The concept of the Yorkshire Maritime Archives date back to 1967 when zoologist David Whittaker, who as a student had already started to research and photograph the marine life of the coast some years earlier, joined the old Scarborough Corporation’s Museums and Libraries Department as one of the two curatorial staff stationed at the Woodend Natural History Museum, a former residence of the Sitwell family, which after a period of dereliction, had been converted and opened as a museum in 1952.
Somewhat disgracefully for a coastal Natural History Museum, the collections at Woodend contained very little that referenced either the local marine biodiversity or the related history and development of the important fisheries of the port and coastline on which it was situated. With the exception of the mounted sea-birds, the only collections at Woodend of relevance to the subject were the part collections of shells of the Rev. Hey and William Bean, whose data in the collection, from a biological standpoint, is notoriously vague and unreliable.
In fact, it was at that time discovered that many marine specimens that had been deposited both in the old Philosophical Society collections at the original Rotunda Museum, and the Harbour Commissioners Lighthouse Museum, established in 1932 in the old Harbour Masters residence, had been purposely thrown away in the early days of moving the collections about in the run up to opening Woodend as the Natural History Museum.
In 1967, therefore, an active project was immediately started at the museum to enhance the research work on the local fauna by extending this to offshore observations, if possible by using the local fishing fleet, and in tandem thereby, to establish reference and display collections of marine zoological material, from the central North Sea area, at Woodend Museum.
Coincidentally, two or three simultaneous events further enhanced the project. Two interesting occurrences, of a large Dealfish, Trachypterus arcticus, and a female White Sided Dolphin, Lagenorhynchus acutus, presented themselves on local beaches for examination, and determined a further policy of adding to the collections by a program of the casting of such relevant specimens, using plaster, while experiments commenced to take moulds off the sea fishes with silicone silastomer, and accordingly a casting room was set up in the basement at Woodend. It was also realised that the paucity of Yorkshire reference material, in any of the County’s museums, of the whales and dolphins occurring along this coast should be addressed, and so in addition to taking off a cast of the dolphin, it was also prepared as a skeleton, the first of many.
At the same time, the late Ben Colling, a much respected and leading fisherman of the community, began sending some of the oddities from his trawl nets up to the museum to discover more about them. After a meeting with Ben it was realised that if all local skippers and crews could be encouraged to bring in, as part of a daily and continuous survey, the oddities in their nets, and in particular the fishes, a valuable amount of local data that would be unattainable in any other way, could be accumulated over time. With Ben’s assistance, most Scarborough coblemen and trawler skippers and their crews became involved and so the ongoing Yorkshire Rare Fish Survey came into being, accumulating some valuable data on the occurrence of fishes and other marine life in this sea area, while a daily watch of the local fish market also ensured that little of interest was missed.
Bens sudden interest was timely; not only did his contact stimulate the establishment of the daily rare fish and offshore biological recording, but his contact was also to ensure that many items connected with the old fishing history of the port were saved from destruction.
Ben Colling was a descendant of an old Filey fishing family that had in Victorian times owned the Yorkshire Yawl, the Eye of Providence, SH 50, and who, together with his father, Frank, had a great interest in his family history and in fishing ways of the past. During the many interesting talks with Ben and his father it became obvious that the fisheries and marine biological collections should be extended to include historical items from the past days of the Yorkshire fisheries and its maritime communities, since it was obvious from what was related by these two ‘salts’ that many bygones of past fishing ways had already been thrown away. Some odd items that some families had realised might have a certain monetary value had, already by the late 1960’s, been discarded another way, by dissipation into the antiques trade, and by which means some of this local maritime heritage, as future years were to reveal, had travelled as far away as America.
Although Ben never had a desire to collect these old bygones himself, and had seen many of them disappear over the years, yet he was almost alone in the fishing community in realising in 1967 that this attempt to preserve and accumulate whatever was left should be supported, and it is due entirely to his knowledge and interest in the history of the old town and fishing industry, and his ever generous and friendly co-operation, that much of what was around at that time was located and saved from destruction. Ben further kick started the collection by opening up the old stores belonging to Frank and himself, an old 19th century fishermens cottage in Quay Street, rummaging through and donating anything of interest.
There was, however, a problem with forming such a maritime collection under the auspices of the Scarborough Corporation Museums; Woodend was strictly a natural history museum, with poor facilities, in fact with little more equipment and reagents than the basics needed for taxidermy. It was struggling to cope with the means of preserving and archiving the number of marine specimens now being brought in daily by the fleet; there were no preservation vessels in the form of tubes, bottles and jars, and it was a struggle to push through the purchase of formalin, and there was no policy or indeed interest, by management, to include marine zoological, fisheries and maritime related historical items into a major collection strategy at the museum. The Corporations other museum, the Rotunda, had been designated the archaeological and historical museum with the reorganisation of the collections prior to opening Woodend. The single Curator at that museum, G. G. Rutter, spent his days repairing and building electric trains, his personal hobby, which were everywhere in the office. This was with the full knowledge of the Director of the Libraries and Museums, Mervyn Edwards, who visited both the Museums once each week. but who left the staff to their own devices. The two museums thus had entirely separate regimes, and it was therefore an impossibility to create a maritime and fisheries collection, as envisaged, in either one of them, but in the meantime, marine natural history material that should have been retained, was being lost on a daily basis.
In 1969 therefore, a maritime archive independent of the Corporation was launched into which all the specimens, research material, records and artefacts being accumulated have ever since been deposited. In view of the subsequent museum practices of the Borough Council, and indeed the recent destruction of the Woodend Natural History Museum, which resulted in the throwing out and selling off, yet again, of many items from the collections, that has been a fortunate decision.
The Sealife, Fisheries and Maritime Archive, has its own logo to trademark its work and the periodical temporary exhibitions that are put on display up and down the coast.
Many fishing families have, over the years, given or sold items into this collection, but sadly there were many that failed to realise the importance of saving such material and artefacts, and would not contribute items which they possessed, yet had no interest or use in, and which have since sadly been consigned to the dustbin. Many that contributed to the archive have now passed away, but it must be said that none were more helpful, or interested in the project, than Ben Colling.