Welcome to the Yorkshire Coast Sealife, Fisheries & Maritime Archive

Founded in 1969 as a product of local research into the marine environment of the Yorkshire coast and central North Sea area, the Archive is a reference resource to preserve and establish historic, scientific and educational collections of artefacts and bygones, photographs, ephemera and biological material, devoted to the maritime history, natural history, and marine biodiversity of this rugged and beautiful coastline. The research is ongoing and the data and collections are added to constantly. The Archive is self-supporting and is not in receipt of grant funding.

This grotesque and mysterious deep-sea angler-fish, caught by a Hull trawler in the North Atlantic in the early 1970's, captivates this little girl who tells mum and grandma all about it, at a display of some of the zoological specimens in the collection, some years ago

Based in Scarborough and with the long term goal of opening its museum collection to the public, it is the first and only long-term project on this coast to research and collect such material relating to Yorkshire's maritime heritage, including that of Scarborough and the adjacent harbours and hamlets along the coast, together with the history and biology of the adjacent fishing grounds of the central North Sea, including that famous submarine plateau known as the Dogger Bank, where so many of Yorkshire’s fishermen and mariners have lost their lives in the pursuit of their calling.

Over the years, numerous temporary educational displays, drawn from the collections, have been put on show to the public, in addition to long-term exhibitions including the Sealife Museum and Aquarium at Scalby Mills 1971-1977, and the Sealife and Fisheries Museum at Scarborough Lighthouse 1980-1995.

This Archive and its collections have no connection with any other, more recently established, maritime group.

MARINE LIFE OF THE YORKSHIRE COAST

Preserved material in the Archive is varied, extending from pressed local seaweeds, age-study material of otoliths and scales of local fishes, to captures of rare fishes from the Scarborough fishing fleet, including sturgeon and juvenile Greenland sharks. The largest specimens are skeletons of whales, including those of a male Sowerby’s Beaked Whale from Filey Bay, and a female from the Humber, the skull of a Humpback Whale from Runswick Bay, and the complete skeletons of both a fin whale and a sei whale from Spurn Point. Body casts of Sowerbys and Pilot whales together with those of dolphins and porpoise from the coast further enhance the marine mammal collection.

As this site develops we hope to give a review and checklist of the marine life to be found along this extensive and varied coastline, including photographs of all the species that are to be found, and which will also act as an identification guide. Topics will include:-

  • Marine life between the tides, including the rock pools and sandy beaches of the coast
  • Rare and unusual fishes occurring on the coast
  • Yorkshire Nudibranchs (seaslugs) and other molluscs
  • Other marine invertebrates of the inshore and offshore fishing grounds
  • Natural History of the cliffs and coastal fringe
  • Marine life of Filey Brigg and the Spittals, a unique, ecologically rich and important feature of the coast
  • Occurrence and history of the Blue-fin Tuna, or Tunny, in the North Sea
  • Whales and Dolphins of the central North Sea

FISH, FISHERIES AND FISHERFOLK

The initial major assistance of a local fisherman, the late Ben Colling, who made constant suggestions of where to look and who to approach for things he remembered seeing over his lifetime, kick-started this part of the Archive and led to many finds and donations of fisheries-related bygones from people in Filey and Whitby as well as Scarborough, while from many an old store and dis-used workshop in the town, including "Tinner Sams" workshop and Jack Johnsons trawler store, old sailmakers and shipwrights tools, herring industry, steam trawler and other related items were gathered.

Even old pit saws, once used to cut planks at old shipyard sites now buried under the modern bustling road of Sandside, were located. Old leather sea-boots the cause of the drowning of so many fishermen in the days of sail, when local cobles, yawls and smacks were caught out in squalls and gales, together with all the tools used in their manufacture, were later secured from the basement of Beanlands cobblers shop in North Street. Donations and purchases of contemporary models and paintings of Yorkshire fishing craft include two particularly historical items, a half hull of about 1820 of one of the famous five-man boats, the largest and fastest fishing craft of the British Isles, that were constructed at yards along Sandside, and which became deeply involved in smuggling alongside their traditional role in the herring and cod fisheries, and an 1862 oil painting of the arrival at Scarborough of the first iron fishing vessel, the Contrast, for Josiah Hudson. The Filey fishing industry is well represented by a large collection of studies by the Victorian photographer Fisher, of the local bait- gathering women, the "flither girls", and by contemporary models of yawls and cobles made by the Filey boatbuilder, Chapman.

  • Fishing Grounds of the Coast
  • Fishing Methods, Past and Present, on the Yorkshire Coast
  • Bygone Fishing Craft of the Days of Sail
  • Fishing Hamlets and Fishing Ways of the coast; from the Tees to the Humber
  • Fishing the Herring; a bygone fishery
  • Early Trawling History, the Paddle-Trawlers & early Steam Trawlers
  • The First World War & the North Sea, the U-boat, wrecks, and the legacy to the fisheries
  • North Sea Fisheries, 1918-1960
  • Boom and Bust; the fisheries from 1960-2010

THE ANCIENT TOWN, PORT AND HARBOUR OF SCARBOROUGH

The continually growing collection today spans everything from old documents and manuscripts, receipts and sales books, to a large photographic collection of 35mm slides, lantern slides and glass negatives. Two important historical items include the harbour engineers model of the old harbour, made about 1818/1820, depicting the old island piers and shipyards, complete with ships on the stocks, that once existed along Sandside, and an 1831 painting, by H. B. Carter, of one of Scarborough's most important medieval port administration buildings on the site of the present Newcastle Packet pub, prior to its demolition by 1840.

  • History, growth and development of the Old Town & Harbour
  • Bygone trades, crafts and tools of the harbour workshops
  • The harbour and its waterfront, portrayed in art and old models
  • The Town, harbour and shipping in early photographs
  • Victorians and Edwardians at Scarborough; seaside holidays & the beach