Chapter VIII: Part 8

Every day of the week we shall find ships giving up their cargoes of linseed and cottonseed from India, Egypt, or South Russia. But if we want to see the ‘butter boats’ emptied, we must be on the spot in the very early hours of a Monday morning. For these boats arrive from Denmark during the Sunday, and the work of transporting their cargoes to the lines of railway waggons that await their arrival begins with the last stroke of midnight. By four or five o’clock on the Monday morning the butter is on its way to all parts of the north of England. The cargo of one ship alone is sometimes consigned to as many as 300 separate stations.

Come for a walk along the Humber Dock or on the Riverside Quay and, according to the season of the year, we shall see unshipped cargoes of plums from Germany; new potatoes and other vegetables from Jersey, France, and Holland; cranberries from Russia; bananas from the Canary Isles; apples from Australia, Canada, and the United States; oranges, lemons, grapes, nuts, tomatoes and onions from Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Last of all we will pay a visit to the St. Andrew’s Dock, and watch the entrance and unloading of the steam trawlers and steam carriers of the Hull fishing fleets. From the fishing-grounds of the North Sea, the White Sea, and the stormy seas around Iceland each brings its ‘catch.’ As quickly as it can be brought up from the hold—tubs of plaice, turbot, halibut, codfish, ling, hake or herring—it is sold at auction to the fish buyers who attend from all the large towns of the north of England; and as quickly it is packed on board the waiting ‘Fish Trains,’ which will distribute it among the fifteen million people who live within reach of the port of Hull.

* * * * *

We shall now be able, perhaps, to understand what is meant when we call Hull ‘England’s Third Port.’ The following table shows the position of Hull in comparison with the other large ports of Great Britain:—

Annual Value of Imports
Name of Port. and Exports in 1910.

London 360 million pounds.

Liverpool 341 " "

Hull 73 " "

Manchester 47 " "

Southampton 46 " "

Glasgow 44 " "

Grimsby 32 " "

The growth of Hull’s shipping industry has meant a corresponding growth of its manufacturing industries. Most of these find their home on the banks of the river Hull, along whose winding course we can find oil and cake mills, flour mills, saw mills, paint, colour and varnish works, starch, blue and black-lead works, coal tar works, and cement works—all one after another.

Among these mills and works are some that rank as the largest in the British Isles. Thus the ‘British Oil and Cake Mills, Ltd.’ have the largest oil refinery, the ‘Hull Oil Manufacturing Co.’ are the largest producers of castor-oil, and the firm of ‘Blundell, Spence & Co.’ own the largest paint works. There are forty different firms engaged in the saw-milling industry, and an equal number in the manufacture of paints, colours and varnishes.

That ‘England’s Third Port’ is still going ahead may be seen in recent shipping and industrial developments. One of these has been the building of a new RIVERSIDE QUAY, available for large ships at any state of the tide, and the inauguration of a daily service of steamers to and from the Belgian ports. Another is the construction of a new JOINT DOCK by the North Eastern and the Hull and Barnsley Railways. This is planned to have eventually a water area of 83 acres, and to be thus an imposing rival of the Great Central Railway’s new dock at Immingham on the Lincolnshire shore of the Humber.

The year 1910 saw the beginning of a new direct steamship service between Australia and Hull, a service which is expected to open out a large trade in the import of Australian wool for the looms of the West Riding. March, 1909, saw the arrival in Hull of the first large cargo of soya beans sent out from China, and the beginning in Europe of a new industry—the crushing of soya beans and the manufacture of soya oil and feeding cake.

Another new industry was started in 1907, when the ‘National Radiator Co.’ opened a branch of their American works. They have extended their buildings each year since the opening, and now employ nearly 1000 hands.

_Photo by_] The Garden Village, Hull. [_C. Bennett_

]

Most noticeable of all recent developments in Hull, however, have been the destruction of slum districts and the opening out of wide thoroughfares in the heart of the city—a work that was carried out during the five years’ mayoralty of Sir Alfred Gelder—the securing of an unfailing supply of pure drinking-water; the construction of a tramway system that is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, in Great Britain; and the planning of Garden Villages and Public Parks on the outskirts of the city.

XXVI.
FAMOUS SONS OF THE EAST RIDING.

First in the list of those who may justly be called ‘Famous Sons of the East Riding’ stand the names of ROGER OF HOWDEN, WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH, and PETER OF LANGTOFT. All these were men of learning in an age when knowledge was difficult to obtain, and each devoted himself to the work of spreading the knowledge of which he became possessed. The work that each of them bequeathed to us is a history of our country, the histories of the first and second being written in Latin, and that of the third in Norman-French rimed verse.

Roger of Howden and Peter of Langtoft took their surnames—_i.e._, additional names—from the places at which they were born. But William of Newburgh was born at Bridlington in 1136, and gained his surname from the fact that he became an inmate of the monastery at Newburgh in the North Riding. Peter of Langtoft was a Canon of the Priory at Bridlington.

Peter of Langtoft’s _History of English Affairs_ takes rank as the ‘finest historical work left us by an Englishman of the twelfth century.’ It is interesting because there are introduced several of the songs sung by the peasantry and the townsfolk of Yorkshire in the thirteenth century.

But most interesting to us is the _Annals_ of Roger of Howden. Roger was a clerk, or secretary, to King Henry II., and later became one of the King’s Justices in Yorkshire. He records several facts about his birthplace—among them that King John spent Christmas, 1191, as a guest of Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, at the latter’s palace or manor-house at Howden, and that in 1200 the King granted Bishop Hugh the right to hold there an annual fair.

* * * * *

Next in our list come the names of two famous churchmen, JOHN ALCOCK and JOHN FISHER, who were both destined to become Bishops of Rochester.

John Alcock was born at Hull about 1428, and became Bishop of Rochester in 1472. Four years later he was promoted to the see of Worcester, and after another ten years received further promotion to the see of Ely. In his time it was customary for churchmen to be at the head of all affairs of the State, and twice was Bishop Alcock appointed by the King to be Lord Chancellor of England. On the second occasion he had the duty of opening the first Parliament of Henry VII.

Hull folk have reason to be proud of the memory of their great townsman, John Alcock. For not only did he reach the highest position in the country next to the King himself, but he was also famed as a great architect and a great patron of learning. As ‘Comptroller of the Royal Works’ he designed the wonderful ‘Henry VII.’s Chapel’ in Westminster Abbey, and as a patron of learning he founded Jesus College, Cambridge, and the Hull Grammar School.

Bishop Alcock died in 1500 at Wisbech Castle, the palace of the Bishops of Ely, and was buried in the chapel of Ely Cathedral which he caused to be built, and which is to this day known as ‘Bishop Alcock’s Chapel.’

John Fisher was twenty-nine years younger than the Bishop of Rochester whose life has just been described. He is said to have been the son of a Beverley mercer, and to have owed his high office in the Church to the favour of Margaret, Countess of Richmond.

So eager was he for the advancement of learning that he started to study Greek when quite advanced in years; and so upright and sincere was he that when confessor to Queen Catherine of Aragon he was ‘the only adviser on whose sincerity and honesty she could rely.’

Fisher was the only bishop who opposed the divorce of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Aragon, and hence he incurred the enmity of the King. This was increased fourfold when, further, he refused to recognise Henry as the ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England.’ And when, as a result of this refusal, the Pope sent Fisher a Cardinal’s hat, Henry’s wrath became ungovernable fury.

‘Yf the Cardinal’s hat were layed at his feete, he wolde not stoupe to take it up, he did set so little by it,’ were Fisher’s words when he heard of the Pope’s present to himself. But for all that he was declared to be guilty of treason, and was sentenced by the King to be hanged at Tyburn as a common felon.

Nothing would move Fisher from the position he had taken up. Come what might, the King was not in his eyes the ‘Supreme Head of the Church.’ So at the age of 76 he suffered the fate of most of those who ventured to oppose the will of Henry VIII. The indignity of a death at the hangman’s hands was spared him, and he was beheaded on Tower Hill, his head being afterwards spiked on London Bridge, and his body buried in St. Peter’s Chapel, by the side of that of his friend, the great statesman Sir Thomas More.

* * * * *

‘A pure-minded patriot in the most corrupt times.’ Such has been the description of ANDREW MARVELL—son of a rector of Winestead and master of the Hull Grammar School—who was assistant to John Milton, the Latin Secretary to the Council of State in the time of the Commonwealth, and Member of Parliament for Hull during nineteen years.

Andrew Marvell was born in 1621 at his father’s rectory, and, as an ‘old boy’ of the Hull Grammar School, passed on to Cambridge at the age of fifteen. When he was nineteen years old, his father was drowned in crossing the Humber by the ferry-boat, and as a result he was adopted by a Mrs. Skinner of Thornton, in North Lincolnshire.

In 1657 Marvell entered the service of the Commonwealth, and two years later he was elected a Member of Parliament for Hull, which post he continued to hold until his death. It was then the custom for Members of Parliament to be paid for their services by their constituents, and Marvell thus received from the townsfolk of Hull the sum of six shillings and eightpence per day ‘for knight’s pence.’ It is curious to notice that he was the last member for Hull to be paid for his services in Parliament until the year 1911.

Notwithstanding this payment Marvell’s means were always very limited, and for some years he lived in a state bordering upon actual poverty. But the scantiness of his means did not cause him to swerve from what he considered to be the path of honesty, and the tale is told of how Danby, the Lord Treasurer, tried unsuccessfully to bribe him with the offer of £1,000. ‘Up two pair of stairs in a little court in the Strand’ Marvell was found by the Lord Treasurer’s messenger. And there he was also left, incorruptible in his honesty.

Marvell earned considerable fame as a writer of political satires, and also as a poet. The poems by which he is best remembered are probably those entitled _Thoughts in a Garden_ and _An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland_.

In the latter poem occur the famous lines in which the author, himself a strong Parliamentarian, honours the way in which King Charles I. met his death:—

He nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe’s edge did try;

Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right;
But bowed his comely head
Down, as upon a bed.

Marvell died in 1678, so poor that his funeral expenses were paid by the Corporation of Hull. How great his worth was may be judged from the words of the great statesman William Pitt:—‘Every man has his own price; I know of but one exception, and that is Marvell, in the past.’

* * * * *

WILBERFORCE HOUSE, HIGH STREET, HULL.
The Birthplace of William Wilberforce.
]

The house in which Sir John Lister entertained King Charles on his visit to Hull in 1639 was also that in which was born Hull’s greatest son, WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. Tradition states, further, that he was born in the room in which the King had slept.

William Wilberforce was born on August 24th, 1759, the grandson of another William Wilberforce, who had been a Baltic merchant and an alderman of the town. Delicate as a child, and reared in luxury, he yet grew up filled with an understanding of the earnestness of life; and after leaving Cambridge he entered Parliament at the age of twenty-one, as a member for Hull. Four years later he was chosen a member for both the county of York and the town of Hull. The former of these distinctions was the one that he selected, and thenceforth for twenty-eight years he remained one of the two members of Parliament for the ‘Shire of Broad Acres.’

Just at that time the minds of thoughtful Englishmen were beginning to be stirred by feelings of horror at the evils of the slave-trade. It had been an English seaman of Queen Elizabeth’s time who had started the traffic in human beings. And, curious as it may seem to us, that traffic had been blessed by the Church; since the negroes who were taken across the Atlantic to the West Indies were being given a chance to learn the truths of Christianity.

It had been, also, an English crew of seamen who had on one occasion thrown overboard a hundred and forty ‘niggers’ to lighten their vessel. But it was also Englishmen who first set to work to put an end to the unholy traffic.

In 1787 a small band of thinkers—Thomas Clarkson, Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce, and a few others—started to labour with this end in view. The great statesmen of the time, Pitt, Burke, and Fox, all supported their efforts, and piles of information were obtained.

They got together details of the bartering of prisoners by African chiefs for supplies of rum; details of voyages across the Atlantic during which the slaves lay chained on decks which had only a couple of feet of space between them, and were so closely packed together that they had hardly room to move their limbs; details of the cruel treatment meted out to them when they were eventually sold to work in the sugar plantations of the West Indies.

But the slave-trade was a very profitable one. Merchants did not feel anxious to give up profits of one hundred and twenty per cent.; so the opposition met by Clarkson, Sharp, and Wilberforce was great. Eleven times during the years 1791–1805 was a Bill introduced in Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade, only to be either rejected by the House of Commons, or thrown out by the House of Lords.

However, in 1806, the Bill was passed by the Lords, and afterwards carried in the House of Commons by two hundred and eighty-three votes to sixteen. Royal assent to the Bill followed on March 25th, 1807.

* * * * *

Almost immediately after this the Ministry resigned, and a General Election took place. This was the occasion of the historic contest between William Wilberforce, the Hon. Henry Lascelles (son of the Earl of Harewood), and Viscount Milton (son of Earl Fitzwilliam). Wilberforce and Lascelles stood as Tories, Viscount Milton as a Whig.

For fifteen days the polling went on in the Castle Yard at York, to which the voters from the whole county had to travel by stage coach or post chaise, on horseback, or afoot. From the East Riding there were 3,556 voters, and at the close of the poll the figures stood:—

Wilberforce 11,806
Milton 11,177
Lascelles 10,989

Thus William Wilberforce and Viscount Milton became the two members for Yorkshire. The defeated candidate owed his position at the bottom of the poll largely to the fact that his father owned slaves on his West Indian estates, and one of the election cries against him was ‘No Yorkshire votes purchased with African blood!’ The election cost Wilberforce £28,000, and each of the other two candidates about £100,000—a striking example of the difference that has come over our political life during the last century.

In 1812 Wilberforce retired from his old constituency, and thenceforth sat for a small borough in Sussex until 1825, when he withdrew from Parliament. But the good work which he had helped to start was continued by others, and two weeks after his burial in Westminster Abbey—August 5th, 1833—an Act of Parliament was passed for the Abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies, the sum of money paid as compensation to slave-owners being £20,000,000.

The memory of our great philanthropist has been perpetuated at York by the building of the Wilberforce School for the Blind, and at Hull by the erection of the Wilberforce Monument near Whitefriargate Bridge, and the opening of his birthplace in High Street as a Public Museum of Local Antiquities. The Wilberforce Monument, which towers up 102 feet above the roadway, bears on one of its sides the simple yet effective inscription:—

NEGRO
SLAVERY
ABOLISHED
I. AUGUST
MDCCCXXXIV.

From William Wilberforce we turn to SIR TATTON SYKES—‘t’owd Squyer’ of Sledmere. Sir Tatton was born in 1772, the second son of Sir Christopher Sykes, and succeeded to the title and the family estates on the death of his brother, Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, in 1823.

Before this he had become widely known as a breeder of sheep and racehorses, and as a fearless sportsman. At the age of twenty-three he rode his first race at Malton, at the age of sixty he rode his last; and on both occasions he came in the winner.

Under Sir Christopher Sykes the cultivation of the bleak, desolate Wold country was successfully begun, and under Sir Tatton Sykes great improvements were wrought by the introduction of bone manure. Sir Tatton was for forty years a master of fox-hounds, and the discovery of the usefulness of bone manure was due to his observing that on the places near his kennels at Eddlethorpe where the hounds were fed, the grass grew more luxuriantly than it did elsewhere.

Throughout his long life of ninety-one years Sir Tatton Sykes continued to dress in the fashions of his early days—‘a long frock coat, drab breeches, top-boots, and a frilled shirt.’ And such was his reputation that sixty years ago the three things best worth seeing in the county were said by Yorkshiremen to be ‘York Minster, Fountains Abbey, and t’owd Squyer.’

Absolutely ‘straight’ in all that he did, he takes rank as a true specimen of ‘The Fine Old English Gentleman’—the Sir Roger de Coverley of the nineteenth century.

_Photo by_] [_Henry Thelwell_

Sir Tatton Sykes.

]

* * * * *

Last on our list of Famous Sons of the East Riding stand the names of CHARLES AND ARTHUR WILSON.

The younger sons of Thomas Wilson, founder of the great shipping firm of ‘Thomas Wilson, Sons & Co., Limited,’ they were born at Hull in 1833 and 1836 respectively. On the retirement of their eldest brother David in 1867, the control of the firm came into their hands, and how it grew and prospered, and how the town of Hull grew and prospered at the same time have been described in a previous chapter.

The parallel between the ancient family of the De la Poles and the modern family of the Wilsons has been noted by more than one writer. It may rightly be said that as the former were the founders of the commercial prosperity of the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, so the latter were the founders of the commercial prosperity of the city of Hull.

For thirty-two years—from 1874 to 1906—Charles Wilson sat in Parliament as a representative of the burgesses of his native place. Then his political services were recognised by the Ministry, and he became the first Baron Nunburnholme of Kingston-upon-Hull.

_Photo by_] [_Barry, Hull_

Charles Wilson, First Baron Nunburnholme.

]

Arthur Wilson did not, like his brother, enter political life, but became widely famed as a sportsman. For twenty-five years he was Master of the Holderness Hunt, and the most famous Meet under his rule was that at Brantingham Thorpe, then the residence of Mr. Christopher Sykes, in January 1882, when more than four thousand people assembled to greet the Prince of Wales.

Charles, Baron Nunburnholme, died at Warter Priory, on October 27th, 1907, and his brother, Mr. Arthur Wilson, at Tranby Croft, on October 21st, 1909. The body of the latter was drawn to its resting-place in Kirkella Churchyard on a farm rulley by a team of farm horses, and public feeling at the time may be gauged from the following passage in one of the newspaper reports of his death:—

In Hull Mr. Wilson was known and respected as a just and honourable
merchant and a philanthropist; in the county he was known and
admired as a model landlord, and a keen and fearless sportsman.

_Photo by_] Arthur Wilson. [_Barry, Hull_

]

XXVII.
SHIPS OF THE HUMBER.

Let us ask ourselves what is our idea of a ship. However we express this in words, it will be vastly different from the idea of a ship that possessed the minds of those early inhabitants of Holderness of whom we read in Chapter III. Theirs was that of a tree-trunk hollowed out partly by fire and partly by hand labour with implements of flint, until it would balance itself on the water, and could be pushed along by its occupants with some sort of paddle.

Such were the ships that men first used on the Humber. Not long ago one of them was found buried six feet below the surface of the ground at Brigg in North Lincolnshire.

At a time when the river Ancholme spread widely over the surrounding land, this boat had been deserted on the river bank, and as years went by it sank into the mud of which the bank was composed. Then the river gradually silted up, so that what had once been a wide expanse of water became merely a narrow water-channel.

This ancient ‘dug-out’ is now one of the treasures of the Hull Museum. It has been constructed of the trunk of an oak tree, split lengthwise, and is nearly forty-eight feet long from stem to stern. Its width is from four to five feet, and its depth roughly two feet six inches. There is probably no oak tree growing in our country that would be tall enough to make a similar boat of equal length.

The stern board of the boat is a separate piece of timber, fitted into a groove along each side; and originally the sides were bound across with leathern thongs to keep the board in position.

Think of the immense amount of labour that the making of this early ‘ship of the Humber’ cost. The patience that its makers must have displayed would put some of us to utter shame in our frantic haste to finish a thing in the shortest possible space of time after its beginning.

* * * * *

Long after the days of the builders of this boat, the Romans and the Angles came to our shores. With them the knowledge of shipbuilding had greatly increased, and their ships were propelled with both oars and sails.

Later again came the Northmen, against whose attacks the Angles prayed in vain. A true sea-faring race were these Vikings of old, and they could boast, as their lineal descendants in Norway boast to-day, that they possessed more ships than any other nation in the world.

_Long-ships_ was the name given to the Northmen’s ships of war, they being thus distinguished from the wider and clumsier merchant ships. But the Northmen were a poetic race, and to a Viking his ship was a ‘black horse of the sea,’ a ‘deer of the surf’ or a ‘raven of the wind.’

The largest ships of the Vikings were ornamented with a dragon’s head at the stem, and often a dragon’s tail at the stern, whence their name _Dragons_. The dragon’s head and tail might be covered with thin sheets of gold, if its owner were a great king. Its prow and sides might also be coated with iron to aid in ramming other vessels.

A VIKING SHIP ON A CHURCH DOOR.
Norman Ironwork at Stillingfleet.
]

These ships were driven along by the use of a large square sail, and also by the use of oars. Twenty or thirty rowers’ benches was the usual number allowed for, and the space between two benches was known as a ‘room.’ Each ‘room’ would hold seven or eight men; so that a thirty-seater, which would be in length about 150 feet, would have a crew of something over two hundred men. Cnut the Great had a monster ship 300 feet long, and containing sixty ‘rooms.’

The Norsemen were very fond of bright colours, and the sails of their long-ships were made of woollen material striped red, blue, green, and white. The sides were painted red, purple, and gold, and along each were ranged the warriors’ shields, alternately yellow and black.

Picture to yourself what a fleet of some two or three hundred of these long-ships must have looked like when it sailed up the Humber. What terror it must have struck into the hearts of those who watched its arrival!

Then picture another scene. A single ship, the home of a renowned Viking, drifting slowly down the Humber on an ebb tide, with sail set, bearing in its bosom the dead bodies of its owner and his favourite horses, and alight from stem to stern with blazing tallow, tar, and oil. This is the picture that a great English poet has painted for us in his poem called _Balder Dead_:—

Soon, with a roaring, rose the mighty fire, And the pile crackled;
and between the logs Sharp, quivering tongues of flame shot out, and
leapt, Curling and darting, higher, until they licked The summit of
the pile, the dead, the mast, And ate the shrivelling sails. But
still the ship Drove on, ablaze above her hull with fire.

THE ANCIENT SEAL OF THE
CORPORATION OF HEDON.
]

With the passing of centuries came more peaceful times, when the ships that passed up and down the Humber were no longer ships of war, but ships of peace. They were ships ‘that sailed from Hull ... to Bergen with English wares, and brought back cargoes of salt fish; that fetched iron from Sweden, and wine from the Rhine vineyards, and oranges and spices and foreign fruits from Bruges; and that carried out the English woollen cloths to Russia or the Baltic ports, and brought back wood, tin, potash, skins and furs.’

What the ships of the fourteenth century were like we can judge from the old plan of Hull on page 165, and from the drawing of the seal of the Corporation of Hedon here shown. The Humber was then noted for its ships, and in the year 1346 furnished the following ships and men to the expedition fitted out by King Edward III. for the siege of Calais:—

TOWNS SHIPS MARINERS
Kingston-upon-Hull 16 466
Grimsby 11 171
Barton 3 30
Ravenser 1 27

For the same expedition London provided only twenty-five ships and 662 mariners.

Gradually the ships of the Humber increased in size; and when in 1598 the seamen of Hull first engaged in whale fishing, the kind of ship they had was one much more seaworthy than the ‘cockle-shells’ of previous centuries.

In the hall of the Hull Trinity House hangs a strange relic of the early days of the whale fishery. This is an Esquimaux canoe, built entirely of whalebone and sealskin, and picked up off the Greenland coast by the captain of a Hull whaler in 1613.

When sighted, the canoe held the dead body of its owner sitting strapped upright with his paddle across his knees. The ‘Bonny Boat’ the English sailors christened it, and there in the Trinity House it may be seen to-day, with what at first glance appears to be its owner still sitting as he sat when he died of starvation on the wide Atlantic Ocean.

During the time of the Dutch wars of the reign of Charles II., the whaling industry passed into the hands of the Dutch, but a century later—in 1765—it was resumed by the Hull seamen. A shipowner named Captain Standidge took a great part in this revival of the Greenland fisheries, and for his services in this direction received the honour of knighthood.

From 1772 to 1852 the WHALING INDUSTRY flourished. To the icy seas around Spitzbergen, or to the Greenland seas and the Davis Straits, there went each year ships of the Humber in number from three to sixty-five. Often they were unlucky, and had to return ‘clean’—that is, with nothing in their holds to repay their owners and their crews. Sometimes they were still more unlucky, and did not return at all, having been gripped in the ice or captured by French privateers. Out of ten ships that sailed from the Humber in 1775, six came back ‘clean,’ and two were lost.

One of the most disastrous years known was 1835, when five of the Hull ships were frozen up, three of them being eventually lost, one with all hands.

In the following year a Hull vessel, named the _Swan_, was frozen up much farther north than the whalers usually went; so that it was the midsummer of 1837 before she got free. Meanwhile she had been given up as lost; and on Sunday, July 2nd, a memorial service was held on the Dock Green, and a collection of £47 taken on behalf of the families of the crew. In the midst of the service, however, news arrived that the ‘missing’ vessel was entering the mouth of the Humber.

We can imagine the excitement caused by her arrival. Among other things it meant, of course, a ‘Hextra Speshul’ edition of the News Sheet, as the photograph on the opposite page shows.

As a rule, however, a voyage resulted in fair profits for both owners and crews. The thirty-one ships that went to Greenland in 1821 took between them 204 whales, and the twenty-one that went to Davis Straits took 294 whales. These 498 ‘fish’ produced whalebone and oil to the value of £150,000. The average return per ship was here slightly lower than that for the whole period 1772–1852, which works out to £3,500.

A NEWS SHEET OF 1837.
(_Presented to the Wilberforce Museum, Hull, by Mr. John Suddaby_).
]

Occasionally a ship would be particularly fortunate. In the Greenland Sea in one day the _Gibraltar_ killed eleven whales, the _Manchester_ ten, and the _Molly_ six. In 1794, also, the _Egginton_ arrived from Greenland with the produce of fifteen whales, 3,021 seals, and five bears. She had been away from home only a hundred days, and created a record by afterwards making two trading voyages to St. Petersburg the same season.

Such luck as this was quite exceptional. Usually the capture of a single whale meant much hard work and many dangers for the boats’ crews. In 1821 the _Baffin_

struck a whale which ran out fifteen lines of 240 yards each, and
dragged two boats and fifteen men for a long time. When the ‘fish’
was killed, it was found to have been also dragging under water six
similar lines and a boat belonging to the _Trafalgar_, of Hull. The
5,040 yards of line weighed a ton and a half.

Most famous of the ships of the Humber that passed to and fro in the whaling industry was the _Truelove_. This was a three-masted barque with a length of 96 feet and a width of 27 feet. Built at Philadelphia in 1764, the _Truelove_ was captured by the English in the American war, and eventually sold to a merchant of High Street, Hull.

The _Truelove’s_ first whaling voyage was to Spitzbergen in 1784. From that year till 1868 she made seventy-two voyages to Spitzbergen, Greenland, or the Davis Straits, and accounted for about 500 whales. In 1873 she was taken to her birthplace, where the captain and crew were fêted; and for several years afterwards she made trading voyages to Norway until eventually she was broken up as no longer seaworthy.

The peculiar build of the _Truelove_ accounted to a large extent for her many hair-breadth escapes from the danger of being ‘nipped’ in the ice. Her sides bulged outwards like a barrel; or, as sailors put it, they ‘tumbled home’ to the deck.

One of the saddest events in the Hull whaling industry was the return home of the _Diana_ in 1867. This was the first steamship to go to the whaling-grounds, and in her voyage of 1866 she had the misfortune to become locked in the ice for six months. The sufferings of her crew can be imagined. Captain Gravill died in December, one of her crew died in February, five died in March, and five more died in April.

The _Truelove_ was sent out from the Humber as a relief ship for the _Diana_, but the two vessels passed each other. With thirty-six men down with the scurvy, and only seven left fit to work the ship, the unfortunate _Diana_ eventually reached home, her dead captain’s coffin on the ship’s bridge.

The following year this ill-fated vessel was wrecked on the treacherous flats of Donna Nook, off the Lincolnshire coast at the mouth of the Humber. With her loss the whaling industry of the Humber seamen came to an end.

* * * * *

During many of the years when the whale fisheries were providing work for East Riding seamen, France and England were at war. Men were consequently needed to man the English navy, and such notices as the following were frequently issued in seaport towns:—

RECRUITING FOR THE NAVY.

=WANTED.=

For the parishes of _Sculcoates_, _Cottingham_, and _Little
Weighton_, A few able-bodied SEAMEN or LANDMEN to serve in His
Majesty’s Navy during the present War ONLY.... The Families and
Friends of Volunteers will receive Monthly Pay, and the Volunteers
themselves will have a bountiful supply of Cloathing, Beef, Grog,
Flip, and Strong Beer, also a certainty of Prize Money, as the men
entered for this service will be sent to capture the rich Spanish
Galleons, and in consequence will return loaded with Dollars and
Honour, to spend their Days in Peace and Plenty.

* * * * *

May the constitution of _England_ endure for ever, and
the Parishioners of _Sculcoates_, _Cottingham_ and
_Little Weighton_ live to see it.

Hull, November 28th, 1796.

But the results of this ‘Recruiting for the Navy’ were not always satisfactory, notwithstanding the ‘certainty of Prize Money’ and the ‘bountiful supply of ... Grog, Flip, and Strong Beer.’ So recourse was had to the _Press Gang_, and many were the tricks practised by the captains and crews of Hull whalers to reach home safely.

A ship of war was stationed in the Humber to board incoming whalers and impress men for service in the navy. To escape, numbers of the men were landed at Easington or at lonely spots farther north, and these would make their way home as best they could by land.

Another very ingenious trick was worked successfully by the captain of a whaler which was boarded by a revenue cutter off Flamborough Head. This is how Captain Barron in his _Old Whaling Days_ tells the story:—

A revenue cutter hove in sight off Flambro’ Head when Captain
Scoresby was returning home with a full ship. When he saw it in the
distance, he let four or five feet of water into the hold through a
large brass tap which some whalers had in their counters on purpose
to fill their casks for ballast. This was kept running, so that the
pumps could not gain upon it, and when the officer boarded the ship
he was told she made so much water that the crew would not be able
to keep her afloat if he took any away. The officer sounded the
pumps, and was satisfied in finding when they stopped pumping the
water rose in the hold. He took his departure. The tap was at once
turned off, and the water pumped out. This clever trick saved his
men from being forced on board His Majesty’s ships.

On another occasion—in 1798—the _Blenheim_ was boarded in the Humber by _H.M.S. Nonsuch_, and a free fight followed, in which two of the warship’s crew were slain. For this the captain of the whaler was brought to trial at York. But he was acquitted on the charge of murder laid against him; and when the York coach brought him safely home to Hull, ‘the crowd took out the horses, dragged it to the Market Place, and ran it three times round the statue of King William’ by way of showing their joy.

The warships of this period, were, of course, vastly different from the battleships of which English seamen are so proud to-day. Many were built in the Humber; the largest being the _Humber_, an eighty-gun ship, launched at Hessle Cliff in 1693. _H.M.S. Hector_ was built by Hugh Blaydes fifty years later. During the years 1739–1774 three warships were built at Paull, six at Hessle, and fifteen at Hull. A memento of the _Hyperion_, built at Hull in 1806, still exists in the name of a small street running off Great Union Street, and a neighbouring street bears the name of a very popular whaler, the _Aurora_.

* * * * *

The first steamship used on the Humber was one built in Scotland, and hence appropriately named the _Caledonia_.[66] This steam packet ran between Hull and Selby in 1815. Five years later the _Rockingham_ was built at Thorne, and the following year the _Kingston_ began the ‘expeditious and easy conveyance’ of passengers from Hull to London.

Footnote 66:

The first steamboat built in England was constructed in a yard off
Wincolmlee, Hull, and was launched in the river Hull. This was in the
year 1787, and the engine was patented the next year. The makers,
Messrs. Furness & Ashton, afterwards built a larger steam-boat, which
was put together in London and bought by the Prince Regent, who
rewarded them with a pension of £70 each.

The _Kingston_ was, of course, looked upon as a wonderful vessel. Its owners proudly announced to the public:—

In the construction of this elegant vessel, which will be propelled
by an engine of sixty horse power every attention has been paid to
render the conveyance expeditious, commodious, and safe.

‘Expeditious’, however, it did not prove to be—at any rate on its first voyage. For when twenty miles from the Humber, the axis of the paddles broke; and instead of reaching London in thirty hours, as the passengers had expected, the _Kingston_ found its way back to Hull some forty-eight hours after its triumphant start.

These early steam packets were somewhat different from the ocean liners of our own day. Compare the portrait of the _Rockingham_ on page 295 with that of the _Bayardo_ on page 299. Launched in 1910 from Earle’s Shipbuilding Yard, at a cost of £67,000, the latter was for its short life the ‘Queen of the Wilson Line.’

The fate of the _Diana_ and the _Bayardo_ illustrates the dangers of the Humber. The latter vessel left Gothenburg on a Friday evening in January, 1912, with a cargo worth £30,000 and a small number of passengers. On the Saturday evening she was making her way up the Humber in a dense fog when she ran hard aground on a sandbank almost opposite the dock which was her destination. By the following evening her back was broken, and the ‘Queen of the Wilson Line’ was a hopeless wreck.

The ‘Bayardo.’
SHIPS OLD AND NEW.
]

* * * * *

_Photo by_] [_C.W. Mason_

The Entrance to the ‘Old Harbour.’

]

Stand on the Victoria Pier at Hull on a clear day, and watch the ships of the Humber. Of all sizes and shapes and speeds they are. There we see the keel, with its one square sail, making its way slowly along, the peaceful descendant of the square-sailed long-ship of Viking days. There are the schooners and barques that are survivals from the days when all ships depended on the wind for their motive power. There is a tug-boat taking out to its moorings the light-ship on which the safety of many other ships will depend.

There also are the ‘fast-sailing’ steam trawlers and carriers coming from, or going to, the fishing-grounds off Iceland and north of the White Sea—the representatives of the whalers of a hundred years ago—there the scurrying pilot boats and revenue cutters. And there is a great ocean liner riding at anchor and waiting the turn of the tide to allow it to enter the dock and discharge the cargo it has brought from the other side of the world.

XXVIII.
FOLK-SPEECH OF THE EAST RIDING.

There is a tale told of a Yorkshireman on a visit to London that he fell into argument with a bus conductor over the correct way of pronouncing the simple word ‘road.’ The cockney bus-conductor had, in his usual way, called out ‘’Toria Rowd; ’Toria Rowd!’ and the Yorkshireman was highly displeased with this obvious murder of the King’s English. ‘Rowd!’ said he in his disgust; ‘whah dooant ya speeak English? R-o-a-d—that’s hoo it’s spelt, beeant it? Whah dooant ya ca’ it Roo-ad?’

The story will serve to illustrate the fact that a man born and bred in the heart of England’s biggest shire, and one born and bred in the heart of England’s biggest city, do not sound all their words in the same manner, though they may at the same time spell them alike. Moreover, neither of the two will perhaps sound his words in the way in which custom says it is correct to sound them.

Such differences are to be found in many parts of the country. The Northumberland miner, the Sheffield steel-worker, the Nottingham lace-worker, the Norfolk grazier, and the ‘Zummerzet’ farm-labourer all speak ‘English’; but yet they would have no little difficulty in making one another understand what their respective English words meant. In other words, the districts to which they belong have each a DIALECT or FOLK-SPEECH of their own.

* * * * *

Let us see what are some of the peculiarities of the Folk-Speech of our East Riding:—

(1) An East Yorkshireman sounds his vowels in his own peculiar way. With him I is pronounced as _ah_, warm as _wahrm_, night as _neet_, road as _rooad_, cow as _coo_, know as _knaw_, pound as _pund_, come as _coom_, and ought as _owt_. He is, moreover, very fond of the EEA sound; for he makes cake into _keeak_, meat into _meeat_, home into _heeam_, sure into _seear_, school into _skeeal_, look into _leeak_, enough into _eneeaf_, and plough into _pleeaf_.

(2) He finds it too much of an effort to sound the whole word ‘the,’ and therefore clips it into _t’_; so that with him ‘the cow is in the close’ becomes _t’ coo is i’ t’ clooase_. If he is a Holderness man even that effort will probably be too great for him, and what he will say is _coo is i’ clooase_.

(3) In the same way he finds it much easier to drop the final G of words ending in ING and to drop an initial H. To make up for the latter, however, he may very possibly put in an occasional H somewhere where it would not be expected. Thus he may tell us, speaking of his companions, that _hivvry yan on em is gannin t’ ’Ool t’ morn_.

(4) He has a very simple method of dealing with the inflections of the verb. I am, thou art, he is; and I do, thou dost, he does, are levelled into:—

_Ah is_ _Ah diz_
_Thoo is_ _Thoo diz_
_He is_ _He diz_

—while, in speaking of his sheep, he may even tell us that _Them’s good uns_.

(5) The plural words cows, eyes, children, are not at all to his liking. He much prefers to speak of such things as _ky_, _een_, and _childer_. Nor does he take kindly to the ‘apostrophe s’ as a sign of the possessive case; but will tell his boy to _stan bi t’ hoss heead_.

(6) He is very fond of doubling his negatives, and occasionally he is not even satisfied with the doubling process. It is said of an East Yorkshireman whose apple trees were the aim of many a schoolboy’s stone, that his lamentation took the form of _neeabody’s neea bisniss ti thraw nowt inti neeabody’s gardin_.

(7) He is also very fond of ‘strong’ past tenses and of past participles ending in EN. The past tenses beat, crept, snowed, are with him _bet_, _crop_, and _snew_; while the past participles burst, fought, got, held, let, put, become _brussen_, _fowten_, _gotten_, _ho’dden_, _letten_, and _putten_. So firmly fixed in popular favour are these forms in EN that it is told of a small boy who had been receiving a lesson on their incorrectness, that in a state of momentary excitement he informed his mistress: _Pleease, miss, Billy Jooanes ha’ putten ‘putten’ wheer he owt ti ha’ putten ‘put.’_

(8) The East Yorkshireman has a host of words that are all his own. Thus he will tell us that _theer war nobbut yah coo i’ t’ helm at t’ far-end o’ t’ pastur_; and that he _doots t’ awd meer’s boon ti dee, but happen she mud live whahl Moon da_.[67]

Footnote 67:

_nobbut_=only. _boon_=ready.
_helm_=shed. _happen_=possibly.
_far-end_=opposite side. _mud_=might.
_doots_=fears. _whahl_=until.

(9) He has likewise his own way of expressing his thoughts, and no other will serve his purpose so well. ‘Well, my boy, who are you?’ a country parson freshly arrived from the South is said to have asked a village boy. _Ah’s weel, hoo’s yersen?_ was the unexpected reply that the parson received. But, of course, he should have known that in East Yorkshire the correct way of asking his question is ‘What do they call you?’

There are very many of these special modes of expression. To spread a report is _to set it aboot_, to scold a person is _to call_ him, to call a person is _to call of_ him, to pour hot water on tea-leaves is _to mash t’ tay_, to be going to the bad is _to be at a loose end_, to leave off doing a thing is _to give ower_, and to give good promise of success is _to fraame middlin_.

If an East Yorkshireman wishes to make known that he saw his brother Sam, he will say _Ah seed oor Sam_. Of one who cannot look after himself he will say that _t’ awd chap canna fend for hissen_, and of one who is not getting better from an illness it will be said that _he dizn’t mend onny_.

Sometimes the result of the change of expression becomes ludicrous, as it was in the case of the cottager who, telling of a lodger that he prepared his own food and she did his washing for him, explained: _He meeats hissen an’ ah weshes him_.

The East Yorkshireman, like many other people, likes making comparisons; but he has his own idea of what forms a fit and proper comparison. Thus, in speaking of the steepness of a cliff he will tell us that it is _as brant as a hoose sahd_, or he will explain that his grandfather is _as deeaf as a yat-stowp_.[68] Concerning a person of whose capabilities he does not think highly, he will tell us that he is _as fond as a billy-gooat_, or _as green as a yalla cabbish_, or even _as soft as a boiled tonnap_.

Footnote 68:

_Yat-stowp_=gate-post.

* * * * *

Many other examples of the peculiarities of the East Yorkshire Folk-Speech might be given. What shall we say about them? Shall we smile at what we are pleased to consider mis-pronunciations and awkward attempts to speak the English language? When the farm-labourer, who had been beguiled into buying a ‘solid gold-plated keyless watch jewelled in seven holes’ from a cheap-jack in Beverley Market Place, was told by his companion to _ax_ where the key was, and proceeded to bawl out _Wheer’s t’ kay?_ was he to be laughed at for murdering the King’s English?

If we wish to laugh at those who thus speak ‘broad Yorkshire’ let us do so. But at the same time let us remember that what we are pleased to call ‘broad Yorkshire’ is often much truer English than what we ourselves customarily use.

A thousand years ago our ancestors called a key _cæg_ (pronounced _kaig_), and used the verb _acsian_ where we should use ‘ask.’ They also used the word _cy_ (pronounced _kee_) for the plural of _cu_ (pronounced _koo_), and the word _cilder_ (pronounced _kilder_) for the plural of _cild_.

So really the East Yorkshire farm-labourers are speaking the language of their ancestors much more truly than we who mis-pronounce words and make them into _cows_ and _ask_, and who manufacture such a double plural as the word _child(e)r-en_.

In numerous instances is the East Yorkshire Folk-Speech nearer to the true English than is the commonly accepted ‘English’ of to-day. The following examples might be multiplied indefinitely:—

OLD ENGLISH WORDS. STANDARD ENGLISH WORDS. EAST YORKSHIRE
WORDS.

(IN USE A.D. 912). (IN USE A.D. 1912).

AFYRHT (pron. afraid AFEEARD _afeert_)

GIF if GIF

GRAFAN (pron. to dig GRAAVE _grahvan_)

HAGOL hail HAGGLE

HRYCG (pron. _hrig_) back or ridge RIG

LICGAN (pron. to lie LIG _liggan_)

SETL seat SETTLE

SWELAN to gutter (of a candle) SWEEL

THAEC (pron. _thak_) thatch THAK

WANCOL unsteady WANKLE

At Beverley there are three very interesting examples of the survival of old English words, which have elsewhere dropped entirely out of use. The Beverley _Frith-Stool_ has preserved its name unchanged from the days when the word which meant peace was _frith_. The street known to-day as _Toll Gavel_ preserves memories of the time when _gafol_ meant a tax or toll, and it is clear that tolls continued to be paid in it long after the original meaning of this word had become forgotten. Similarly the _Hurn_, or freemen’s pasture which was once a corner of Beverley Westwood, has kept its name from the days when _hyrne_ meant a corner.

Another example of how the original meaning of a word may be kept in one instance only occurs in the descriptive name which is so commonly applied to England’s largest shire. Yorkshire is known far and wide as the ‘Land of the Broad Acres.’ But to how many who use this expression does it convey any meaning? Are the acres in Yorkshire ‘broader’ than they are elsewhere in Britain? If they are not, what sense is there in the expression?

As a matter of fact, the expression is a most suitable one. But it is so only if we know that the word _aecer_ (pronounced _akker_)[69] originally meant not a certain area of land, but merely a ploughed field. Yorkshire is still the ‘Broad-acred Shire,’ for in no other part of our country shall we find _fields_ of waving corn that measure as much as a hundred acres in extent.

Footnote 69:

The local pronunciation of ‘acre’ in the East Riding is _yakker_; so
that the old sound of the word has been here kept, even though its
meaning has universally changed.

* * * * *

In Chapter VIII. we read how the fierce Northmen settled in our land, and on pages 59–61 it was shown how numerous are Danish place-names in the East Riding of Yorkshire. But it is not only in the place-names of the district that we find proofs of the presence of the Northmen. There are in common use among the inhabitants of the East Riding scores of words that are purely Danish words, handed down from father to son, almost or quite unchanged during more than a thousand years. Some are as follows:—

WORDS USED BY THE MODERN STANDARD WORDS USED IN EAST
NORSEMEN 1000 YEARS ENGLISH. YORKSHIRE TO-DAY.
AGO.[70]

AT that (conjunction) AT

BAND string, cord BAND

BARN child BA’AN or BARN

BELJA to cry, shout out BEEAL

BUINN ready BOON

DALIGR dismal, lonely DOWLY

DENGJA to strike DING, DENG

FLYTJA to change one’s abode FLIT

FRA from FRA

GARTHR yard GARTH

GATA road, way GATE

GAUKR cuckoo GOWK