STORM AND COMPANY
Jacob Storm's Memoir
CHAPTER TWO. SHIPS AND THE SEA
In the year 1850 when I first went to sea for a living,
our people did not value formal schooling in the way they
do today. Nor was it easily obtained, especially above
the elementary level. The boys had every reason and
encouragement to go to sea. Their parents and relatives
were all more or less interested in their future, and the
fishing had become less remunerative than it had been.
There were even at one time teachers of navigation in
business in Bay. Walker Tindale is one I
remember.
It is true that there were seventeen cobles, two luggers
and a yawl in the fishing, but numbers of the adult
fishermen had already become merchant seamen and the
boys, almost without exception, were beginning to be
trained in the growing fleet of cargo vessels belonging
to the place, with the same object in view. All fisher
lads, and indeed nearly all men and boys in Bay, could
row and steer, box the compass and knot and splice before
they became apprenticed to shipmasters or owners to learn
the craft of the mariner. I had my first steering and
swimming lessons from an old whaling harpooner, a giant
of a man, a real old sea-dog, who told us boys many
hair-raising and wonderful tales about hunting whales in
Arctic seas.
Before I continue my personal story, it is necessary, as
will I hope be apparent, that I say something about the
fishing and how it led the way to the deep sea voyaging
that was to be the living of so many local men.
The parish register shows that Robert Moorsom,
Thomas Robson, John Skerry, Thomas Storm and his son
Thomas were all lost in their five-man boat in
1686, and that James Helme, Robert Staincliffe
and Thomas, Robert and Bartholomew Storm
suffered the same fate in 1690. This is sad but clear
evidence of fishing from big boats. Such larger boats
were rated, like houses, for parish funds. In 1762, the
parish books give fourteen boats paying poor, church and
constable rates.
In Fisherhead Quarter, the boat-ratepayers were Thomas Bedlington,
James Helme, John Richardson,
Israel Huntrods, Zachariah Granger,
William Prodam and Matthew, James and
Edward Storm. Those in Bay Quarter were
William Moorsom, Thomas Bedlington,
John Nightingale and Andrew and William
Storm. How familiar these names are, and what a
nightmare for the genealogist! I have had to sort out
more that twenty Isaac Storms over the years.
The cobles on which these fishermen paid their rates were
found winter quarters up the cliff at Bay and the yawls
and luggers went to Whitby .
The Reverend Mr. Young writing at Whitby in 1817 gave the
number of cobles fishing there winter and summer as
thirty-five.
PHOTO: The Coble
The catches were disposed of locally or
to panniersmen and he said each large boat dealt with
thirty tons of fish annually. Incidentally, William
Storm, panniersman, became a freeman of York in
1551, so the city's register says. Mr. Hinderwell, the
Scarborough historian, states that two Bay boats did so
well in 1796 that each man's share was over fifty pounds,
and that was without counting the great annual expedition
to the Yarmouth herring fishing. I would say that the
well cut stonework of the houses and the cottages of Bay
is proof sufficient that in the eighteenth century and
well into the nineteenth, prosperity was the rule here.
The larger boats were nearly fifty feet in length and
over fifty tons. They were decked and lugger rigged, and
they were swift sailers. Each carried two of the smaller
cobles, and there were seven hands as a rule. They sailed
out towards the Dogger Bank and in the chosen spot, three
men in each coble took lines away from each side of the
anchored boat, leaving one man on watch, each line having
hundreds of baited hooks and being held across the stream
by the coble.
Line fishing began with Lent and in August came the
Yarmouth herring season, when nets were used. The
womenfolk often went along to help the men take care of
their effects.
When they came back after a good season, they brought new
furniture and ornaments for their houses and many of
these remain as heirlooms with their descendants today.
Clocks, especiaIly the grandfather variety, were
favourites.
Weather permitting, they landed gear and stores at Bay.
Otherwise they went to Whitby, laid up for the winter and
carted their effects home by road. After the return, a
great supper was made.
The cobles from which the winter fishing was done were
only twenty-six feet long, with flat bottom, deep
forefoot, sharp stern and carrying capacity of about a
ton. Their fishing grounds extended to deep water, about
three or four miles out, positions being determined by
weather and checked by reference to distant landmarks,
such as 'Swallow', t'stick', 'Farside's Out', 'Minster',
'Ower Robin a Trum', 'Weapons Ower t'castle', 'Humber
Head' and others.
During the summer months when the larger boats were still
Fishing locally, they folded their wings on Sundays and
rested like monster gannets on Grunwick Deep in the
shelter of North Cheek. They delivered some catches on
weekdays from there, and, weather allowing, took on store
and more bait lines. I remember talk of longer periods of
steady weather in those days, with moderate land and sea
breezes.
During the fine season, fishermen and sailors who from
age or infirmity were unable to go deep sea augmented the
coble fishing with two-man craft and fished near the
shore with trunk 'hoop nets' for crabs and lobster, nets
for salmon and handlines for such small fish as haddock,
whiting, flounders and rockfish, all of which could be
caught in abundance. Bait was plentiful. Mussels were
brought from Boston deeps and the Tees and stored between
the scars. Fishermen's wives and daughters picked
flithers from the rocks at various places between Maw
Wyke and Hayburn Wyke and they also baited the lines, and
twenty or thirty men digging sandworms in the landing was
a common sight. Large catches of cod, ling, sole,
halibut, skate, haddock and others were landed.
The Panniersmen's route was over the moors, with
packhorses, by May Beck, Lilla Rig, Ellerbeck and
Saltergate to Thornton Dale, Pickering, Malton and York.
When carts came into use, they took an extra horse to get
them up to the Saltersgate Brow and sent it back from
there by man or boy.
All the unsold cod, ling, sole and skate were cleaned,
salted and dried in the sun, and all except the skate
were sold by the ton to the northern seaports for ship
use. The haddock were cut up and used for baiting the
haaver lines hooks for the big boats (12). Cod
sounds were taken from the bones, cleaned, salted and
bleached and packed in small cases for market, and the
fish livers were converted into oil for domestic use.
It was the women who did most of the shore work, such as
gathering bait, baiting lines, barking sails and nets and
spreading them in the fields and so on. They were noted
for their methodical house-keeping and the stately gait
which much exercise and carrying of burdens on the head
gave them.
Notwithstanding the drain on the ranks of the fishermen
made by merchant shipping, the work was prosecuted with
vigour until the middle of the last [19th] century, when
there were seventeen cobles and three large boats, that
is to say the luggers 'Speedwell'
and 'Isaac and Isabella' and the yawl 'Providence
Protector'. But the young fishermen, almost to a
man, came to be apprenticed in the Mercantile Marine so
that towards the end of the century, the fishing was a
small fraction of what it had been and the native
fishermen were represented by one family of Storms,
William, Thomas, Reuben and Oliver the sons of Thomas Smith Storm (still going
strong at ninety-odd years) and his wife Rebecca (nee
Moorsom).
They combined their fishing with lifeboat work as
coxswains and crew, and among them saved many lives. They
descend from my great-great-uncle Isaac who went whaling
with Scoresby. At last, the inhabitants of Robin Hood's
Bay had to learn to be contented with stale fish imported
from Scarborough and Whitby and even places further
afield.
It goes without saying that the fisherfolk were tough,
hardy and not lacking in courage. Many suffered death in
their calling, but the rest were undeterred. The reasons
for their disappearance, other than the merchant
shipping, were the extension of the railway transport of
fish, which interfered with local markets, and, from
what, I remember of local experience, great and prolonged
deterioration in weather conditions which made the Bay
unusable by the improved vessels that came along.
I have written about the fishing because it brings me to
the subject of my grandfather, Thomas Harrison,
some of whose notes I have. In 1841, he went to Yarmouth
in the lugger 'Speedwell', 59 tons, and his account was
as follows:
Disbursements at Yarmouth :
Boyce Harrison .£9 0 0
Wm Storm ........£7 0 0
Robert Pratt ........18s 0d
Henry Cayley...... 18s 0d
John Pinkney .....£5 0 0
Thomas Pinkney ..15s 6d
Geo Pinkney.......£5 0 0
Total.............. £28 11 6
Receipts at Yarmouth:
Oct 9th 100 herrings at Yarmouth 4s 6d
Oct 16th 700 herrings at Yarmouth @ 4/- £1 8 0
Oct 23rd 800 herrings at Cromer @ 5/- £2 0 0
Oct 25th 5000 herrings at Whorlton at £24 a last 12 0 0
Oct 27th 5000 herrings at Whorlton at £25 a last 12 0 0
Nov 12th 7 lasts at Whorlton at £13 10s a last 94 10s 0
Nov 15th 7 lasts to a Frenchman 6 15 0
Total £128 17 6
Balance £100 1 6
If you consider the wages of my great-uncle Boyce and my
cousin William, the master's return on the venture was
good, because he got the usual 'one for the boat'. The
fishing was once even more lucrative that this. I should
explain that the low pay went to the boys, who had no
sort of financial share in the venture.
Even in 1859, Whitby fish dealers paid out £26,262 for
herrings, and Rev. Mr. Young said in 1817 that Whitby
fishing was worth £25,000 to £30,000 a year.
At all events, my Harrison grandparents saved and bought
a brand new trading vessel, a brigantine, in 1844, for
£1,104.13.2, and they called her 'Harrisons'.
This was a culmination of many years of hard work.
Thomas's grandfather (also Thomas) had also been a
fisherman. He lived from 1721 to 1795 and he became the
owner of the square-sterned lugger 'Speedwell', an open
boat, in 1787, and later boats in the family kept the
same name. My grandfather's 'Speedwell' carried six men
and a boy, and ten men all told when the bounty was paid.
The older Thomas had two sons who were lost at sea. One
of them, John, also had two sons lost, and the
circumstances of the loss of one of them, John junior,
are recorded on his tombstone. He went to help a vessel
off the rocks and his coble was overwhelmed by the sea.
Footnote (12) The haavers were long,
deep-sea lines: the term is of Scandanavian origin.
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