Following the ferocious weather of Storm Babet earlier this month it has been reported that a section of a timber ship has appeared on the beach near Marske, north of Whitby. This is well known locally as the place where the whaler Esk sank in heavy seas in 1826 with the loss of all but three of her crew. Investigations are ongoing as to which ship the wreckage may have come from. It is being reported that there are 23 shipwrecks from that period in the immediate area of Marske, and many of those will be “Whitby Cats” a widely-used design of cargo vessel similar to the Esk. So although the chance of this wreckage being from the Esk is low, it is an enticing thought.

Somewhat surprisingly, given that they operated for months every year in the Arctic, the loss of so many men from one ship was unusual in whalers. Even when ships were sunk, by ice or storm, it was rare for the entire crew to be lost. Although Arctic whaling was dangerous, the losses were usually limited to individuals going overboard from the ship, or an overturned whaleboat. The crew of a whaler in 1826 usually ran to around 50 men, so the loss of the Esk touched many families on the coast of Yorkshire.

The relative safety of whaling was for two main reasons. Firstly, sailing in open ocean, where there is little risk of being blown onshore, is much safer than coasting, where an onshore wind could quickly leave a ship with very little leeway; there were no auxiliary motors to get you out of trouble in 1826. That the Esk was lost close to its home port of Whitby underlines the point that this part of a whaling voyage, close to land, was perhaps the most risky. And secondly, whalers looked after one another. There was an unspoken, but cast-iron code among them that a ship in distress must be given assistance. And since in the early nineteenth century there were upwards of 100 whale ships in the Arctic Ocean every summer, pursuing a diminishing population of whales, they were often within sight of one another.

The Esk herself is a famous example of how loyal whalers were to one another. In 1816, a decade before she was lost, the Esk was wrecked by ice while “fishing” in the Arctic. Her commander, William Scoresby Jr. of Whitby, who went on to become one of the foremost scientific experts on the Arctic, was assisted by several other captains to make a temporary repair to the hull, pump out the water, and return, partly under tow, to Whitby. Scoresby was proud that no lives were lost, despite his crew spending many days camped on the ice, though one man died soon after arriving home. I wrote about this in a small book(let) which is available here.

One interesting footnote to the story of the Esk is that when she sank her captain was John Dunbar, who had been a harpooner with Scoresby in 1816, and was one of his most loyal officers on that difficult voyage. The memorial service for the crew of the Esk, held in St Mary’s Church, Whitby, was reportedly attended by 3000 people. The service was conducted by Scoresby, who by then had given up whaling, and was a curate at the nearby village of Bessingby. 1826 also saw the total loss of the Lively, another Whitby whaler, in the Arctic. The loss of the Lively was the only total loss of a ship and crew in Whitby’s history of Arctic whaling, going back around 70 years.

You can buy my self-published book(let) here: The Voyage of the Whaleship Esk in 1816

There’s an excellent lecture on whalers and whale ships by the late Bernard Stonehouse here: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/greenlanders-arctic-whaleships-and-whalers

Back in 2013 I gave a talk on Scoresby and whaling at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, which you can see here: https://chrisroutledge.co.uk/2013/06/05/from-liverpools-greenland-street-to-greenlands-liverpool-coast-william-scoresby-whaling-and-exploration/

Now there has been some rain after six or seven weeks of drought, the river is back. It is remarkable what a difference four or five centimetres of water makes. Instead of the still pools of warm water, and the smell of slowly rotting weed, there is movement, sound, and flashes of light. The local heron has enjoyed catching fish unable to escape downstream, but a river that doesn’t move soon dies. This spate river rises and falls, sometimes dramatically, and it is too easy to attribute moods, but the valley is a happier place when it is flowing.

It has been dry, very dry, and here in Cumbria, among the wettest places in England, nothing is right when it doesn’t rain. Up on the fell, where tarns baked dry and the usually boggy ground gave up no water under foot, birds suffered. In the week before the rain came I saw stonechats and meadow pipits on the river bank. These are birds that normally live on the fell tops, leaving the valley to humans. Second broods of chicks, their parents driven away by thirst, must have perished. A friend spotted a hare in her garden, a long way from the fellside, presumably desperate for water.

Before the rain we walked dusty paths and the baked lakeshores and were reminded of Provence. There were smiles and talk of fine weather, people sunbathed and swam, and went paddle boarding on the lake, piling even more pressure on the birds nesting there. As Tim Dee says in his book Greenery, “elephants think they own everything wherever they are” and humans at leisure do the same, having little regard for the longer pattern of life in a place. A few hours by a shrinking lake and they soon leave, remembering only a sunny day.

But the rain has come and the river is moving again, for the time being at least. The stonechats have migrated back up the fellside, crows are in the alder, bossing the river bank, and the lambs are getting fatter. The drama, which mostly went unseen, is over.

On 21 May 2022 I am running a cyanotype printing workshop at Rydal Mount, the lovely former home of Romantic poet William Wordsworth, where he lived from 1813 until his death in 1850. This is an opportunity to learn how to produce prints using a technique dating back to 1842, but with a modern twist. We’ll make light sensitive paper and then spend some time photographing in the gardens before producing negatives that can be used for printing. Bring a phone or a camera to take the photographs. If you are using your phone, please download the free Snapseed photo editing app before the workshop. Everyone will go away with at least one print, and negative.

More information and a link for booking is at the Rydal Mount website.

Cross-posted from chrisroutledge.pictures