The loss of the Comely
A poem by May M Ritchie printed in Scarborough Magazine 1893-5
All day the minute gun had boomed,
And rockets flew and signals loomed,
From many a brave ship that was doomed,
To come to port no more,
And ever thro' the battling gale,
Arose the mariners' plaintive wail:
'O! Save us ere our courage fail!'
Alas! for few could save.
All night along the coast driven,
With mast uptorn, and lug sails riven,
A fishing boat from Banff had striven,
For shelter from the storm.
Before the tempest flying fast.
With white keel upwards to the blast
Of wind and wave, she came at last,
By Scarborough Castle Hill.
When broke the first bright gleam of day,
Across the blue Carnelian Bay,
Upon the beach a lugger lay,
A derelict indeed.
And sadly O'er the wreck strewn sand,
Looked Filey Brigg and Stormy Band
To see the devastating hand,
Of Death uplifted there.
Over the wild cliffs, rugged, steep,
The gallant coastguard went to reap,
The creul harvest of the deep,
That lay along the shore.
Alas! they found no mariner there,
To tell his story of despair;
Naught but a hull all bruised and bare,
Told its own bitter tale.
They found the homely fisher's dress,
The little nothings, more or less,
Had been his pleasure to possess;
But they found more than these.
A scrawl the heartless wave had bleared,
But on whose page there still appeared
The tender words of her endeared
To him, who lay in death.
Which conjured up a picture sad,
Of faithful wife and loving lad,
Whose little lips kept crying "Dad",
So the fond mother wrote.
But sadder even to see,
The baby socks which tenderly
The searchers brought from the debris
The tempest tide had made;
And the silent knowledge brought
Of Child, whose father's tender thought
Some token of his love had sought
To bring his baby home.
Ah! Shipwrecked homes! there surely lies
For ye in distant Paradise
That love divine, which never dies,
And shall support ye now.
May M Ritchie. A Scottish lugger which perished off the Scarborough coast during the storm, 18th-19th November 1893
OTHER ARTICLES
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• Harwood Brierleys description of Scarborough harbour at the opening of the 20th century
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• The loss of the Scarborough trawler Heritage in 1993
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
• The Borough of Scarborough formed in the 12th Century
• Tommy Rowley - stories about loss of life at sea
• The port of Scarborough in the late 15th Century
• Strange customs amongst the Scarborough shipbuilders
• Tunny fishing in Scarborough in the 1930's
• The history of the Scarborough Spa pump rooms
• Wreck of the Mary Stoddart - Dundalk
• Loss of the Scarborough Lifeboat November 2nd, 1861
• World war one outbreak. The war effort in Scarborough
• The press gang and the Royal Navy at Scarborough
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• The U-Boat campaign in the First World War
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