It’s no surprise that Whitby has developed strong gothic horror associations. The wild, brooding North York Moors – the windswept landscape of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights – and the cold, grey waters of the North Sea meet at this spot. The picturesque fishing harbour may appear quaint in calm, sunny weather, but it sits in a cleft amongst rugged cliffs on a coastline often lashed by violent storms and draped in sullen skies.
To reach the harbour, you descend steeply into a valley carved by the River Esk where it meets the North Sea. It’s a dramatic sight, and the natural harbour it created allowed Whitby to flourish as a fishing port. Fishing has been a mainstay of the local economy from its earliest origins in the Bronze Age. The Romans had a small presence here, but things really took off for Whitby with the founding of its iconic abbey in 656.
In the 7th century, the Anglo-Saxon ruler, King Oswy gave land for the construction of an abbey in thanks for his victory over the pagan King Penda of Mercia. The abbey was a ‘double monastery’ for men and women. Its first abbess, the royal princess Hild, helped make it rich and powerful. She allegedly performed miracles as well. When a plague of snakes terrorised the area, she turned them to stone.
Fossil ammonites found on the coast are said to be proof of her miracle. Despite the fact that the British Isles have nothing more threatening than a handful of domestic adders that eat small mammals, she was made a saint for this act of ecocide. The abbey flourished for two centuries until Viking raiding parties plundered the region, destroying the abbey in the process, before finally settling here.
The Vikings destroyed the abbey around 870 and it was abandoned until after the Norman Conquest. Refounded in the 11th century, it never regained its former glory but thrived until Henry VIII decided he needed the wealth of the monasteries more than some monks. Destroyed again in 1540, over the centuries it became an enigmatic ruin. A process aided by two German battlecruisers that mistakenly shelled it in 1914.
Under the patronage of the abbey, the fishing village tucked into the cliffs next to the harbour flourished. Herring was the main catch throughout the medieval period, and things only really changed with the discovery of alum in the 17th century. Alum was critical in cloth making and England was dependent on hostile Spain for imports. Whitby soon became the main port for shipping alum to London.
The port and town grew as the demand for alum and coal from Newcastle to process it boomed. Shipbuilding became a major industry and all those ships needed provisions and people. Taxes from trade made the town rich and the port expanded further. By the mid-18th century a new industry started to grow. Herring were still fished, but Whitby was about to become a major whaling port.
The first whaling ship departed for Greenland in 1753. Used to illuminate the houses of the wealthy and even burned in street lamps, soon the demand for whale oil rendered from blubber was insatiable. Four oil houses on the harbour boiled the blubber to make whale oil. The town must have smelled terrible. Whaling peaked during the Napoleonic Wars, but by the mid-19th century was in decline.
One of Whitby’s most famous sons learned his seafaring trade on Whitby ships before going on to become a globally famous explorer. James Cook would change the world as it was understood when he set sail on the HMS Endeavour on the first of three scientific voyages to Australia and Pacific. The Endeavour was built in Whitby in 1764 and both the man and ship are central to the identity of the town today.
Cook’s achievements in the South Seas are legendary, collecting scientific data and mapping new territories which, of course, he claimed for Britain. After ‘discovering’ New Zealand and becoming the first European to communicate with the Maori, the Endeavour headed for Australia. Making landfall at Botany Bay, Cook’s crew were the first Europeans to set foot in eastern Australia.
Cook named everything after places and people he was familiar with in Britain, which is why when I was there a few years ago, I spent a night on Whitehaven Beach in the Cumberland Islands. Strangely, there is no Whitby in the region. Cook can be said to be one of the most famous Britons, yet none of this convinced my travelling companions to visit the Cook museum.
Instead we strolled round the gorgeous harbour, along the harbour walls, visited a couple of the town’s historic pubs, and ate fish and chips at the renowned Magpie Cafe. The streets and alleys, once frequented by sailors, smugglers and navy recruiting officers, of the ancient fishing village are wonderful. Across the harbour is the later, but equally nice, Victorian seaside resort. Whitby really is marvellous.
