Scarborough dog hero
It was when I was in the Asphodel that I first took a
Newfoundland retriever, 'Hero' to sea with me from
Scarborough. 'Hero' went ashore daily at Lauceston, and
returned regularly, but on the day we sailed he failed to turn
up, and we were hauled out in the stream before we noticed
his absence. There was another of Walker's ships there due to
sail for London with him. The Captain did so, and as the
Asphodel had to load at Mauritius, reached London before me.
When he got there, there happened at the time to be a little
Scarborough vessel, the 'Duncan Dunbar' lying in the river.
She belonged to Mr William Wear, and with the 'Endeavour'
used to bring general goods to Scarborough. 'Hero' was put on
board the 'Duncan Dunbar,' but when this craft arrived at
Scarborough it was low water, and she grounded coming in.
'Hero' ran into the bows, looked at the old town, jumped
overboard, swam ashore, and bolted to my sisters house in
Castlegate, from which place I had taken him. The house door
was open, but no one was downstairs, and he bounded up to a
bedroom, bursting in in the wildest excitement and to the
surprise of all. Since leaving Scarborough he had been ten
months away and right round the world, beating his master
home. His arrival without me was a mystery and a matter of
some anxiety until an explanation followed. Hero was a
marvellous dog for the water, full of play, and accompanied me
on many voyages. In light winds he would sometimes jump
overboard for a swim, and we frequently had to back the
mainsail to allow him being picked up again. Throwing over a
bowline, into which he would put his fore-paws and head and
shoulders assisting, we hauled him against the side of the
ship.
Once in the South Pacific Ocean, on passage from Australia to
China, I had a dozen Tasmanian geese, on board, as as we
were close to the equator, and the ship was only making a
mile an hour, I thought in my ignorance it would be a good
thing to give the geese a swim, so fastened them at intervals to
a long line, and threw them overboard. Instead of them
swimming in the same direction of the ship, as I imagined
they would have done, they formed line abreast, and began to
swim in the opposite direction. When they felt the strain of the
line as they began to be towed backwards, they set up a great
cackling, and this created much excitement in the heart of
'Hero', who promptly jumped overboard and swam to the geese
to see what it was all about. He treated them as a Sheperd dog
treats sheep , and what with his attentions and the frantic
efforts of the geese to break loose from the line as we pulled
them in backwards to the ship, they were a pretty sorry
looking pen of fowls when, we finally got them on board.
The above story appeared in a series of articles by Forrest
Frank in 1920 in the Scarborough Daily Post - This story came
from Captain Wyrill
OTHER ARTICLES
• Scarborough sailing ship - a man overboard
• Charles Dickens account of Filey and Scarborough graveyards
• Pirates threaten a Scarborough ship
• Funny stories from the age of sailing ships in Scarborough
• Filey and the gales of 1860,1867,1869 AND 1880
• Stories of human interest from the sea port of Scarborough
• Events and newspaper clippings from Scarborough
• The Captain and his wife
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• Some Scarborough sailing ships - Mercia and A.I.
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• Stories from Flamborough Head and Filey
• Whitby history - The journal of Captain Cook - extracts from Tahiti
• The Allen and Truman Scarborough fishing families
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• Sailing ships - a true ghost story
• Views from Plantation Hill in Scarborough
• Stories from Robin Hood's Bay and Whitby
• Yards and passages in Scarborough
HOW TO HELP THIS WEBSITE: Google rates pages posted on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites very highly. So if you have found this site useful please post it using the buttons below.
Tweet