OCR Text |
Show ! Old Whitby . , . , ? , V" vA - yyvr l tJ Scotch Lassies Work at Whitby During Fishing Season Prepared by National Geographic Society, Washington, D. C. WNU Service. MELLOWED by time, Whitby, climbing the cliffs of the North sea coast to which t has clung for centuries, draws many visitors who are lured by the atmosphere of old England. Most of the old part of the town remains as It was hundreds of years ago, dominated by the parish church, St. Mary's built In 1100 and the famous ruins of Whitby abbey. Today Whitby Is a fishing port only, and Its real splendors belong to the past : to the days of the old Sason monastery of St. Hilda and Caedmon ; to the days of the Great Synod In 6G4, when Saxon kings and the leading ecclesiastic ec-clesiastic lights of the land met with pomp and circumstance to settle the vexed question of the date of Easter; to the days of wooden ships and wooden ship-building, when Whitby was fifth port in England and her sturdy, oak-built ships were famed across the seven seas ; to the days when Whitby was one of the chief bases of the Greenland whaling industry, indus-try, and Cools and Scoresby sailed from the port on their exciting enterprises enter-prises ; to the days when 1,500 men were regularly employed mining and carving jet (a black semi-precious mineral) and twice this number were engaged In the alum Industry along the coast. There is no shipping now. At the dawn of the great Iron age some of the "yards" turned to Iron, and many fine screw steamers were built on the stocks which then lined the upper harbor. But the shallowness of that harbor and the distance from foun-j foun-j dries and rolling mills were fatal handicaps, and Whitby found annihilating annihilat-ing rivals In the ports of the Tees and the Tyne. The alum Industry died with the discovery dis-covery of a cheaper method of production. pro-duction. A trade which depends on the fickleness fickle-ness of feminine fashion is built on sand, and from a peak of prosperity reached In that glum period of court mourning that followed the death of Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, Al-bert, the Jet trade declined, until today It supports scarcely more than a dozen craftsmen. Ancient, Crooked Streets. The old town's streets are tortuous and narrow. The names of the chief ones, Baxtergate and Flowergate, suggest sug-gest that they were built when there were no traffic problems. There is documentary evidence of their existence exist-ence in the Fourteenth century. Flowergate Flow-ergate climbs down the slope of the West Cliff. Baxtergate runs parallel I to the docks. A steel bridge, original- ly a wooden drawbridge, conducts its , bewildered traffic to the east side of (he harbor, and here Is the equally an-' an-' cient and ever narrower Church street ! again running parallel to the harbor I and leading to the foot of the famous 199 steps which the faithful must climb to attend worship In the parish church, St. Mary's. Whitby Is the shopping center for a wide rural area. Its shops are chiefly In the two main streets and its market mar-ket backs off Church street. The market mar-ket day is Saturday. Early in the morning the farmers arrive ar-rive in their neat little traps, with baskets of butter, eggs, chickens, curds (filling for the famous Yorkshire cheesecakes), trussed geese, rabbits, and the like. Chiefly in Church street are the shops of the jet and fossil dealers. Jet is fossilized wood converted into carbon. It Is found In beds known as jet rock, which crop out In several places along the coast. It does not occur In seams, like coal, but in Isolated Iso-lated pockets, which make Its mining a speculative business. A man might dig for months and not find a handful. A good pocket, however, when the trade was In Its heyday, might have been worth anything up to $250. There Is no mining now. What craftsmen are left depend for their supplies on the longshoremen, who collect col-lect the bits washed out of the cliffs, or from submarine exposures. Its Jet Is Distinctive. While there - is diverse opinion regarding re-garding the merits of jet as a medium for the true artist, It has Inspired some very fine and original carving. It is easy to work and takes on a lovely love-ly polish, as different from the glaze if glass and imitation jet as the polish uf cheap furniture Is from the patina of a genuine piece of Queen Anne. Moreover, while jet Is found elsewhere, else-where, notably In Spain, Whitby jet Is distinctive. Most of the famous craftsmen are dead, and there has been a tendency for their successors to keep the standardized stand-ardized designs. But here and there one of them will show a flash of originality, orig-inality, and hope endures that the pendulum of fashion may swing back. The fossils which form the second bow of the Whitby jet dealers have a more strictly scientific Interest. The commonest Is the ammonite. It is found In Immense profusion along the entire coast, but from the geologist's point of view its most Interesting aspect as-pect Is Us extraordinary variety. The ammonite, of course, was a marine animal belonging to the family of squids and octopuses. Its nearest existing ex-isting relative, is the nautilus. Its variations are distinguished by size, by number and shape of the conuga-tlons conuga-tlons of its shell, by the presence or absence of spines or tubercles. The ammonite, which Is particularly abundant on the rocks at the foot of the Abbey cliff, has given rise to an Interesting legend which still finds credence among Whitby fisher folk. They believe it to be the petrified remains re-mains of a snake. Rarely, however, is a specimen found with its "head" Intact. The story goes that In the days of St. Hilda, the district suffered from a plague of adders. The holy lady was prevailed upon to use her influence in-fluence against them, with the result that first their heads were prayed off and then their bodies were turned into stone. Cottages of the Fishermen. From the main streets of Whitby Baxtergate, Flowergate, Church street and from Skinner street, Sandgate, Haggersgate and St Ann's Staith, narrow nar-row lanes twist among the old cottages or lead to watery dead ends. The cottages are built in amazing confusion. One has the impression that they must have pushed themselves them-selves up, mushroom fashion, from the ground wherever there tvas space. They have no gardens. They have, with few exceptions, no view save into their neighbor's parlor or down his chimney stack. They are, however, all built on one general plan, which gives a kitchen, parlor, a best room, two bedrooms, and an attic. Their architects archi-tects and builders were all men of the sea. Today It is chiefly the fishermen fisher-men who live in them. Even the fishing trade of Whitby has suffered more than an ordinary share of economic vicissitude. Old residents of the town can remember the time when, in summer, during the height of the North sea herring season, sea-son, the harbor was a forest of masts. And they have since seen the time when the unloading of a solitary herring her-ring drifter created a sensation. The herring trade has vanished. But that spirit without which no industry can thrive has remained alive in the breasts of the sturdy Whitby men, and the port has of late years experienced experi-enced a revival in the crab and lobster lob-ster trade. Coble a Fine Surf Boat. That view to the east across the harbor, so beloved of painters and photographers, would not be complete without the fishing craft, moored hard up to the very threshold of the cottages cot-tages ; without the lobster pots stacked upon the quays, the salmon nets spread out on poles to dry in the sun ; without the groups of blue-jerseyed, salt-tanned men, busy with their gear or gossiping. Some of these men are old, white-bearded, and loquacious; but most of them are in their prime, tall, square-shouldered ; soft, catlike In the way they move about, restrained in their speech, watchful. The type of craft characteristic of the coast is -the coble. No photograph photo-graph can show Its superb sailing qualities. qual-ities. Its design Is the evolutionary outcome of conditions. It Is pre-eminently a surf boat. The coble's greatest draft Is forward, for-ward, and on an open shore It is landed land-ed stern first, Its slender bows offering no resistance to the surf. It sails fast and very close to the wind, because Its long rudder acts as a keel. But the rudder Is also a source of danger, for it may foul a mass of seaweed or become be-come entangled In anchored fishing gear when the boat Is In a heavy breeze. The coble, like a spirited horse, demands expert handling. |