CHECKPOINT 8
Ship Building Yards - 42 Sandside
Ship Building
Where Sandside and Foreshore Road stand today was actually filled with ship building yards - a lucrative industry for the town (and the few families who monopolised it to their advantage).
As a popular port and fishing town, it was inevitable that Scarborough established its own ship building industry.
The most famous ship building yards were housed on Sandside, owned by 7 generations of the Tindall family, ending in 1862 when Richard Tindall passed away and the yard was closed.
100 vessels were built in this yard between 1771-1800,
Scarborough was a busy hive for shipbuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries, but when steel and iron replaced wooden timber in ships, the businesses faded rapidly.
Here, at 42 Sandside is a blue plaque to commemorate this industry of a bygone era.
Scarborough Ships
The Scarborough & The First Fleet
Named after the town, the Scarborough ship was commissioned by the Hopper family and built in the town by Fowler & Heward, launching in 1782.
Her early life consisted of shipping timber to and from the Baltics and North America, however, in 1788 it became part of the “First Fleet” transporting convicts to New South Wales. She famously completed 2 voyages as prisoner transport - the only ship from the First Fleet to return to Britain and head out on the Second Fleet. She narrowly resisted at least one mutiny attempt on each voyage by the convict passengers.
By the turn of the century, the Scarborough was used to transport goods between London and the Caribbean, but she was beginning to show the impacts of her global journeys. In 1804 the Scarborough was the victim to French privateers (legal pirates - more about pirates and privateers at Checkpoint 10), who fired at her for over an hour. Although the Scarborough escaped capture, under a year later she floundered just off the coast of Jamaica after leaking heavily while at sea, where she remains to this day.
The Regal Lady
Any Scarborough resident will tell you the most famous vessel in our harbour is the Regal Lady. A pleasure boat first built in 1930 in Great Yarmouth, she was originally christened the Oulton Belle.
Famously assisting the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940, she was then used as a tender to transport thousands of US soldiers from their transatlantic journey to Greenock on the Clyde. After her military role, the Oulton Belle was sold to Scarborough Cruises Ltd in 1954 and renamed the Regal Lady. Her first season in 1955 was a roaring success, with an hourly cruise to Hayburn Wyke. Evening cruises to Filey were also popular, where passengers could view the bright lights of the town, before returning to Scarborough Harbour, where it has docked ever since.
Today the Regal Lady is a Dunkirk Ship Floating Museum, and is currently up for sale.
The full history of MV Regal Lady can be found here: https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/180/regal-ladyoulton-belle
The Coronia
If you visited Scarborough throughout the 1970s to 1990s, one of the most popular pleasure boats of the time was the Coronia - another Dunkirk evacuation boat. Built in the 1930s, Coronia helped rescue 900 troops and brought them safely back to our shores in World War 2. She became a pleasure boat in Scarborough from 1968 to 2021, and has carried thousands of passengers around the Yorkshire Coast.
Even after being bought by a local MP, and campaigns to refurbish and reopen as a visitor attraction, Coronia was sadly sold and left Scarborough Harbour a few years ago. The Coronia is now a floating cafe in Hartlepool officially named MV Watchful.
The full history of this vessel can be found here: https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/179/mv-watchful
Sea shanties
It is no surprise that any seafaring town will have its own repertoire of sea shanties - and Scarborough is no different.
Although many have not survived the test of time - the few we know today have been passed down through the generations, and not written down or recorded.
Here are a few of the surviving Scarborough based sea shanties. In many cases, they've become part of the folklore of the town, and the melody has been completely lost, with only the titles remaining:
The Scarborough Street Cries - a copy is held at Scarborough's Maritime Heritage Museum (SMHC Box 9)
Dawn in Scarborough's Lanes
St Nicholas Street Corner
Scarborough Sands
And here's a song about the 1880 storm along the East Coast:
Thought to originate from the French word "chanter", meaning to sing, the word shanty is heavily associated with the merchant ships, where long periods of hard graft was required. However, it is likely that many cultures who relied on the manual labour of their crew would have had their own shanty, or songs to make lighter work of remedial tasks - or just to help pass the time on long journeys.
Sung in time to the work at hand, there are several types of shanties (see below). If the crew complete their actions in time to the music, it made them more productive.
With the invention of steam powered boats, the type of work required by the crew changed, reducing the need for man-power - and therefore melodic, time keeping chants began to disappear.
Capstan Shanties: Associated with the heaving motion of pushing the capstan (the revolving cylinder on a boat pushed around by the crew). Used where a continuous repetition of an action is required over a long period of time, such as dropping the anchor. Drunken Sailor is probably the most famous example of this type of shanty.
Halyard Shanties (known as long-haul): Useful for longer tasks such as pulling ropes and hauling. Tasks where a continuous rhythm is required with breaks in between, e.g. for hoisting the sails. A famous example of this rhythm is from Blow The Man Down:
" Wayhay, blow the man down" allowed for 2 pulls in time with the song.
Short-haul (or short drag): Used for short sharp bursts of energy, such as shortening sails, particularly useful in storms - with everyone singing, it was easy to hear what actions are required.
E.g. Paddy Doyle's Boots: "To-me-way-yah!
We'll pay Paddy Doyle for his boots!"
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