The Lady Dock - a small slipway on the North Bays Marine Drive

At the beginning of the 21st Century the Marine Drive sea defences were reinforced. During these changes the 'Lady Dock' - a small slipway on the North Bay was built over. Not many people knew what this small archway built into the Marine Drive was used for. Some people talked about its links to smuggling - a dark and mysterious place used for the landing of contraband. Some people felt it was built as an emergency landing. The only real practical it ever had was as the starting point for the Castle Foot Swim each year when swimmers swim from one Bay to the other.

The Lady Port was built after a Ministry inquirey into the building of the Marine Drive. It was intended as an emergency landing point. The archway provided a break in the long sweep of the walls. But in practice it was never used for this purpose. Sailing boats preferred to go round the Marine Drive and into the South Bay. The treacherous rocks around this made it a place to be avoided. In fact the waves around this portion of the wall are amongst the most vicious.

The size of the archway was altered when Clarence gardens slipped. The wall was pushed outwards and the archway was narrowed. So no cobles ever put into here in bad wheather.



OTHER ARTICLES
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• The Yorkshire smuggler - the smuggling of contraband
• Tommy Rowley - stories about loss of life at sea
• The Smuggling of contraband and the coastguard in Flamborough
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
• The port of Scarborough in the late 15th Century
• The history of the herring fishing in the North Sea
• Scarborough pleasure boats - the Bilsdale, Coronia and Royal Lady
• Charles Dickens account of Filey and Scarborough graveyards
• Scarboroughs Heyday of Inns,smuggling and illicit stills
• The fishermen and fisheries of Robin Hood's Bay in 1838
• Harwood Brierleys description of Scarborough harbour at the opening of the 20th century
• The Allen and Truman Scarborough fishing families
• The history of the Scarborough Spa pump rooms
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• The U-Boat campaign in the First World War

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