Act 15
The Mariners of Whitby
The story of the Whitby Farndales and
their maritime adventures
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experiment. Using Google’s Notebook LM, listen to an AI powered podcast
summarising this page. This should only be treated as an introduction, and
the AI generation sometimes gets the nuance a bit wrong. However it does
provide an introduction to the themes of this page, which are dealt with in
more depth below. |
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As a mood setter, you
might enjoy some music before you read this page. |
Orientation
Having
arrived in Cleveland the family settled in Kirkleatham
and Skelton and became
associated with small towns such as Moorsholm
and Liverton. We have met two family hubs
who then settled for six or seven generations in Kilton, Brotton
and Loftus and more widely across
Cleveland.
Now we will
meet the third hub, those who were drawn to the thriving port of Whitby.
In the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Cleveland was a rural landscape, like the
lands south of the moors which the family had left. So over time, there was
adventure to be had by leaving the farmland of Moorsholm,
Liverton, and later Kilton to find new opportunities in the
thriving port of Whitby.
We will meet
several master mariners in this Act. A master mariner held an unlimited license
to serve as the master of a merchant ship of any size, of any type, operating
anywhere in the world, and it reflected the highest level of professional
qualification amongst mariners and deck officers. The term master mariner has
been in use at least since the thirteenth century. In guild or livery company
terms, such a person was a master craftsman in this specific profession,
equivalent to master carpenters, master blacksmiths and other such people. In
the British Merchant Navy a master mariner who had sailed in command of an
ocean going merchant ship was titled Captain, although a professional seafarer
who held a restricted or limited master's certificate who had sailed in command
of a ship also tended to be referred to as a captain. Where the movements of
ships were recorded in the shipping news and other media, the name of the ship
was followed by the name of the Captain.
Scene 1 – Of Carpenters, Weavers and
Sailors
The time
has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things, of shoes and ships and
sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether
pigs have wings
(The Walrus
and the Carpenter, Lewis Carroll)
The first of
the family to appear in the records in Whitby
was John
Farndale (c 1636 to 1712) who married Alice Peckock
of Whitby on 19 November 1661. Although I
am not certain, he was probably the son of Rychards and Emme ffarnedayle
(1604 to c1685) of the Liverton 1
Line who we met in Act 12.
Poor Alice died only two years after she married John, and she was buried in Whitby on 28 November 1663. A decade later John married
Margarita Herd in Whitby on 25 November
1673 and John and
Margarita had a daughter, also called Margarita,
and three sons. Their family were the
Whitby 1 Line. Their third child was Thomas Farndale
(1683 to 1747).
Thomas Farndale married Sarah Perkins at Sneaton,
south of Whitby on 11 January 1707. Thomas
and Sarah had four sons. Certainly by 1713, and probably earlier, Thomas was a
carpenter in Whitby, most likely working
in the substantial maritime industry of the thriving port.
Lewis
Carroll stayed in Whitby on many occasions. Eighty five years after Thomas Farndale’s
death, Lewis Carroll wrote his famous nonsense verse about a carpenter on the
sands of Whitby. It is thought he drew his
inspiration for his poem The
Walrus and the Carpenter from the nearby village of Sandsend.
Thomas and Sarah
Farndale’s eldest son John Farndale (1709 to 1790) became a sailor and
on 31 July 1751 he was enlisted on the Coal Cat or collier ship called the Three
Brothers on which ship James Cook,
soon to be the discoverer of new worlds, had just been promoted to mate. John Farndale served on
the Three Brothers and the Friendship, on a series of voyages
under James Cook as mate, which
included transporting British troops from the Netherlands at the end of the War of Austrian
Succession, trading with Norway and in the Baltic, and taking part in a not
very successful whaling expedition. After James
Cook had joined the Royal Navy and by the time of Cook’s third voyage of
exploration, John
Farndale had advanced his own career in the merchant navy and had been
promoted to captain of the Friendship, the same ship which Cook had
previously served on as mate.
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1709 to 1790
John Farndale
served alongside James Cook, discoverer of the Southern Continent, on
colliers out of Whitby |
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1728
to 1779
The
association of James Cook with Cleveland, Whitby, Great Ayton, the Farndale ancestral lands,
and individuals of the Farndale Story |
John Farndale had
married Hannah Christian at Whitby
on 30 May 1736, and they had a family of four, the Whitby 2 Line. Their eldest
daughter, Sarah,
married a joiner in Whitby.
John and Hannah’s third child was John Farndale who
married Phyllis Holdforth of Loftus and then moved back to Loftus, where he became a weaver. On 9 July
1787, his apprentice ran away. John Sanderson, Apprentice to John Farndale,
Weaver of Lofthouse, Yorkshire; he is stout made, a little pitted with the
small pox, dark brown hair, and has a bald spot on the top of his head,
occasioned by a fall; he had on when he went off, a blue jacket, a yellow
striped waistcoat, leather breeches, and brown and white mottled stockings. If
the said Apprentice will return to his Master, he will be kindly received; and
any person or persons harbouring or employing him after this public notice,
will be prosecuted with the utmost vigour, and any person giving notice of the
said John Sanderson to the said John Farndale, will be handsomely rewarded.
By 1798 John was an alehouse keeper in East Loftus
and by 1800 he was a police constable and gave evidence in the prosecution of a
yeoman for stealing delft or earthenware goods, namely two teapots, two
decanters, two pitchers, two basins or small bowls and one cream pot belonging
to the said James Lynas.
John and Hannah’s
youngest son, Robert
Farndale, also became a master mariner by 1780. Robert Farndale was buried
on 7 June 1827 and his place of burial, along with many others of the Whitby family line, was the Churchyard of St
Mary the Virgin, overlooking Whitby, which
would be forever associated with the story of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Sacred to
the memory of Robert Farndale Master mariner who died June 2nd 1827 aged 74
years. And of Hannah his wife who died March 28th 1845 aged 89 years Robert Farndale’s Will
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A
history of Whitby at the height of its maritime power in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, home to several large Farndale families. |
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The place of Dracula inspiration where many Farndales
have been buried, provides a vantage point over Whitby, and its maritime
activity |
Thomas and Sarah
Farndale’s third son was Giles Farndale (1713
to 1742) who was press ganged into the Royal Navy at Whitby at the age of 27 in 1740.
Mid
eighteenth century press gang HMS
Experiment
The Nore
Battle of Cartagena de Indias
On 29 June
1740 Giles was on the muster list of HMS Experiment at the naval muster
point at the entrance to the Thames known as the Nore. From there HMS
Experiment sailed for Port Royal, Jamaica where she arrived on 15 September
1740. From there until June 1741 the ship was either in Port Royal, at sea, or
in Cartagena. Giles was present at every muster until 9 May 1741 when he was
marked DD, Discharged Dead. During the time of Giles’ service, HMS
Experiment served under Admiral Vernon during the
War of Jenkins’ Ear in the Spanish Main, and took part in a large
amphibious operation against the port of Cartagena
de Indias in Colombia.
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1713 to 1742
Press ganged into
the Royal Navy, Giles served on HMS Experiment in the Spanish Main
during the War of Jenkins Ear where he died and was buried at sea |
Thomas and Sarah
Farndale’s second son was Francis Farndale
(1711 to 1772), who was a carpenter like his father. Francis married Margaret
Spark on 28 May 1738 when he was 27. They had six children, Sarah, Giles, Francis, Spark, Thomas and
another Thomas. It seems likely that their first
five children died at birth or in infancy. The second young Thomas Farndale
married Jane Calvert on 22 February 1785 and he was a third generation
carpenter. Thomas
and Jane Farndale had nine children. Five of those children, Francis, William,
another Francis,
Phillis, and
Thomas also
died in infancy.
Flowergate, Whitby, late nineteenth
century
Margaret Farndale
was a spinster who lived in Flowergate in Whitby by 1841. Mary Farndale,
also a spinster, was a seamstress in Flowergate in
1851. A second Thomas
Farndale died aged 35 in 1832. The youngest daughter was Elizabeth
Farndale who married James Husband on 2 February 1819, when she was
21.
The older Francis Farndale’s
wife Margaret probably died in the late 1740s and Francis married Margaret Gray
in Whitby on 4 November 1750, by which
time he was 39 years old. Francis and the second Margaret had triplets, born on
3 September 1759, Mary,
Christian
and Frances
Farndale. Frances
Farndale had two children when she was unmarried, William (who
died at birth) and Margaret Farndale
(who died when she was one year old). Frances Farndale
later married Robert Heselton in Whitby in
1791.
It seems
that by the fifth and sixth generation of this Whitby
family, life was a struggle with high infant mortality. Though still a thriving
port, Whitby could also be a challenging
place to live.
Scene 2 – Of Victorian Captains and
Shipwrights
William Farndale
(1743 to 1777) was born in Kilton and
baptised in Brotton on 13 July 1743, the
son of William
and Abigail Farndale. We met him in Act 13, Scene 2 and
he was born into the Kilton 1 Line.
William Farndale
the Younger married Elizabeth Barry of Whitby
and became a master mariner in Whitby,
the captain of colliers, like his
kinsman John Farndale.
William was
captain of the Abigail and Martha on voyages between Whitby, London and Newcastle. Since Abigail
was the name of his mother and his daughter, this suggests he had a proprietary
interest in the vessel. William and
Elizabeth had two daughters, Abigail and Elizabeth and
two sons Robert
Farndale, a ship’s carpenter, and John Farndale, the Whitby 3 Line. William was
buried at Brotton on 27 April 1777, so the
family seem to have maintained their links with their family home at Kilton and Brotton.
John Farndale (1773 to 1833) seems to have been engaged in some form of
military service. John married Dinah Boyes in Loftus on 23 April 1799 and they had seven
children, the Whitby 4 Line.
After John died, aged 60, in 1833, the widowed Dinah Farndale seems to have
petitioned for a pension through the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, so perhaps John served in the Royal Navy, possibly as
a ship’s carpenter.
John and Dinah Farndale had eight children and seven were girls. Ann Farndale did
not marry and worked as a dressmaker, living at Brotton
and later Loftus. Hannah Farndale
married a joiner called Edward Hunt and they lived in Church Street, Whitby. Jane Farndale
married Nicholas Rippon who was another master mariner, and in old age worked
in an iron foundry. They lived in Stockton.
Dinah Farndale
married Robert Stamp, a ship’s carpenter and later a master shipwright in the
bustling port of West Hartlepool. Dinah
was later a shareholder in Robert’s business. Mary Ann Farndale
died in infancy and Elizabeth
Farndale lived with her sister Jane Rippon in Stockton, but died when she was only 16. So
this was a family who settled across Cleveland.
John and Dinah
Farndale’s only son amidst the seven girls was John Christopher Farndale the Elder
(1802 to 1837). John was a Master
Mariner and Captain of the William and Nancy. He was a merchant sea
captain who sailed around the British shores and may even have travelled to
Archangel in Russia. John
Christopher Farndale the Elder married Ann Ling and they had two sons, William Farndale
(1825 to 1887) and John
Christopher Farndale the Younger (1830 to 1868). There are plenty of
records of the epic adventures at sea of father and two sons, all master
mariners, which include hard labour for absconding as an apprentice, an assault
on the high seas, voyages across the Baltic, and the eventual loss of John and
his crew in the Bay of Biscay.
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1802 to 1837
The story of the
merchant master mariners, John Christopher Farndale Senior and his sons
William and John and their epic maritime adventures around the English coast,
to the Baltic, Russia and Scandinavia and to Biscay, the site of a tragic
disaster |
John Christopher
Farndale the Elder and Ann’s other children were Thomas Farndale,
a ship broker’s clerk, Mary Farndale, a
straw bonnet maker, and James Farndale
who died an infant.
William Farndale
married Ann Brown and they had two children John Thomas
Farndale (1854 to 1930) and Jane Farndale
(1856 to 1938). They also seem to have adopted their niece, probably a daughter
of John Christopher
Farndale the Younger, Maria J Farndale.
John
Thomas Farndale and Jane Farndale each
did not marry, but lived together in Thirsk, where John Thomas became manager
of Barclays Bank and both were prominent members of Thirsk society in the early
twentieth century.
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1854 to 1930
The Bank Manager
of Thirsk |
Scene 3 – Of Innkeepers, Policemen,
Engineers, Presbyterians, Soldiers and Pioneers
There was
another family originated in the
Kilton 1 Line, who came to settle in the lands immediately to the west of Whitby, at Newholm,
in Eskdale and around Goathland, Danby
and Egton.
John Farndale was
the son of Samuel
and Elizabeth Farndale, the cabinet maker family who we met in Act 13, Scene 2.
John was born in Kilton and baptised in Brotton. He married Ann Nicholson of Danby on 12 December 1813 and they had five
children, the Whitby 5 Line.
John seems to have been an agricultural labourer and farmer at Danby and Brackon
Riggs, but was buried in Egton.
John and Ann Farndale’s eldest son was William Farndale (1814 to 1886). William Farndale married Sarah Saunders on 19 April 1841 in Egton and they had seven children, many of
whom were ironstone miners of Egton and Cleveland who we will meet in Act 18. From this family
would descend the Loftus 3 Line
and the Ontario 2 Line. Their
grandchildren included John William
Farndale (1869 to 1938), a farmer, butter huckster, innkeeper and Butcher
of Danby and Egton;
Samuel Kirk
Farndale (b 1871), who emigrated to Ontario,
and we will meet again later; and George Farndale
(1891 to 1917), a Blacksmith striker who was killed in action on 27 May 1917,
during the Battle of Arras, barely a month after arriving in France.
John and Ann Farndale’s
third child was John
Farndale (1818 to 1874) who was a farmer of Newholm,
an agricultural labourer and quarry waggoner of Eskdaleside. The younger John Farndale
married Margaret Dawson on 18 June 1838 and they had two sons, Thomas Farndale
(1839 to 1919) who became an innkeeper in Wakefield
and Joseph Farndale.
John and Margaret
Farndale’s son Joseph Farndale
(1842 to 1901) and their grandson, Thomas Farndale’s
son, also Joseph
Farndale (1864 to 1954) became the Chief Constables of Birmingham and Bradford respectively and had extraordinary
police careers. We will meet them both again in Act 21.
Thomas Farndale
married Sarah Bell and their other children were Thomas Dawson
Farndale (1862 to 1940) who was a stone mason and then clerk of works and
eventually a civil engineer; Samuel Farndale
(1866 to 1936), a clerk in Portsea in Hampshire who later lived in London and
worked in the civil service with the Admiralty rising to become clerk to the
engineer in chief, whose descendants were the
London 1 Line and Margaret Farndale
(1868 to 1955) who married James Law, another publican in York.
John and Ann Farndale’s
youngest child was Joseph
Farndale (1825 to 1875), a labourer and carter of bricks who moved to Brick
Yard Lane in York. Joseph married Margaret
Brown and they had seven children, including William Farndale
(1859 to 1909), a railway porter and Methodist local preacher, then town
missionary, and later baker and confectioner at Macclesfield and Chorlton.
William’s son was Rev Dr
William Edward Farndale, a leading Methodist who would become President of
the Methodist Conference in 1947. We will meet them again in Act 31.
From this
part of the family would also descend a family who settled in Holderness, the Holderness Line, where William Derrick
Farndale, a motor fitter and tractor driver, was patrol commander of the Withensea Patrol during the Second World War.
This was a
diverse section of the family who fanned out from Eskdaleside immediately to
the west of Whitby, across the nation, to
become innkeepers, leading policemen, civil engineers, Presbyterians, soldiers
and Canadian pioneers.
or
Go Straight to Act 16 – Return to
Yearsley
You might
also be interested in
Rev. George
Young D.D, A Picture of Whitby and its environs, 1840. You can get a
copy from Yorkshire
CD Books.
by