John Farndale

John Farndale served alongside James Cook, discoverer of the Southern Continent, on colliers out of Whitby

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The Whitby seaman

John Farndale, the eldest son of Thomas and Sarah (nee Perkins) Farndale, was baptised at St Mary the Virgin, Whitby on 22 May 1709. His father was a carpenter of Whitby. His brother was Giles Farndale, who served in the Royal Navy and died at sea in the Spanish Main.

Eighteenth century Whitby

John Farndale married Hannah Christian also of Whitby at Whitby Parish Church on 30 May 1736. John was 27 when he was married. John and Hannah had five children. Sarah Farndale was baptised on 19 March 1737; Thomas Farndale was baptised on 30 September 1739; John Farndale was baptised on 16 October 1743; Hannah Farndale was baptised on 27 December 1747; and Robert Farndale was baptised on 17 November 1752.

John Farndill was a seaman on the Collier, The Three Brothers between 21 November 1751 to 7 January 1752.

He was aged 45, so he had probably been at sea before. During this voyage his captain was Richard Ellerton, and James Cook was mate. The Three Brothers was engaged as a transport ship conveying British troops from the Netherlands at the end of the War of Austrian Succession. Later she was used for trade in the Baltic and probably sailed to Norway. In 1750 her captain was John Walker.

So we know that John Farndale served with James Cook, the famous explorer, soon to embark on three famous voyages to the southern continent and around the globe.

Before James Cook’s great voyages, he served on the following Whitby ships:

Ship	Type of Vessel	Dates	Role of James Cook	Overlap with John Farndale
Freelove	Collier	29 September 1747 to 17 December 1747	Apprentice
Freelove	Collier	26 February 1746 to 22 April 1748	Apprentice
Three Brothers	Collier	14 June 1748 to 14 October 1748	Apprentice
Three Brothers	Troopship to Holland and Ireland	14 October 1748 to 20 April 1749	Apprentice
Three Brothers	Voyage to Norway	20 April 1749 to 26 September 1749	Seaman
Three Brothers	Collier?	27 September 1749 to 8 December 1749	Seaman
Mary of Whitby	Voyage to The Baltic	8 February 1750 to 5 December 1750	Seaman
Three Brothers	Collier	19 February 1751 to 30 July 1751	Seaman
Friendship	Collier	31 July 1751 to 8 January 1752	Seaman Was he promoted to Mate by November 1751 and returned to the Three Brothers from 21 November 1751 to 7 or 8 January 1752?	John Farndill sailed on the Three Brothers between 21 November 1751 to 7 January 1752 This voyage was probably to Norway. On this voyage his captain was Richard Ellerton, with James Cook as mate. The Three Brothers was engaged as a transport conveying British troops from the Netherlands at the end of the War of Austrian Succession. Later she was used for trade in the Baltic. In 1750 her captain was John Walker.
Friendship	Collier	30 March 1752 to 10 November 1752	Mate	John Farndill, Seaman, 45 years old, Whitby, served seven months 12 days, on the Friendship, 30 March 1752 to 12 May 1753. Paid 8/4d muster dues. On 30 March 1752, the ship sailed from Whitby to London, where it arrived on 9 April 1752. It then sailed to Newcastle, where it arrived on 18 April 1752. It then sailed to Norway, where it arrived on 3 May 1752. It then returned to Newcastle on 12 May 1752, and then to Whitby on 17 May 1752.
Friendship	Collier	2 February 1753 to 4 February 1754	Mate	According to the muster rolls of Friendship in 1753, the ship had a crew of 24 men, including Swainston and Cook. The ship left Whitby on 4 April 1753 and returned on 26 September 1753. The voyage was probably not very profitable, as the ship only caught one whale. It is not clear whether John Farndale took part in this whaling expedition, but he might have done. John Farndale was a seaman named in a list of 42 of the crew of ‘The Friendship of Whitby’ on 10 November 1753.
Friendship	Collier	2 March 1754 to 28 July 1754	Mate
Friendship	Collier	9 August 1754 to 19 December 1754	Mate
Friendship	Collier	15 February 1755 to 14 June 1755	Mate
Friendship	Collier	22 April 1776	Nil	John Farndale was captain of the Friendship and sailed out from Portsmouth, bound for Whitehaven in Cumbria.

James Cook spent nine years in Whitby, three as apprentice and six as a seaman and later mate for Captain Walker’s shipping service. These years had a profound influence on his later life and career.

Coal Cats

Whitby in the mid eighteenth century was a centre of shipbuilding. The town was prosperous, and the heart of the coal carrying trade between Newcastle and London. It was the sixth biggest ship-building port in the country outside London.

There were a lot of shipyards, mostly on the banks of the river Esk. There were several dry-docks and three rope works for manufacturing the cordage needed for ships, sail-making lofts, and even sailcloth manufactories from 1756. It was a place teeming with skilled craftsmen.

Tough, capacious collier barks, sometimes called cat-built barks, or simply ‘cats’, were being built at Whitby.

Whitby cats were wide-beamed, shallow-draught, lightly rigged vessels built in Whitby designed for the coastal trade. They were used mainly to carry coal from Whitby to the Thames and backloaded with timber. Cat might have been an acronym of coal and timber ship.

HMS Endeavour was a collier

William Falconer's Dictionary of the Marine, 1769 defined a cat, which it describes as from the French chatte, as a ship employed in the coal trade, formed from the Norwegian model. It was distinguished by a narrow stern, projecting quarters, a deep waist, and by having no ornamental figure on the prow, generally built remarkably strong, and carrying from four to six hundred tons

J C Beaglehole says the broad bottomed blunt bowed Whitby Collier was no sprite of the sea, she was a 'cat built' vessel or simply a 'cat'.

Also known as colliers, these vessels were used in the North Sea coal trade and were robustly built to withstand the handling of their cargo as well as the harsh weather conditions.

Traditional collier brigs of wooden hull and two masts could carry between 280 and 300 tons of coal, although some sources suggest they could loads up to 600 tons.

They had two or three masts and most had large square sails. This type of sail allowed the boat to navigate in almost any weather condition, facing the most violent storms.

Since James Cook knew this type of ship well, having sailed on colliers during his first nine years as a sailor, before enlisting in the Royal Navy, he chose the Earl of Pembroke, launched in 1764, for his first expedition to the South sea from 1768 to 1771 and during successive his voyages of exploration, of 1772 to 1775 and from 1776 to 1779 he would also make them aboard colliers. Measuring 98 feet in length by 29 feet in the beam and with a tonnage of 369 burden, the Earl of Pembroke was built by Fishburne of Whitby, launched in 1768 and renamed the Endeavour after its purchase. Following the return from Captain Cook’s voyage of discovery between 1768 and 1771, the vessel made several voyages to the Falkland Islands before being sold in 1775. It was eventually returned to the North Sea coal trade and later passed to French ownership, before finally ending up at Newport, Rhode Island, towards the end of the eighteenth century. Endeavor's wineries were modified to house food for 18 months, scientific material and 94 people comprising a crew of 71 men, 11 scientists from the Royal Society and 12 Royal Marines.

Collier barks also traded across the Baltic, bringing back timber, tar, hemp and other naval supplies. They were not elegant nor particularly fast, but very capacious in order to carry low-value, bulky goods such as coal, and very reliable and durable. As they were virtually flat-bottomed, they could be beached anywhere. No quay or dock was needed. There were between 250 to 300 ships owned by Whitby men sailing out of the port. There were too many Whitby registered vessels to fit in to the harbour altogether at once. Many over wintered to the north in Newcastle or Sunderland. The ships were well known to the Royal Navy, and frequently hired as troop transports or supply ships in times of war. A large number of collier barks were used during the Seven Years War in North America.

Whitby was a bustling port with lots of opportunity for work. It also had a strong Quaker community which was very influential in the town. The Society of Friends, or Quakers, believed in moderation, in not bearing arms and abstaining from violence.

Whitby gained a reputation for training young men for the sea. Boys came not only from the surrounding countryside, but also from places much further away, even as far as the Orkneys. The town must have been awash with boys and young men. In the years 1747 to 1748 when James Cook was an apprentice, there were over 1,200 apprentices listed in Whitby’s ship muster rolls. The town had a population of 5,000 inhabitants.

There was no publicly endowed school nor grammar school in Whitby. That meant that there was no accepted model of a standard classical education for the sons of prosperous burgesses. Boys did not have to learn Latin or study Roman models of behaviour. Instead, there were commercially oriented schools and the teaching of mathematics was encouraged because of its practical use at sea. It was here that Cook acquired the mathematical knowledge which enabled him to develop navigational, cartographic and astronomical skills of a high order.

John Farndale’s voyages

November 1751 to January 1752

John Farndill sailed on the Three Brothers between 21 November 1751 to 7 January 1752. On this voyage his captain was Richard Ellerton, with James Cook as mate. The Three Brothers was engaged as a transport ship, conveying British troops from the Netherlands at the end of the War of Austrian Succession. Later she was used for trade in the Baltic, probably sailing to Norway.

January to March 1752

Between January and March 1752, John seems to have sailed on a ship of an unknown names with Robert Easton of London.

March 1752 to May 1753

John Farndill, Seaman, 45 years old, Whitby, served seven months 12 days, on the Friendship, between 30 March 1752 to 12 May 1753 and was paid 8s 4d muster dues.

On 30 March 1752, the ship sailed from Whitby to London, where it arrived on 9 April 1752. It then sailed to Newcastle, where it arrived on 18 April 1752. It then sailed to Norway, where it arrived on 3 May 1752. It then returned to Newcastle on 12 May 1752, and then to Whitby on 17 May 1752

The following information appears in the ledgers of the library of Whitby museum: Ship: "Friendship" of Whitby, owned by John Walker, Grape Lane, Whitby. Richard Allerton, Master, James Cook, Mate. John Farndill, Seaman, 45 years old, Whitby, served seven months 12 days, 30 March 1752 to 12 May 1753. Paid 8/4d muster dues. Prior to this he sailed with Robert Easton of London, but the name of ship is not given. No ship of James Peacock appears in Whitby records, but the name Peacock appears often as crew member in the muster rolls. In fact there was a Captain Peacock still living in Whitby in 1984.

The Friendship of Whitby was a collier ship that carried coal and other goods between London, Newcastle, and Norway. Friendship appears also to have been used as a whaling ship that sailed from Whitby to the Arctic regions in search of whales and seals.

The Friendship was owned by John Walker, a Quaker shipowner and merchant in Whitby. He was also the master of James Cook, who served as his apprentice and later as his mate. He owned several ships that traded coal and other goods between London, Newcastle, and Norway. He was also involved in the whaling industry and sent his ships to the Arctic regions.

Cook served on the Freelove, the Three Brothers and the Mary before sailing in the Friendship. All the ships were owned by the Walker Brothers who were engaged in the coal trade.

In 1753, the ship was commanded by John Swainston, who had been the mate of Three Brothers, another ship of Walker’s fleet, in 1751. James Cook was still the mate of the Friendship in from 2 February 1753 to 4 February 1754. On Friday 2 February 1753, the Friendship, still operating as a collier, sailed from Whitby. On Monday 4 February 1754, she returned to Whitby. According to the muster rolls of Friendship in 1753, the ship had a crew of 24 men, including Swainston and Cook.

Between 4 April and 26 September 1753, the Friendship was engaged in a whaling expedition. The voyage was probably not very profitable, as the ship only caught one whale. John Farndale must have taken part in this whaling expedition, as we know that he was on the Friendship until 12 May 1753, and it is not clear whether he returned during a pause in this expedition in May.

September 1753 to 1755

John Farndale was a seaman named in a list of 42 of the crew of The Friendship of Whitby on 10 November 1753. John was about 46 years old at this stage.

During winter months outside of the sailing season, ships were overwintered at Whitby. Repairs were carried out to vessels and Cook, like the other apprentices, lodged at Mr. Walker’s house in Grape Lane. During these periods Cook appears to have studied hard and by 1755 he had the chance to become Master of the Friendship, deciding instead to join the Royal Navy.

James Cook was the mate of the Friendship between 2 March and 28 July 1754; from 9 August to 19 December 1754 and then from 15 February to 14 June 1755. There is no record of John Farndale on these voyages, but he might still have been on the crew.

These were the last voyages of James Cook on colliers before he joined the Royal Navy.

1776

By 1776, when James Cook embarked on his third voyage, the Hampshire Chronicle on 22 April 1776 reported: Ship News. Sailed from Portsmouth, April 18th … Friendship, Farndale, for Whitehaven … The naming of John Farndale after the name of the ship records him as captain of the Friendship, sailing out from Portsmouth, bound for Whitehaven in Cumbria.

So between 1755 and 1776 John Farndale had become a master mariner and captain of a collier.

John’s wife, Hannah Farndale, died aged 75 and was buried at Whitby on 26 Mar 1782. She was therefore born in 1707. John was described at that time as a mariner.

John Farndale, a sailor, aged 79, was buried at St Mary, Whitby on 28 March 1790 in the graveyard which would one day be made famous for its association with the fictional Dracula.

How does John Farndale relate to the modern family?

John Farndale was part of the branch of the family called the Whitby 1 Line and had a family of his own, the Whitby 2 Line, but there were no Farndale descendants of either line.

However John was the great grandson of Richard Farndale (1604 to 1685), of the Moorsholm family recently settled in Cleveland, so this was a branch of the wider family.

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or

Go Straight to Act 15 – the Mariners of Whitby

or

Learn more about the history of Whitby.

Meet John’s brother, Giles Farndale, who was press ganged into the Royal Navy and went to war in the Spanish Main.

The webpage of John Farndale includes a chronology and research notes.

See also

The Captain Cook Society

The Captain Cook Museum, Whitby

Whitby Museum, maritime collection

J C Beaglehole, the Life of Captain James Cook, 1974

Clifford E Thornton, Captain Cook in Cleveland, Middlesbrough Council, 1978

C Preston, Captain James Cook RN, FRS, Whitby Literary Society, 1973