STORM AND COMPANY
Jacob Storm's Memoirs
CHAPTER ONE. FAMILY
I am writing this account of my family and my life at sea for the
interests of my descendants and for anyone else who might be
inclined to read it.
My family story begins with the survey of Whitby Abbey properties
at the time of the Dissolution in 1539 when John, Matthew,
Peter, William, Robert and Bartholomew Storm were named as
tenants of the Abbey of Whitby in Robin Hood's Bay; Matthew being
the principal tenant renting Cow Close at £1.18.4. per year.The
same names, perhaps their sons', occurred again in 1565 when
Queen Elizabeth sold the Abbey's possessions to the Cholmleys;
and other names that have stayed in Bay Town down to modem times
are Staincliff, Huntrowes, Richardson, Hewetson,
Morsonne, Allatson and Cockerill. About the time I was born,
there were over a hundred of people of the old names living down
in Bay itself and quite a lot more scattered around Fylingdales
parish. How we have clung to "t'awd spot"!
Our origins before that are obscure, Robin Hood's Bay comes into
history late. John Leland mentioned it about the time of the
survey I mentioned, and he said it was a "fischer tonnelet
of 20 bootes with Dok or Bosom of a mile yn length" It was
also said to have "50 cottages by the shore". It could
be seen as being more important than Whitby e.g. a Rotterdam
chart in 1586 points to Robin Hood's Bay 275 miles away but makes
no mention of Whitby. My guess is that it was a sort of growth
that attached itself to Fylingdales, having more to do with the
sea than the land; and the sea made it pretty well self
sufficient and independent, and so it remained. The parish books
show that not many Bay men took part in the public life of
Fylingdales parish, compared with the farmers and others and.
after all, for much of the time a seafaring place doesn't have
many men about.
A most interesting feature of the population of Robin Hood's Bay,
time and again, is the excess of women and girls over men and
boys. As well as the sea voyages, there has also to be taken into
account the great loss of life at sea, as revealed in our
'Register of Missing Seamen' (1) and on the
tombstones in the old churchyard. It would often be said in the
old days of a man who had been away for some time that he came
back to find a wife.
The name Storm before Queen Elizabeth's time occurred quite often
in eastern Yorkshire, and occasionally in East Anglia, but hardly
anywhere else in England as far as I have been able to ascertain
in collaboration with Mr. Philip Lawson and other
genealogists. Mr. Lawson is an antiquary and a relation by
marriage who became interested in Bay families (2).
I believe the earliest mention of the name in our district occurs
in a document of 1332 concerning the outlawing of John Storm for
the taking of deer in the Forest of Pickering. His kinsmen who
put up money for him lived at Levisham. In the fifteenth century,
there are wills of Nicholas Storm, clerk of Greenhammerton
(1405), and William Storm of Ellerburn (1496).
Robert Storm, skinner, was registered as a freeman of York in
1535 and his namesake of the same trade, of 'Flamburg',
appears in the York registry in 1441. I think we know whereabouts
we belong!
In fact, the only other place in Britain where the name is
common, to the best of my knowledge, is Findhorn in the North of
Scotland, and it is a remarkable coincidence that the bearers of
the name there follow the sea like ourselves. Fifty or so years
ago when the Whitby schooner 'Oak' got into trouble in a gale off
the Farnes, a difficult rescue was carried out by the 'Elsie', Captain
John Storm of Findhorn, and the crew were landed at that
place.
It is commonly believed among us, and it has been said by some
writers, that we are of Scandinavian origin; the main explanation
being the strong connection with the sea and the frequency with
which the name is met in Denmark. I have met Storms in Norway who
told me their forebears came from Denmark and I have seen 'Jacob
Storm' on a shop in Sleswick.
It has been a source of much frustration to me that the records
of the parish of Fylingdales start late, that is to say in 1658,
but I have nevertheless been able to compile tables of genealogy
for my own and related families from the seventeenth century
which show descents and also reveal a complicated collection of
cousins tying together the strands of Bay life down the years in
a pattern that defies unravelling.
Perhaps it seems strange that a fishing village without a harbour
should have thriven as Bay did on shipping, for fishing cobles
can work from beaches but cargo vessels can not, unless they are
very small. The explanation is that the menfolk were used to
making a living from the deep and when Whitby became an important
seaport, Bay men took to the trading vessels and Bay Town
provided a stock of experienced mariners (a very handy one for
the press-gang), who knew the rest of the world better than they
knew the old country.
The women were a noble breed. They shouldered great
responsibility during long absences of their men at sea, and
suffered great sorrow when ships went down. I was only a child at
the time but I remember the awful day in 1846 when the news
arrived that the three Granger brothers had been lost on their
way home from the fishing ground. They were related to most
families, my own especially; but if the sorrow was widespread so
was the support for the afflicted. After Mr. Walter White visited
the 'King's Head', he wrote in his book 'A Month in Yorkshire',
with some astonishment, that there had been over two hundred
mourners at the funeral of the late husband of his hostess, my
cousin Martha, but anyone who knew anything about local customs
and above all about the meaning of family in Bay need not have
been at all surprised.
PHOTO:Isaac Storm and sons Thomas, Reuben and Matthew
with their coble Gratitude
and their dog 'Spy'.
Photographed by F.M. Sutcliffe near the Wayfoot.
Sometimes the women shared the dangers of the sea with their
husbands. In the fishing days, there was more than enough hard
work for them helping to keep gear in good order, repairing nets,
tanning sails, finding bait and so on. Hardworking, thrifty
women, good managers as they say, made good wives, not only for
Bay men but for strangers who came to stay, like the Officers of
Customs (who were long present in strength, regrettably),
coastguards, schoolmasters and clergymen. In any case, it was
necessary for many women to find husbands from elsewhere because
of the shortage of men to which I have made reference. That is
why, I theorise, typical Bay names like my own stayed here so
well represented, while connections beyond our remote parish have
most often been established through the distaff side. I have
tried to pursue these connections as well as those nearer home
and they have often proved interesting, linking our isolated
community with events in other worlds.
'There is . . . my great-aunt Elizabeth, she was first married to
Capt. Andrew Harrison of Robin Hood's Bay but he died,
leaving her with a young son who grew up to be a sea captain. In
1808, this son was in command of the 'Nautilus' when she was
taken by a French privateer and he remained a prisoner until
1814. This Harrison branch settled in Sunderland and through
Andrew's descendants, we have many connections (alas now tending
to be forgotten) with the shipowning, commercial and professional
life of that town (3). My further interest in
Elizabeth, however, is that she next married John Spink of
H.M. Customs in 1769 and through them there is a maze of
relationships with the 'outside world'. Their son John became a
general with an adventurous career in India and other parts (4).
His nephew, Robert Danby, a bank official but son of a
shipmaster, used to visit us in my young days. Elizabeth's
daughter Esther had a daughter who married Thomas Jackson,
Prebend of St. Paul's. This clergyman was son of the famous
Wesleyan minister, also Thomas, who came of a blacksmith's
family, Scarborough way, and was chosen President of the Wesleyan
Conference in 1839 and Centenary President in 1849 (5).
I believe he preached in the Bay Chapel. One of the younger
Thomas's sons became an admiral and for the time directed naval
intelligence (6). He called on me at 'Leeside'
in 1914, introducing himself as a cousin. During the war, one his
sons commanded battleships and was also director of operations at
the battle of Jutland (7). Another son was a
master in the merchant servic
PHOTO: Wayfoot
I have mentioned the subject and so I will say more about the
local strong connections with the Wesleyans. It is, of course,
well known that John Wesley himself paid no fewer than
eleven visits to Bay, which lay on the road from Whitby to
Scarborough ... and many families maintained a strong Chapel
tradition. When I was a boy, I knew Thomas Newton and his
wife who lived in the Low Street, and Thomas's brother Francis
who lived at Thorpe, and these were brothers of the renowned
preacher Robert Newton, chosen conference president on four
occasions. The grandfather of my cousin Jane Ireland took for his
second wife Anne, Rev. Robert Newton's sister. Jane was a
benefactress of the Thorpe Chapel ... and her grandfather,
Samuel Ireland, who was clerk of the Peak alum works, often
figures in documents as a leading trustee of the Bay Chapel.
PHOTO: The Square
John Ireland, his son, was a sea captain who ran the Bay Indemnity with Ben Granger - too well known for words of mine (8). Some of the Newton information comes first-hand from the family and some from the family Bible, bought by Robert's mother Anne on a visit to York, which starts with her husband's birth in 1732 and is still kept in local hands by Mrs. Harding (nee Isabella Anne Newton) of Holgate, Thorpe Lane.
Footnotes(1). The Genealogical Society has a copy of this work by William Conyers and Capt. Streeting in its collection in London. After its publication a record was kept by Capt. Arthur Gibson of Trongate, Robin Hood's Bay. ......(2)Philip Lawson, R.R.I.B.A., F.S.A., brother -in-law of Rebecca Storm(1854-1914)....... (3) One of Andrew's descendants, Capt. Squance of the P&O Line, was co-founder of the Hindoostan Steam Shipping Co. of Sunderland.....(4) General John Spink, Knight of Hanover......(5) The Centenary Presidency was the earlier of the two... (6) Admiral Sir Thomas Sturges Jackson KCVO........(7) Admiral Sir Thomas Jackson, KCB.....(8) This was one of the villages's two ship insurance associations