The age of the smack

This story appeared in a series of articles by Forrest Frank in 1920 in the Scarborough Daily Post - This story came from Captain John Wilson

Already, even when I was a boy, there were a few smacks, whose coming in the first place had been much resented, and the men who came in them and settled in the port were regarded practically as foreigners. But they brought trade to the sailmaker, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the butcher, and the baker, and their number increased so that Scarborough lads went prentice in them, yawls were converted to trawlers, and local money went in provision of more. Some of the original Smacksmen lived in the little cottages on the sands, between where the Lifeboat House and the Salt-Water baths now stand, before the foreshore was built. Amongst them were the Besoms, the Tobeys, the Perkins, and the Buckets. Nicholas Maddick, who afterwards kept the Fishermen's Arms, between the Brittania and Pump Hill, was another who came to town as a smacksman. Old Mr Alwood, another of them, lived in Princess Street, where his sons, George and James, were brought up. They went 'prentice with their father out of Scarborough, and as young men went to Grimsby, where they developed the smack industry tremendously, took the flowing tide of steam trawling in its infancy, and founded the Alwood Fleet, which became one of the biggest firms in the Kingdom, and materially helped to make Grimsby what it is today.

OTHER ARTICLES
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• The history of the Scarborough fishing industry
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
• Children of the fishing families in Scarborough
• The Allen and Truman Scarborough fishing families
• Tunny fishing in Scarborough in the 1930's
• The Harwood and Bullamore fishing family history in Scarborough
• The port of Scarborough in the late 15th Century
• Harwood Brierleys description of Scarborough harbour at the opening of the 20th century
• Life in the Old Town of Scarborough and harbour - the fishing families
• The early trawlers - Yarmouth and Barking and Brixham
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• Trawling and overfishing - Filey fishing
• Fighting the Scots in Scarborough Waters in the early 16th century. John Rushton
• Women working in the Scarborough fishing industry
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• Famous fishing families - the Whitby Storr family and the Leadleys
• The history of the herring fishing in the North Sea

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