A History of Whitby

A history of Whitby at the height of its maritime power in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, home to several large Farndale families.

A look back to the Anglo Saxon history of Whitby in the time of Celtic and Roman Christianity

Whitby in about 1750

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Whitby Harbour is a safe refuge, when once past the old wooden bridge. Let old Neptune rise and foam, and run mountains high, all are safe within her walls and bulwarks.

(John Farndale, 1864)

The port on the east coast

The port of Whitby sits on the east coast of Yorkshire at the mouth of the River Esk. Whitby has a maritime heritage. Upon its East Cliff lie the ruins of Whitby Abbey, where Cædmon, the earliest recognised English poet, lived. The fishing port emerged during the Middle Ages and supported coaling, herring and whaling fleets. It was here that James Cook learned his seamanship.

Jet and alum were mined locally, and Whitby Jet, which was mined by the Romans and Victorians, became fashionable during the 19th century.

Tourism started in Whitby during the Georgian period and developed with the arrival of the railway in 1839.

Whitby was called Streanæshalc (probably meaning ‘Streane’s headland’), Streneshalc, Streoneshalch, Streoneshalh, and Streunes-Alae in Lindissi in records of the seventh and eighth centuries CE. Prestebi, meaning the habitation of priests in Old Norse, was an eleventh century name. Its name was also recorded as Hwitebi and Witebi, meaning the white settlement in Old Norse, in the twelfth century, Whitebi in the thirteenth century and Qwiteby in the fourteenth century.

Medieval Whitby

The Whitby headland was settled during the late Bronze Age. A round house within a ditched enclosure was found near the cliff edge, and a number of objects dating to this period have been recovered.

The Whitby headland may have been occupied by a Roman signal station in the third century CE, as it is midway between known stations at Goldsborough and Ravenscar, and is in a strategic position at the mouth of the river Esk. However the site of the signal station has probably long since fallen into the sea as the cliffs here have eroded steadily. Until recently the only evidence of the Roman presence in this area was a soldier’s helmet and a few coins, which were found at Goldsborough and the Signal Station on Huntcliff.

The Saxon history of the town begins with the introduction of Christianity into Northumbria. King Edwin and his kinswoman Hilda, then a child, were baptized in 627 CE. Edwin's successor Oswy had vowed to grant lands for monastic purposes if he should defeat the pagan Penda, and it was possibly in connexion with his victory at Winwaed in 655 CE that Hilda was given possession of her lands at Whitby to build a monastery. This was the earliest record of a permanent settlement in 656 CE, when as Streanæshealh it was the place where Oswy, the Christian king of Deira, founded the first abbey, under the abbess Hild. The monastery was founded as an act of thanksgiving, after Oswy’s defeat of Penda, the pagan king of Mercia. At its foundation, the abbey was an Anglo-Saxon double monastery for men and women. Its first abbess, the royal princess Hild, was later venerated as a saint. The abbey became a centre of learning and here Cædmon the cowherd was "miraculously" transformed into an inspired poet whose poetry is an example of Anglo-Saxon literature. The abbey became the leading royal nunnery of the kingdom of Deira, and the burial-place of its royal family.

Excavations here have revealed evidence of Anglian life, including large quantities of pottery, household goods and fine metal objects. There are two main sources for the history of Streanæshealh, as it was then known. These are the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed about 731 by the Venerable Bede, a monk from St Paul’s Monastery at Jarrow on the Tyne; and a The Earliest Life of Pope Gregory the Great, by an anonymous monk of Streaneshalch. Chapter III of the introduction of the anonymous monk’s work tells the early history of Whitby, as does Book IV, Chapter 23 of Bede’s work..

Here King Edwin's headless body, which had lain since 633 CE at Hatfield, was brought for burial.

It was at Whitby that the famous synod of Streoneshalch was held in 664 CE which established the Roman date of Easter in Northumbria and recognised Roman over Celtic Christian traditions.

The monastery was destroyed between 867 CE and 870 CE in a series of raids by Vikings from Denmark under their leaders Ingwar and Ubba. Its site remained desolate during the early Scandinavian period. In the eleventh century the place came to be called Prestebi (Scandinavian byr or village presta, of priests) and later white byr, or Whitby, but this was much later. The existence of Prestebi at the Domesday Survey may suggest a revival of religious life in the later Scandinavian period. The Danish town of Whitby was presumably of some importance, as close to it was apparently held the Danish Thing, and nearly all the places in the district in 1086 bore Danish names. Whitby was geldable before the Conquest at the large sum of £112, but by 1086 had reduced in value to £3, presumably reflecting the ravages of the Normans during the Harrying of the North. It had been part of the estates of Earl Siward, Earl of Northumberland.

The Domesday Book recorded 40 villagers, 8 freemen and 3 smallholders, with 39 ploughlands, and 4 lord’s plough teams and five men’s plough teams. There was 26 acres of meadow and woodland strentching to seven by three leagues. It had a mill, valued at 10s.

By the time of Domesday, the settlement had gained its current name, Whitby (from "white settlement" in Old Norse). The first recorded use of the name Whitby in the eleventh century is unlikely to have been more than a hundred or so years old, since its origin in Scandinavian.

The Domesday record listed a number of locations including Baldebi; Breck; Flower[gate]; Fyling [Old Hall]; [Fyling] Thorpe; Gnipe [Howe]; [High] Stakesby; Newholm; Prestby; Sneaton; Sowerby; Ugglebarnby; Whitby.

After the Conquest, the area was granted to William de Percy who, in 1078 donated land to found a Benedictine monastery dedicated to St Peter and St Hilda. William de Percy's gift included land for the monastery, the town and port of Whitby and St Mary's Church and dependent chapels at Fyling, Hawsker, Sneaton, Ugglebarnby, Dunsley, and Aislaby, five mills including Ruswarp, Hackness with two mills and two churches.

The Benedictine monk Reinfrid established a new community on the site in 1078. Reinfrid was a soldier of William the Conqueror who became a monk. He approached William de Percy for a grant of land, who gave him the ruined monastery of St. Peter with two carucates of land, to found a new monastery. Serlo de Percy, the founder's brother, joined Reinfrid at the new monastery, which followed the Benedictine rule. The greater part of de Percy's building was pulled down and the monastery was rebuilt on a larger scale in the 1220s. The Benedictine abbey thrived for centuries as a centre of learning.

The Church of Saint Mary at Whitby was founded in about 1110, although its interior dates chiefly from the late eighteenth century.

In about 1128 Henry I granted the abbey burgage in Whitby and permission to hold a fair at the feast of St Hild on 25 August. A second fair was held close to St Hild's winter feast at Martinmas. Market rights were granted to the abbey and descended with the liberty.

Whitby Abbey surrendered in December 1539 when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. Its ruins are those seen on Whitby’s headland today. The vast shell of the abbey church is a magnificent example of English Gothic architecture. The abbey was bought by Sir Richard Cholmley. It remained in the Cholmley family and their descendants, the Strickland family. The Strickland family passed it to the UK government in 1920. The ruins are now owned and maintained by English Heritage

In 1540 the town of Whitby had between 20 and 30 houses and a population of about 200. The burgesses, who had little independence under the abbey, tried to obtain self-government after the dissolution of the monasteries. The king ordered Letters Patent to be drawn up granting their requests, but it was not implemented.

In 1550 the Liberty of Whitby Strand, except for Hackness, was granted to the Earl of Warwick who in 1551 conveyed it to Sir John York and his wife Anne who sold the lease to the Cholmleys.

In the reign of Elizabeth I in the late sixteenth century, Whitby was a small fishing port.

The prosperous port of Whitby

At the end of the sixteenth century Thomas Chaloner visited alum works in the Papal States where he observed that the rock being processed was similar to that under his Guisborough estate. Alum had medicinal uses, and was used in curing leather and for fixing dyed cloths. The Papal States and Spain maintained monopolies on its production and sale. Chaloner secretly brought workmen to develop the industry in Yorkshire, and alum was produced near Sandsend Ness five kilometres from Whitby during the reign of James I. Once the industry was established, imports were banned and although the methods in its production were laborious, England became self-sufficient. Whitby grew significantly as a port as a result of the alum trade and by importing coal from the Durham coalfield to process it.

In 1635 the owners of the liberty governed the port and town where twenty four burgesses had the privilege of buying and selling goods brought in by sea.

Shipbuilding in Whitby increased very rapidly during the eighteenth century. In 1700, 113 sailboats of small tonnage were constructed. By 1734, 130 ships of 80 tonnes and upwards were built and by 1776, 251 ships of 80 tonnes and upwards were built.

It was the coastal trade which absorbed the majority of these ships and in particular, the coal trade. Coal was shipped at Newcastle, Sunderland and Shields for London and the east coast ports, the main part being for the Capital. It was imported into Whitby both for domestic use and use in the alum works. In 1690, 60 tons of kelp were shipped from Berwick on Tweed to Whitby for use in the manufacture of alum and presumably this was not an isolated instance as the alum trade persisted throughout the century in various states of economic decline and recovery.

In 1731 Whitby imported coal from Newcastle and Sunderland and wine, linen, nails, firkin staves, bricks, clog wheels (cart wheels of thick plank without spokes), and timber from Hull. There were also three cargoes of miscellaneous goods from London. 27 shipments left the port that year, one of alum for Newcastle, one of alum for Alloa and 25 for London which consisted of alum, dried fish and butter.

In 1740 Giles Farndale was press ganged into the navy in Whitby, and was killed in the Spanish Main during the War of Jenkins’ Ear.

In 1767 William Farndale, originally from Kilton was a Master Mariner who captained colliers along the east coast of England from Whitby to ports which included London and Newcastle. He was captain of the Abigail and Martha. Abigail was the name of his daughter and his mother, which suggests he may have some interest in naming the vessel, in which case he perhaps had some rights in the collier he sailed, rather than just a captain for another person.

In 1752, John Farndale was a seaman on the collier, the Three Brothers, and James Cook was the mate.

Whale fishing began in Whitby in 1753 and the vessels were sometimes used in the coal trade during the autumn and winter months and then adapted for whaling in the summer. In 1753 the first whaling ship set sail to Greenland and by 1795 Whitby had become a major whaling port. John Farndale was a seaman on the collier, Friendship, and James Cook was again the mate when it embarked on a sailing expedition.

By 1776, John Farndale was captain of the Friendship.

Because of the increase in shipbuilding, large quantities of timber came into the town. Most of it was from the Baltic direct or via Hull along the coast. Whitby registered ships traded with the Baltic from Hull and London and were also engaged in the trade in the West Indies, Mediterranean, America and the East Indies. So Whitby seamen employed on locally owned ships would have picked them up at ports around the country.

Some Whitby merchants might have been involved with the slave trade but no definite evidence has come to light and nothing to connect the port with slave ships.

Luxury goods such as wine, tea, coffee, sugar, spices, currents, raisins, fine dress materials and tobacco would come along the coast from London or Hull.

One final use to which would be ships were put is that of transport vessels in time of war. The Navy board commandeered the privately owned vessels and paid well for their use, granting adequate recompense in the event of loss. The crew would not fare so well if they were all pressed into the Royal Navy.

Whitby benefited from trade between the Newcastle coalfield and London, both by shipbuilding and supplying transport. In his youth the explorer James Cook had learned his trade on colliers, shipping coal from the port. HMS Endeavour, the ship commanded by Cook on his voyage to Australia and New Zealand, was built in Whitby in 1764 by Tomas Fishburn as a coal carrier named Earl of Pembroke. She was bought by the Royal Navy 1768, refitted and renamed.

Whitby grew in size and wealth, extending its activities to include shipbuilding using local oak timber. In 1790 to 1791 Whitby built 11,754 tons of shipping, making it the third largest shipbuilder in England, after London and Newcastle. Taxes on imports entering the port raised money to improve and extend the town's twin piers, improving the harbour and permitting further increases in trade.

Whitby developed as a spa town in Georgian times when three chalybeate springs were in demand for their medicinal and tonic qualities. Visitors were attracted to the town leading to the building of "lodging-houses" and hotels particularly on the West Cliff.

In 1790 there were imports of coal, timber, hemp, flax, ashes (for soap), and iron into Whitby. Exports included sailcloth (7,300 bolts), butter (1,309 firkins), hams and bacons (21 tonnes 19 cwts 3 qts 10 lbs), oats (4,094 qts) ad leather (33,615 lbs). Alum and whale oil, blubber, whale fins and whale bone also formed part of the export trade.

The Napoleonic Wars were fought between 1793 and 1815.

John Farndale was probably engaged by the Royal Navy at the turn of he century, as his wife, Dinah Farndale, obtained a pension from the Royal Hospital Chelsea in 1841 after he had died in 1837.

Whitby’s most successful whaling year was 1814 when eight ships caught 172 whales, and the whaler, the Resolution's catch produced 230 tons of oil. The carcases yielded 42 tons of whale bone used for 'stays' which were used in the corsetry trade until changes in fashion made them redundant. Blubber was boiled to produce oil for use in lamps in four oil houses on the harbourside. Oil was used for street lighting until the spread of gas lighting reduced demand and the Whitby Whale Oil and Gas Company changed into the Whitby Coal and Gas Company. As the market for whale products fell, catches became too small to be economic and by 1831 only one whaling ship, the Phoenix, remained.

In 1826 John Chrisopher Farndale the Elder started to captain the William and Nancy on voyages out of Whitby. He died young aged only 35 in 1837. He sailed mainly along the east coast, but might have captained a voyage to Archangel in northern Russia in 1833.

Lewis Carrol stayed in Whitby on many occasions. It is thought he drew his inspiration for his poem The Walrus and the Carpenter from the nearby village of Sandsend.

Burgage tenure continued until 1837, when by an Act of Parliament, government of the town was entrusted to a board of Improvement Commissioners, elected by the ratepayers.

The 1837 Poor Law valuation of Whitby was a list of every property in the township of Whitby in the year 1837, recording 2,435 houses, tenements, shops, offices and other places. The valuation included the occupier of the property, its owner, a description and its rateable value.

In 1834, the New Poor Law came into operation in England and Wales. As part of this, parishes were grouped into Poor Law Unions. These were administered locally by a Board of Guardians, elected by each parish or township, and answerable to a central Poor Law Commission, based in London. Those families who could not fend for themselves were either given money or food to sustain themselves, known as out-relief, or were taken into a Union Workhouse, where the workhouse master and his staff would deal with their immediate needs. However, the workhouse was segregated by sex and the inmates were expected to perform laborious tasks in return for their food and lodging, so this was an option that the poor avoided unless desperation left them no choice. The funds to pay for the relief of the poor were collected from the population of the township or parish, according to the value of the property they occupied. The value of each property, or more particularly, the rent it would fetch if rented for a year, was assessed. The local Board of Guardians would decide how much they needed in each year and each householder was liable for a proportion of this, depending on the annual rateable value of his property.

In 1837, the Board of Guardians for the Whitby Union came to the conclusion that the rateable values that they had been using prior to that date was out of date. They requested permission from the Poor Law Commission to conduct a new valuation. When this was granted, in order to record the annual rateable value of each property, the Board of Guardians appointed a valuer. He wrote a list of properties with their owners, occupiers and their rateable values, presumably by walking around the town and interviewing people. This list was published by a local printer so that people could check that their rateable value was correct and also that no-one else was being charged too low a rate. A copy of the list was sent to the Poor Law Commission.

In 1839, the Whitby and Pickering Railway connecting Whitby to Pickering and eventually to York was built, and played a part in the town's development as a tourism destination.

George Hudson, who promoted the link to York, was responsible for the development of the Royal Crescent which was partly completed. For 12 years from 1847, Robert Stephenson, son of George Stephenson, engineer to the Whitby and Pickering Railway, was the Conservative MP for the town promoted by Hudson as a fellow protectionist. William Farndale voted for the Conservative candidate Thomas Chapman after he died in 1859.

By 1849 William Farndale was the captain and master of his father’s ship, the William and Nancy. He is recorded in a very large number of voyages as captain of a number of different ships, mainly brigs, trading coal. His early voyages were along the east coast, but he led voyages to France.

In 1845, William’s younger brother John Christopher Farndale the Younger was an apprentice mariner who went absent. He was punished by a sentence of a month of hard labour at Northallerton gaol, in order to bring the young delinquents to a sense of their duty, and act as a warning to others. By January 1853, he was captain of the John Stewart. He captained brigs on a number of adventurous voyages including many trips into the Baltic. By 1866 he captained a new screw steamer (a steam ship), the Medusa and then the Norfolk until he was lost at sea in the Bay of Biscay in 1868.

Whitby in 1857

Whitby town from Abbey Terrace, sketched on 3 October 1861

A period of decline

The advent of iron ships in the late nineteenth century and the development of port facilities on the River Tees led to the decline of smaller Yorkshire harbours. The Monks-haven launched in 1871 was the last wooden ship built Whitby and a year later the harbour was silted up.

From the mid nineteenth century all of Whitby 's major traditional industries, wailing, alum, shipbuilding and fishing, faced the growing challenge of changing markets add new technological innovation. It was a town in relative decline.

The black mineraloid jet, the compressed remains of ancestors of the monkey-puzzle tree, was found in the cliffs and on the moors and had been used since the Bronze Age to make beads. The Romans are known to have mined it in the area. In Victorian times, jet was brought to Whitby by pack pony to be made into decorative items. It was at the peak of its popularity in the mid nineteenth century when it was favoured for mourning jewellery by Queen Victoria after the death of Prince Albert.

By the 1880s, Whitby had become a town of two halves.

There was the impressive grandeur of the West side of the river Esk which housed the professional classes and accommodated a growing tourist industry.

In contrast, the east side of the river was a place of inequality of income and wealth. It was in large part a ghetto of small houses, stacked together lining narrow streets and yards clinging to the east side cliffs. It provided accommodation for the poor of Whitby, the destitute, the unemployed, the unskilled and skilled artisans, who provided the labour for the towns remaining shipbuilding and fishing industries and serviced the growing needs of the west side residents.

Flowergate, late nineteenth century

In 1891 the census records showed an average age of Whitby's population of 13,414 was only 27 years old. There were extremely high levels of infant mortality among those who lived on the east side of the town.

On 30 October 1914, the hospital ship Rohilla was sunk, hitting the rocks within sight of shore just off Whitby at Saltwick Bay. Of the 229 people on board, 85 lost their lives in the disaster; most are buried in the churchyard at Whitby.

In a raid on Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby in December 1914, the town was shelled by the German battlecruisers Von der Tann and Derfflinger. In the final assault on the Yorkshire coast the ships aimed their guns at the signal post on the end of the headland. Whitby Abbey sustained considerable damage in the attack which lasted ten minutes. The German squadron responsible for the strike escaped despite attempts made by the Royal Navy.

The Whitby Gazette of 31 January 1919 published a letter objecting to dark, damp and crowded housing on the east side, declaring them to be far worse than the London slums in the East End and advocating that the unhealthy houses be pulled down, the streets widened, and that Whitby shall be made into a place of health and beauty... then will be the time for artists to paint Whitby with its red tiled roofs that are water tight.

During the early twentieth century the fishing fleet kept the harbour busy and few cargo boats used the port. It was revitalised as a result of a strike at Hull docks in 1955 when six ships were diverted and unloaded their cargoes on the fish quay.

Endeavour Wharf, near the railway station, was opened in 1964 by the local council.

The number of vessels using the port in 1972 was 291, increased from 64 in 1964. Timber, paper and chemicals are imported while exports include steel, furnace-bricks and doors. The port is owned and managed by Scarborough Borough Council since the Harbour Commissioners relinquished responsibility in 1905.

Whitby today

Dracula and Whitby

Bram Stoker arrived at Mrs Veazey’s guesthouse at 6 Royal Crescent, Whitby, at the end of July 1890. As the business manager of actor Henry Irving, Stoker had just completed a gruelling theatrical tour of Scotland. It was Irving who recommended Whitby, where he’d once run a circus, as a place to stay. Stoker, having written two novels with characters and settings drawn from his native Ireland, was working on a new story, set in Styria in Austria, with a central character called Count Wampyr.

Stoker had a week on his own to explore before being joined by his wife and baby son. Mrs Veazey liked to clean his room each morning, so he’d stroll from the genteel heights of Royal Crescent down into the town. On the way, he took in views that had been exciting writers, artists and romantic visitors for the past century.

The favoured Gothic literature of the period was set in foreign lands of eerie castles, convents and caves. Whitby’s windswept headland, the dramatic abbey ruins, a church surrounded by swooping bats, and a long association with jet, the stone of mourning jewellery, evoked the landscape that Stoker was imagining.

Bram Stoker photographed in about 1906

High above Whitby, and dominating the whole town, stands Whitby Abbey, the ruin of the once great Benedictine monastery, founded in the eleventh century. The medieval abbey stands on the site of a much earlier monastery, founded in 657 CE by an Anglian princess, Hild, its first abbess.

In Dracula, Stoker depicted Mina Murray, whose experiences form the thread of the novel, recorded in her diary. Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes … It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. Between it and the town is another church, the parish one,, round which is a large graveyard, all full of tombstones. This is to my mind the nicest spot in Whitby for it is right over the town, and has a full view of the harbour and all up the bay ,,,

Below the abbey stands the ancient parish church of St Mary, perched on East Cliff, which is reached by a climb of 199 steps. Bran Stoker described St Mary’s Church. For a moment or two I could see nothing, as the shadow of a cloud obscured St. Mary's Church. Then as the cloud passed I could see the ruins of the Abbey coming into view; and as the edge of a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword-cut moved along, the church and churchyard became gradually visible... It seemed to me as though something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.

There is a gravestone with a skull and crossbones, which it is sometimes claimed is the fictional Dracula’s grave, but in reality was probably the mark of a stonemason. And there is the tale of a suicide’s grave, where vampires have been depicted to reside. He pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. “Read the lies on that thruff-stone,” he said. The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over and read, “Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on July 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son. `He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.’ Really, Mr. Swales, I don’t see anything very funny in that!” She spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat severely. “Ye don’t see aught funny! Ha-ha! But that’s because ye don’t gawm the sorrowin’ mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was acrewk’d, a regular lamiter he was, an’ he hated her so that he committed suicide in order that she mightn’t get an insurance she put on his life.”….I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she said, rising up, “Oh, why did you tell us of this? It is my favourite seat, and I cannot leave it, and now I find I must go on sitting over the grave of a suicide.”

Stoker would have seen how time and the weather had gnawed at the graves, some of them teetering precariously on the eroding cliff edge. Some headstones stood over empty graves, marking the memorial sites of seafarers whose bodies had been lost on distant voyages. Stoker noted down some inscriptions and names for later use, including Swales, the name he used for Dracula’s first victim in Whitby.

On 8 August 1890, Stoker walked down to what was known as the Coffee House End of the Quay and entered the public library. It was there that he found a book published in 1820, recording the experiences of a British consul in Bucharest, William Wilkinson, in the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, now in Romania. Wilkinson’s history mentioned a fifteenth century prince called Vlad Tepes who was said to have impaled his enemies on wooden stakes. He was known as Dracula, the son of the dragon. The author had added in a footnote, Dracula in the Wallachian language means Devil. The Wallachians at that time … used to give this as a surname to any person who rendered himself conspicuous either by courage, cruel actions, or cunning.

While staying in Whitby, Stoker heard of a shipwreck five years earlier of a Russian vessel called the Dmitry, from Narva. This ran aground on Tate Hill Sands below East Cliff, carrying a cargo of silver sand. With a slightly rearranged name, this became the Demeter from Varna that carried Dracula to Whitby with a cargo of silver sand and boxes of earth.

So, although Stoker was to spend six more years on his novel before it was published, researching the landscapes and customs of Transylvania, the name of his villain and some of the novel’s most dramatic scenes were inspired by his holiday in Whitby. The innocent tourists, the picturesque harbour, the abbey ruins, the windswept churchyard, the suicide’s gravestone in Whitby churchyard, and the sailors’ tales he heard from Whitby seafarers all became ingredients in the novel.

In 1897 Dracula was published. It had an unpromising start as a play called The Undead, in which Stoker hoped Henry Irving would take the lead role. But after a test performance, Irving said he never wanted to see it again. For the character of Dracula, Stoker retained Irving’s aristocratic bearing and histrionic acting style, but he redrafted the play as a novel told in the form of letters, diaries, newspaper cuttings and entries in the ship’s log of the Demeter.

The log charts the gradual disappearance of the entire crew during the journey to Whitby, until only the captain was left, tied to the wheel, as the ship ran aground below East Cliff on 8 August, the date that marked Stoker’s discovery of the name Dracula in Whitby library. A large dog bounded from the wreck and ran up the 199 steps to the church, and from this moment, Dracula had arrived in Whitby.

There are many Farndales buried at St Mary’s churchyard of Dracula repute including John Farndale in 1712, Thomas Farndale, a ship’s carpenter, in 1747, Francis Farndale in 1772, John Farndale who sailed with James Cook, in 1790, Robert Farndale in 1827, Thomas Farndale in 1834, John Chistopher Farndale the Elder and James Farndale in 1837 and Thomas Farndale in 1859.

Return to the Contents Page

or

Go Straight to Chapter 13 – The Mariners of Whitby

There is a webpage on Whitby with research notes, and a chronology with source material.

You can also explore:

T S Willan, The English coasting trade 1600 – 1750. Manchester University 1938.

Rev George Young, History of Whitby, two volumes Clark and Medd, Whitby 1817.

Whitby then and Now, Colin Waters, 2004

A History of the County of York North Riding: Volume 2, originally published by Victoria County History, London, 1923, Whitby.