arrived. In 1806 he had enough time to pursue the whales to within 510 miles of the North Pole, the furthest point ever reached by a sailing ship.

In those days, the capture of the whale was made from small boats, with none of the powerful weapons and sophisticated aids that have made modern whaling such a shameful story. Scoresby himself led these perilous excursions. Over 6ft tall and powerfully built, he was an expert with the harpoon, thrown by hand.

Scoresby's eldest son, also named William, was even more remarkable. He made his first whaling voyage at the age of ten, as a stowaway on his father's ship. There is a story that when he asked his father what his mother would say, his father replied: ' She'11 be all the more glad to see you when you get home.' Scoresby Junior became a master whaler at twenty-one, but twelve years later, in 1833, he abandoned the sea to become a priest in the Church of England. After serving at Bessingby, near Bridlington, he moved to Liverpool, where a few years earlier he had landed the largest cargo of blubber ever seen in the port!

Scoresby Junior spent whaling's close season studying at Edinburgh University. Local scorn clearly prompted his comment: 'Let the Whitby people say what they will about the college. I find it is the best thing I ever did . . .' And so it was, for Scoresby became a skilled and respected scientist. While whaling he carried out a detailed study of magnetic fields, with the aim of producing a compass untroubled by magnetism. He also made the first correct map of East Greenland. Even as an apprentice he decorated the ship's logs with drawings showing the detailed composition of snowflakes and the anatomy of whales, and in 1820 his observations blossomed into a book that is still a standard source work: An Account of the Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale Fishery.

When Whitby's whaling trade began, two ships were sent out. By 1776 the number had increased to 15, although 8 was more usual. The largest size attained by the fleet was 20 ships, in the 3 successive years 1786-8. Manned by 40-50 men, the ships weighed up to 350 tons and were characterised by square rigged sails and broad heavy bows for ramming a passage through the ice. Their special 'whaling' arrangements included the 'flensing platform', a broad deck of wood lowered over the bulwarks to allow the fishermen to cut up the whale while it was still in the sea. This, too, was an invention of the elder Scoresby.

The ships sailed from Whitby in February-March and returned between June and September. For many years a voyage was thought successful if it produced 4 or 5 whales. But between 1790 and 1823 the average per ship was 15.

The largest single catch was not by either of the Scoresbys but by another fine whaling skipper, Captain Kearsley, who landed 28 whales from the Resolution in 1814. This haul yielded 230 tons of oil, closely matching the overall average of 8 tons per whale. Altogether 1814 was the peak year of Whitby whaling, with 8 ships bringing home 172 whales. The blubber, boiled in 4 harbourside oil houses, produced 1,730 tons of oil, which was sold for oil lamps. The carcases yielded 42 tons of whalebone fins, which became 'stays' in the corsetry trade.

By this time whaling was the lifeblood of Whitby. Each successful voyage was worth about £3,000 to the town. Scoresby Senior is said to have earned £2,000 a year-perhaps £70,000 by today's standards!

But a serious decline was about to set in. The spread of gas lighting reduced the demand for oil, and changes in fashion for a time made 'stays' virtually redundant. Catches were in any event becoming too small to be economic, and the fleet also suffered a disastrous series of shipwrecks. Scoresby Senior retired in 1823, aged fifty-three, after his ship was burned out in The Orkneys. Three years later Whitby experienced its worst ever whaling season up to that time. Of 5 ships sent out, 2 were wrecked, with the loss of all but 3 lives, and the others returned with poor catches.

By 1831 only one ship, the Phoenix, was engaged in whaling. On her 1832 trip she landed the largest cargo of oil-234 tons- ever brought into Whitby. This encouraged a second vessel, the Camden, to try her luck, and for a short period the two ships returned some good catches. But in 1837 the Phoenix, setting out on her twenty-second voyage, was wrecked off the harbour mouth. The Camden's voyage in the same year was a failure, and after eighty-four years the whaling trade was abandoned. In the boom era, from 1766 to 1816, 2,761 whales had been landed in the port.

Whitby's most prominent reminder of the enterprise is a handsome whalebone arch on the West Cliff, each year framing thousands of tourist photographs. The arch was obtained in 1963 by Mr Graham Leach of Sandsend, who organised a competition among Norwegian whalers, the prize being the honour of having the whalebones erected in Whitby. The arch is formed by the jawbones of a whale 82ft long and weighing 111 tons, captured in the Weddell Sea.

Many original links with whaling still exist. Scoresby Senior's birthplace is a cottage called Nutholme, near Crop-ton. His two Whitby homes also survive-the red-brick Scoresby House in Church St, and No 13, Bagdale, where he died in 1829, aged seventy-nine. Exhibited in Whitby Museum is a pump he erected in Church Street with a Latin inscription saying: 'Water for the free use of all. Draw and drink but don't gossip.' The museum also contains the younger Scoresby's scientific papers and instruments, including the compound magnetic needle that he invented as the solution to the compass problem. At the age of sixty-six Scoresby sailed to Australia specially to test this instrument. By this time he had become a Doctor of Divinity and Master of Arts and had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. On a visit to the USA he was well enough known to be received by President John Tyler at the White House: the ever observant Scoresby noticed that there were signs of heavy spitting on the marble portico!

When Scoresby Junior left the sea he made a notable mark as a social reformer. At Bradford, where he served before retiring to Torquay, he fought hard for better sanitation and a reduction in air pollution. He also founded schools and helped to start a 'Friendly Society', which ran its own bank and provided sickness benefits for factory girls. His last visit to Whitby was to deliver a lecture on magnetic variation. It is nice to think that a few of his listeners reflected on the unlikely homecoming of a former child stowaway on a whaler.