"Robin Hood’s Bay"

A Script by

Joan Littlewood

Produced by

Nan Macdonald

..............

O.B. The Spa Whitby

Recording: Wednesday, 25^th May 1949. 6.00 – 7.00 p.m.

For transmission

NORTHERN CHILDREN'S HOUR: Sunday, June 19^th 1949. Bet 5.0-5.50 p.m.

ROBIN HOOD'S BAY

(Open with 19th Century Sea Shanty)

(into sea background)

Wilf: There's nothing finer on a fair day in May than a walk along the cliffs with the sea far below you and the scent of spring rising from the land, and up near Whitby the moors reach over almost to the cliff tops, spreading their dark colours over the lightness of the Bay. My path led sometimes to the broken edge of the cliffs and I stood and looked down at the sea breaking over the gre; rocks, I counted five ships - one looked like a coal-boat from Middlesbrough or Newcastle, and two were fishing boats, tossing mildly at the edge of the Bay. I watched a white breaker spend its force beyond the rocks, and thought how the coal-boats had plyed this coast since the days of Good Queen Bess. Then I turned inwards over grassy plots where primroses bloomed and along narrow tracks through budding gorse. The air was as light as the sun on the sea spray and the whiteness of the gulls wings dazzled my eyes. I was walking from Whitby to Robin Hood's Bay but the village itself was still hidden, tho’ I could see the strong shoulder of Ravenscar which forms the South Cheek of the Bay, and beyond it, a misty headland far to the South. I heard only the sea^’s sound and the screeching gulls and a ship blowing its siren as it passed the bay. "That Skipper's a Robin Hood's Bay man", I thought. Then suddenly there was a blinding light, and a deafening crack. I began to run, looking for shelter. I couldn't imagine what that frightening sound meant.

It was quiet now and I strained my ears for another explosion but instead I heard men's voices, and reaching the next height of the cliff, I saw them standing near a strange contraption. I drew nearer_. Who were they? There was a chap in a butcher's apron, a carpenter with his rule still in his overalls, there was a grocer and some men in fishermen's jerseys. Now they were hauling at a rope attached to a mast head. I ran nearer to find out what it was all about.

(Sea at foot of cliffs)

Jack: (shouting) Howea! Howea there! Pull away you lads.

Wilf: Here, I'll give you a hand.

Jack: Right, grab hold of her. Let her have it!

Jackson: (Shouting) Slacken the whip.

Jack: Slacken!

Wilf: I'm slackening

Jack: We'll have you in t'team.

Jackson: Pull on the right.

Jack: Give her a pull.

Wilf: What's that coming up?

Jack: Breeches buoy. Do you want a ride in it?

Wilf: Chance myself in that thing, no fear!

Jack: There's plenty owes their lives to that.

Wilf: It’s nothing but a lifebouy with a pair of breeches in it.

Jack: What more do you want?

Wilf: How does it work?

Jack: We're hauling her in, now, aren't we?

Wilf: Aye.

Jackson: Pull on the right whip!

Howea! Keep pulling!

Wilf: (Pulling) Phew! It would be some weight if you'd a man in there.

Jack: Aye. You see that mast over there.

Wilf: Which one?

Jack: The one the hawser’s tied to. That represents the ship.

Wilf: And we^’re supposed to be pulling a man in. Howea!

Jack: That's the stuff!

Wilf: Heave ho.

Jack: We^’ve had two practices this week. That's the commanding officer of all the rescue squads over there, and the other's the Chief Coastguard of this district.

Wilf: I see, that's the Coastguard uniform, is it? And you chaps work in with 'em,

Jack: That's right.

Wilf: It's an important practice today is it?

Jack: Oh, aye, we've been trying out a new rocket, you see.

Wilf: I thought I heard a bit of a bang as I came up the cliff.

Jack: You would do.

Wilf: What's the rocket, fired for then, a signal?

Jack: No - how do you think we get the hawser aboard the wreck?

Wilf: I see, you fire the hawser on to the ship by means of a rocket gun!

Jack: Aye, there it is behind you. All complete with a pigtail and everything.

Wilf: I couldn't make out what it was from a distance. I've seen one like it though, in a naval picture. How far will it fire?

Jack: There's 270 fathom of line on them pegs, and attached to the rocket. When rocket's fired, the rope whips out after it,

Wilf: 270 fathom.

Jack: Come on, you should have a better think box than me. Six times that in feet.

Wilf: Six times 270! 1,620 feet. So if the wreck is further than that from the shore, you can't reach it.

Then it's a case for the lifeboat. But we can get to places where the lifeboat can't get.

Wilf: How do you mean?

Jack: "The Heatherfield" went aground on the scaurs below this cliff.

Wilf: Down there?

Jack: That's right, 200 feet from the foot of the cliff. You can still see her boiler, if you look.

Wilf: When did that happen?

Jack: 1936 - in January.

Wilf: And they couldn't get the lifeboat to her? /

Jack: The lifeboat couldn't leave Whitby through lack of water.

Wilf: But you managed to reach her all right?

Jack: Aye, it took 270 feet of cable. We thought we'd never stop hauling.

Wilf: How many were saved that time by the breeches buoy?

Jack: Five were hauled ashore. Last came the captain carrying his pet canary in a cage.

Wilf: I wouldn't fancy being hauled on a rope over a wild sea with those rocks underneath me.

Jack: Aye, they'd a nice ride right up to the cliff top. Next morning when they saw where they'd been, they had a bit of a shock. Well, now we've a bit of practice in artificial respiration to do. So I'll see you later.

Wilf: What's your name?

Jack: Jack Wedgwood.

Wilf: Where will I find you?

Jack: Everybody knows everybody else here. But I'm always knocking about down by ‘dock, anyway. So long.

Wilf: As I turned to go I saw the men in their workaday clothes running to take part in the next drill. Three lay down while three others practised artificial respiration on them. Year by year, these volunteers from the little Bay town, have drilled and practised to keep themselves proficient at their self-appointed task* Any day or night at any time, the distress signal may go off, sending the eighteen men of the rocket team hurrying to their posts. It was hard to imagine the scene on a day so fair and smiling, with the sea in its sunniest mood. I left my cliff path suddenly and found myself on a road of pink brick villas and modern garden streets. This wasn^’t the village I had imagined but, turning, I found the road fell steeply down, down into the Bay itself and the pavement dwindled to a flight of steps. It was an exciting looking path and I followed it quickly.

(Music)

I seemed to be walking into a hidden, secret place; the road was winding and shadowed and the houses old and strangely built. One moment I walked by a roof top and the next I was level with the door and then, at the foot of the hill, I crossed a narrow beck. Upstream, there were farmlands on one side of the stream, and on the other, a row of brightly painted cottages as fresh and strange as a new fairy-tale. This Bay town was a place for exploring and soon I found a steep pathway leading up into the sunshine.

(Fade, in carpenter's shop)

As I climbed the narrow steps, I passed an open door and heard the sound of voices and the buzz of a saw. I stopped, for the carpenter's workshop looked an inviting place.

Wilf: Hallo there, it's a grand day.

Jackson: It is.

Wilf: You're always climbing up or down in Robin Hood's Bay, aren't you?

Jackson: Yes, and it's quite steep up here.

Wilf: It's a queer name it's got - "Jim Bell's Stile".

Jackson: There's queerer than that.

Wilf: You've no proper streets at all, have you?

Jackson: Not really. There's the main street: it's called "Station Road", but it never gets that.

Wilf: I noticed a place called "Bolts" on the way down the hill. That's a strange name, isn't it?

Jackson: Aye, and there's "Brig Garth". That was going to be "Ben's the Barber's", but no one cared for old Ben to give his name -to a street.

Wilf: I've seen a picture of "Tommy Baxter's Street". It looked nothing but a yard.

Jackson: Well, like many other of these streets, it was a through-road once; King Street was, too.

Wilf: And what happened to them?

Jackson: They fell over the cliff.

Wilf: There must be a tremendous lot of coast erosion here. I saw some cottages that looked as if they might topple into the sea any minute.

Jackson: And they will do. You can't stop it whatever you do. Our washhouse is going over. But the house will last our lifetime, anyway. It's built on the rock.

Wilf: I should think quite a lot of the old town has been lost, then?

Jackson: It has. Bay was a much bigger and more important place once_.

Wilf: (More to himself) I suppose one day, there'll be nothing left but the villas on top of the cliff. Nobody'11 know what the old town was like*

Jackson: There were more ships owned out of the bay than anywhere in my grandfather's time.

Wilf: Was your father a seagoing man?

Jackson: He still is, says he wouldn't follow any other life. Still, he wasn't so keen on us going.

Wilf: So you became a carpenter? .

Jackson: Well, not exactly, I've done a good many jobs. But I like making things - we all do here.

Wilf: Do you build ships?

No, I was brought up among ships; most of us could handle a boat as soon as we could walk, but I never made them

Wilf: Have you got a local boatbuilder?

Jackson: No. Boats are finished in the bay, but that chap you were talking to up at the rocket practice – Jack Wedgwood - he's built his own boat, you know.

Wilf: Ah! I'thought I'd seen you before. You were on the rocket team, too, weren't you?

Jackson: Yes, I've just got back. I'm another Jack - Jack Jackson, they call me - no, as you were saying, we did have a boatbuilder here, a Norwegian called Olsen, he married a local lady.

Wilf: There'd be plenty of fishing and seafaring here when you were a boy then, Jack.

Jackson: Yes, there was. We used to mind the boats at ebb tide when I was a boy. Otherwise, they'd get grounded.

Wilf: It wasn't too good a natural landing then? I suppose that's partly why the fishing decayed.

Jackson: It was. We're pretty close to nature, here. I have had a season salmoning with a master mariner, but by the time I left school, the slump was on. A lot of the old master mariners were out of a job.

Wilf: They seem to be all master mariners and skippers round here.

Jackson: Yes, they are. If you look at the headstones in the Church you'll see the same - all masters.

Wilf: So you never got the chance to go to sea at all.

Jackson: Oh yes, I did! - during the war, you know, I was in the Navy.

Wilf: I suppose all the chaps in the Bay preferred the sea during the war.

Jackson: Yes, they did. Mostly the Merchant Navy, that's the tradition here.

Wilf: I'm not holding you back from your work, am I?

Jackson: No, I'll finish it later.

Wilf: What is it?

Jackson: It's the door for a rocket house. Like the one you saw up on the cliff. No, it's nice to have a bit of a chat, and I can make up the time after. Visitors-haven't started coming yet and we don't see many foreigners in the winter.

Wilf: It must be a bit dull here, then. You've no cinemas or theatres or owt, have you?

Jackson: They did have a mobile cinema coming for some time, but no one bothered very much. We find plenty to do. I make violins and violas in my spare time and I play, too.

Wilf: And you're in the rocket team?

Jackson: Aye, and there's always a job to,do for somebody. I don't think I've had a spare evening this week.

Wilf: Making violins is a skilled business, isn't it, Jack?

Jackson: Well, I learnt from Thomas Dixon. He was a wheelwright and a country joiner. He taught me.

Wilf: A good many of those old country wheelwrights were artists, in their own way.

Jackson: He was. He had a natural gift. He was an artist in everything he touched.

Wilf: And had he learnt by himself?

Jackson: Well, he was a great craftsman and his father was a player. As a boy, he made a piano, and carved the ivories out of meat bones.

Wilf: That would take some doing.

Jackson: Yes. Of course, he was an old chap when I knew him. He was building fiddles years before that, I'll show you some of my fiddles if you like- to come home and have a bite to eat with us.

Wilf: Thanks very much, I will.

Jackson: I think we might as well go now, then I can show you a lectern I designed and carved for our chapel.

Wilf: Aren't you going to lock up?

Jackson: No, not just now. We don't often bother to lock our doors here, you know.

(Fade shop noises)

 Wilf: We walked together up the steep steps of "Jim Bell's Stile" to a chapel on a hill. Jack took me inside and proudly showed me the work of local men which had made their place of worship beautiful. Fishermen, carpenters and wheelwrights alike, they were all great craftsmen. As we walked along together Jack explained this to me.

(Beck faintly in background)

Jackson: It's not only at our house that you'll see home-made violins. You want to call at Miss Rebe Storm's, up at top. Jimmy Willy Storm, her brother, was a great cello maker, and his father was a fine craftsman, too.

Wilf: And was it their profession?

Jackson: No, old Mr. Storm was a captain,. They are great painters too, the Bay people* There isn't a house where you won't see paintings of brigantines and frigates and five-masted schooners.

Wilf: Sounds like a colony of artists.

Jackson: It's done for a pastime but there's a lot of skill in the Bay. Well, we might as well walk round by "Mundy's Shop" and "Sunny Place". It's pleasant that way.

Wilf: You've beautiful street signs up everywhere.

Jackson: Well, they've just gone up.

Wilf: They're nicely painted; I've never seen any like them, anywhere.

Jackson: As a matter of fact, I did them myself.

Wilf: Then you must be an artist, too?

Jackson: No

(Fade beck)

Wilf: We walked by the beck which divides the Bay and the scent of wallflowers filled the air. Climbing again, we came to Sunny Place and a quiet garden v/here the spring flowers grew around an apple tree covered with pink blossom. A gracious old lady, dark-haired and straight as a willow wand, greeted us. It was ? Bedlington, whose ancestors have been sea captains here since the days of the Elizabethans* She took us into the garden and showed us three beautifully carved and weathered ships'heads: "Neptune" from the ship "Ocean", the head of "Juno" and the full length figure of a Russian fisherboy from the island of Runo with a net over his shoulder and two fish at his feet. Seagulls were gliding on to the roof top and the soft primrose laden air from inland was fanning our faces as we stood and listened to her stories. The story of Nan Skrikes - the witch of Castle Chamber -who sat on the cliff and laughed at the fishermen if they dared go fishing on a Sunday. The story of the ghostly full-rigged ship which appeared off Ness Point, North of the Bay, then disappeared as the fishermen approached, and how the fishermen stood in wonder till they turned and saw old Nancy laughing at them as she sat perched on Ness Point. Miss Bedlington has a store of wonderful stories and she speaks the old dialect of the Bay. I could have listened to her all day, but presently she bade us goodbye and went back into her steep, graceful house. And now the way we followed was so narrow that you could reach out and touch the houses on either side. It was steep too, and each old-fashiond red-tiled cottage seemed different from the next. Some were named after old Bay boats and in many windows, there were beautiful carvings of full-rigged ships set in bottles. I called in at Jack’s house and saw the delicately fashioned violins he has made, and the models of ships carved by his brother - models so light that they looked as if they were in full sail. Many of the ships from which they had been copied, were lost in remote seas many years ago.

Then, leaving the snug little house, I walked down to the sea front. I saw Jack Wedgwood sitting there netting a lobster pot.

(Fade up sea lapping)

Wilf: Hello, Jack. Are you busy?

Jack: I've got a two hours' job here.

Wilf: You have to be nimble fingered for that work.

Jack: It's a question of use. Some boards, some hazel sticks, and a bit of twine.

Wilf: And a wooden needle and a lot of skill.

Jack: You learn it as a kid, you know.

Wilf: Have you a boat of your own?

Jack: That's my boat that you're sitting on, and the other. Made them both myself.

Wilf: You're a boat builder?

Jack: No I'm a plumber.

Wilf: Then how did you learn to build a boat?

Jack: I just set on and built it

Wilf: And the wood?

Jack: Some larch, a few skill beasts.

Wilf: Skill beasts?

Jack: Aye, the standings in a stable in between the animals. Me and Billy sawed them off. Farmer's a friend of mine.

Wilf: And I bet you sawed the trees down yourself, too.

Jack: I did that, I said to the farmer "I want some larch". He said; "Well, you know where it is, and you know where the horses are.

Wilf: And a grand job you've made of her. But you make better living at plumbing than fishing, do you, Jack?

Jack: Aye, inshore fishing's finished in the Bay. It's all done by the big keel boats from Whitby, I remember the time you could make a darn good living with forty pots.

Wilf: It's a pity you can't follow it up when you're interested in it. I don't suppose you've any difficulty in getting rid of a catch,

Jack: No, we eat a few, sell a few, give a few away.

Wilf: So the fishermen moved out to Whitby, did they?

Jack: Aye, the Dukes were the last to go and one of the Storms went with them. He married one of their girls. They were a hard-working family, the Dukes - came from Flamborough to here.

Wilf: So there's no fishermen left at all?

Jack: Well, there's old Oliver Storm over there, and Greenup Harrison, standing by the coastguard's house.

Wilf: They look proper fishermen.

Jack: They've done it all their lives. But me, things were so bad at one time that I even had to go picking taties, or doing owt I could find.

Wilf: You seem to have enjoyed your life, though, Jack.

Jack: What makes you say that?

Wilf: Well, you've plenty of interests.

Jack: Aye, I like to be creating a bit. I'm just making a winch out of an old bacon machine now. I think most of us around here are like that. We're a bit creative.

Wilf: Just got the one lad?

Jack: No, I've got Alfie in the Navy - he's 21, Michael, he's in the Army, Aye, Alf's out on the Yangtze somewhere. He'll be having a good time, I'11 bet. All the lads have to go away, but life's pretty good here; it can be one long holiday if you make it like that, and you don't have to depend on fishing for a living like the old chaps used to. But this won't get the job done.

Wilf: No, I'm sorry I can't give you a hand with that, Jack.

Jack: I'll see you again. I'm always around.

(Fade sea)

Wilf: I left him to finish his job and wandered down by the sea shore for a moment. The grey scaurs of rock were revealed by the slackening tide, and looking back, (Music?) the village - so full of interest, so rambling and so exciting when you explored it - now looked quite tiny. Thin curling strands of smoke arose from the chimneys in the red roofs, and the houses wore a fairy tale air. One looked like the "House that Jack built" for it was toppling over into the sea and its kitchen floor, so neatly tiled, seemed balanced on the edge of the cliff itself. I looked right round the Bay; a flight of herring gulls disturbed the peace of the afternoon. So this was the place that Robin Hood had loved - or so the story says. Here he kept his fishing boats to be used for his pleasure or as a means of escape. Here, they say, he set up Butts for his archers, just near Ravenscar. The story tells how he founded the Bay town - shooting an arrow from the brow of Stoup beck when he was pursued to the edge of the Yorkshire moors, and vowing that, where the arrow fell, he would build his retreat. And a fair retreat it is to this day. Unnoticed from the highroad, hidden and quiet, its outlines are as ancient as the shape of the fishing coble, which, they say is copied from the Viking ships. The old fishermen - Oliver Storm and Greenup Harrison were still standing by the breakwater gazing out to sea, and Jack was bent over his lobster pot. The fishermen looked at me quizzically as I climbed up the slope to the street.

(Sea lapping as before)

Mr Storm: Having a look round?

Wilf: Aye. I was enjoying the view.

Mr Storm: We're used to visitors.

Wilf: Aye. You still -come to have a look at the weather even though the fishing finished long ago?

Mr Storm: Aye. There's no fishermen now. We were the last here-the Storms. And Greenup Harrison here, he's my cousin.

That's the old lifeboat house behind you, isn't it?

Mr Storm: That's it. I was her last coxwain. Each member of my family was coxwain in turn.

Wilf: Storm! That's an appropriate name for these parts.

Olive: It's the oldest name in the bay, isn't it, Grandad? Miss Bedlington knows a rhyme about Grandad and his brothers.

Wilf: How does it go?

Olive: "Our Will, our Ol, our Reub, our Dud. They all went off in the 'Robin Hood'"

Mr Storm: This is my grandaughter, Olive. That's Greenup Harrison, my cousin, over there. We used to call them Hurricanes.

Storms and Hurricanes, Qh?

Olive: Mr. Harrison's got a register of the missing seamen of the bay, right back to 1686 and the first entry was a Storm, wasn't it, Grandad?

Mr Storm: It was. They were all fishermen. Read it to him, Olive, my eyes are no good for reading.

Olive: "Thomas Storm senior, fisher. Thomas Storm, junior, fisher. Thomas Robson, fisher. All lost at sea in their fishing boat August 6th, 1686. August 1st 1690. Thomas Storm, fisher. Robert Storm, fisher. Bartholemew Storm, fisher. James Helrne, fisher. Lost at sea in their fishing boat. And it goes on like that.

Wilf: Here's one of 1839. "Drowned when assisting a vessel off the rocks".

Olive: That would be before they had the lifeboat, wouldn't it, Grandad?

Mr. Storm: It was. They just went to rescue them in the cobles then. Take him into the lifeboat house, Olive. He can have a look.

Wilf: Olive took my hand and we went together into the lifeboat shed. There on the wall was the record of the lifeboat's service - a record of lives saved in storms and blizzards. Of men of the four corners of the earth saved from the treacherous rocks off the Yorkshire coast.

Olive: Grandad tells a lot of stories about the lifeboat; they saved eighty-two lives while he was in it. Swedes, and Frenchmen, Germans and Russians. He was in for nearly forty-four years.

Wilf: I expect you know all his stories, Olive?

Olive: Yes, I do, and I like to hear them. Did he tell you about the time they had to bring the lifeboat overland from Whitby?

Wilf: No. You mean they brought it nearly seven miles by road. Was it too rough to launch it at Whitby?

Olive: It was in January and there were terribly deep snow drifts and they had to cut a way through them.

Wilf: They'd need the whole population for that job.

Olive: Everybody turned out to help and all the ladies brought them hot drinks and then when they got here they launched her in tremendous seas and brought the men back safe. Would you like to see an octopus now?

Wilf: An octopus? Is it alive?

Olive: No, it's pickled.

Wilf: Pickled octopus?

Olive: Yes, Grandad pickles everything he finds. He says it keeps them for ever. My father was in the lifeboat, too, and then he was in the rocket team, but he caught pneumonia when they rescued the crew of the "Heatherfield" and he was dying when they got the award for it.

Wilf: Do you live in the Bay, Olive?

Olive: Mummy's moved away now, but I come here as often as I can because I love it better than anywhere. You must meet Grannie because she could bait lines better than any man.

Wilf: Have you been to sea with your Grandad?

Olive: Yes, in the "Olive"

Wilf: I suppose he named that after you?

Olive: Yes, he did. He fell overboard once.

Wilf: And could he swim?

Olive: No, but he was all right, because his belt hooked on to the boat. I always laugh when he tells me about it, because one of the other fishermen told him he'd no need to go down and look for the crabs. Would you like to see the octopus now?

Wilf: Yes, I would very much.

Olive: Come on then. I'll have to ask Grandad for the keys.