What mariners brought back from overseas

The Whitby Museum at Pannet Park is a delight, not only for its geological treasures, curious creatures found in the alum shales, and the ship models kept from its days as a great ship building and trading port, but also for the curiosities that its mariners brought back from all over the world. It comes as no surprise to find a Samurai sword from Japan.

Scarborough's seamen shared their broad interests. Local printer John Cole in 1821 saw the head of a walrus at Mr Wilsons music shop and dresses made from skins by Eskimo Indians. The next year, he saw the head of a New Zealand chief brought back in Captain Thompson's ship out of Hull. Scarborough museum in its early days received gifts of the mocassin of a North American chief, a Madagascar chief's scarf, and the armlet of a "caffre chief". An elk's head,.eleven foot from tip to tip, and an elephants tusk came from the boulder clay on the Bridlington coast in 1823. (John Rushton)



OTHER ARTICLES
• The national RNLI and the Scarborough lifeboat of 1861.
• The 200 year history of scarboroughs RNLI
• Seabathing in scarborough - an article by John Rushton
• Havens on the North Yorkshire coast. An article on scarboroughs maritime history by John Rushton
• Scarborough ships in the baltic - an article by John Rushton
• Shipbuilding at Scarborough - the wooden barques and schooners
• The early years of the Scarborough Lifeboat
• A sea shanty about a storm on the Scarborough coast
• The port of Scarborough in the late 15th Century
• Coastal erosion in the 19th Century around the North Bay and Scarborough Castle area
• Whitby history - The journal of Captain Cook - extracts from Tahiti
• Famous fishing families - the Whitby Storr family and the Leadleys
• Thomas Crimlisk - First of the Crimlisks
• Harwood Brierleys description of Scarborough harbour at the opening of the 20th century
• Dennis Allen - stories from the sea
• Shipping Ironstone down the coast by John Rushton
• The U-Boat campaign in the First World War
• Captain Cook and his early life in Staithes and Whitby
• History of the Whitby whaling industry

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