Whitehaven

“ Further on, the heights gradually soften from horror into mild and graceful beauty, opening distantly to the cheerful country that spreads towards Whitehaven; but the road soon immerges among woods, which allow only partial views of the opposite shore, inimitably beautiful with copses, green lawns and pastures, with gently sweeping promontories and bays, that receive the lake to their full brims. ”

“ The inhabitants of Whitehaven are noted for their public spirit, honourable conduct in trade, and for that indefatigable attention to business which has so happily distinguished them through a long series of years. It has several schools, two weekly papers, and the study of literature and science is much cultivated and encouraged by the families of affluence and respectability who reside in the town and vicinity. Social and hospitable intercourse, with balls, assemblies, and public fetes, render the stranger's residence at Whitehaven extremely agreeable. ”

“ From an old history of the county of Durham, Whitehaven appears to have been a resort for shipping in the tenth century; and when the Nevills of Raby were called upon to furnish their quota of men to accompany Henry in his expedition to Ireland in 1172, they were brought to Wythop-haven, or Witten-haven, and transported thence in ships to the Irish coast. When Edward was advancing against Scotland, in the fourteenth century, he found a ship belonging to this place, in which he sent a cargo of oats, to be ground by the monks of St. Bees. ”

“ Captain Paul Jones, waxing industrious, attempts to burn the shipping which crowds the tidal basin at Whitehaven. In these fire-lighting efforts he succeeds to the extent of five ships; after which he rows out to the Ranger. Thereupon the people and militia, who crowd the terror-smitten hills round about, come down into their town again.
Captain Paul Jones crosses now to the north shore of the Solway for a morning call upon the Earl of Selkirk. He schemes to capture that patrician, and trade him back to the English for certain good American sailors whom they hold as prisoners. ”

“ All in all, the Scotch lad stood that first short voyage to Whitehaven in fine shape. So bravely had he faced the jibes and rough play of the sailors coming across the Solway, so well had he performed his duties, that Mr. Younger's interest in him expanded. When they reached port he had the boy take quarters with him at his own splendid home, where Mrs. Younger treated him with as much consideration as if he were her own son. Here John stayed for almost two weeks, while the new vessel on which he was to sail was taking on her finishing touches and being fully provisioned. ”

“ On the first discovery of Walterson’s flight, which the officer had made a little after daybreak, he had sent horsemen to Whitehaven, Keswick, and Kendal, and a boat to Newby Bridge. The nearer shore and the woods on the point below the bishop’s house—some called it Landoff House—were well beaten, and the alarm was given in Bowness on the one hand and in Ambleside on the other. The general voice had it that the man had got away early in the night to Whitehaven. But some stated that a pedlar had met him, on foot and alone, crossing the Kirkstone Pass at daybreak ”

“ Andrew Huddleston, who was at that time rector of the parish of Whitehaven, and also had the living of another parish a few miles distant, both being the presentation of the Earl of Lonsdale. 61 He said he was a bachelor, of about fifty years of age, and was seldom in England; his curates performed his duties for him. But he was in Whitehaven when we arrived there, for I saw him walking up Duke Street with Father, two or three days after our arrival. ”

“ He lived in his father's cottage near the sea until he was twelve years old. Then he was put to work in a big town on the other side of the Solway Firth. This town was called Whitehaven. It was a very busy place, and ships and sailors were there in such numbers that the little fellow, who had been put in a store, greatly liked to go down to the docks and talk with the seamen who had been in so many different lands and seas and who could [33] tell him all about the wonderful and curious places they had seen, and about their adventures on the great oceans they had sailed over. ”

“ John Paul Jones performs Daring Deeds on the English Coast.—Afterwards Paul Jones went to France, and sailing from Brest in his ship the Ranger, he swept the seas all around England, taking or destroying every hostile ship he met. He was so audacious as to sail into British ports, wrecking and pillaging everywhere. He entered the harbor of Whitehaven, England, surprised the forts, spiked the guns, and burned some ships at the docks. English commerce was crippled, insurance rates rose to a fabulous price, and merchants met with enormous losses. ”

“ One all-important consideration, in the case of tenders employed for the storing and detention of pressed men prior to their dispatch to the fleet, was that the vessel should be able to lie afloat at low water; for if the fall of the tide left her high and dry, the risk of desertion, as well as of attack from the shore, was enormously increased. Whitehaven could make no use of man-storing tenders for this reason ”

“ Captain Strickland left Whitehaven next day by express train for Loudon. The first thing he did after reaching town was to deposit his portmanteau at the station hotel and then take a Hansom to his old club, the Janus, where he was sure to meet several brothers in the profession of arms to whom he was well known. After dining he went to consult some files of Army Lists. In a List twenty years old he found the name of a Captain Laut as belonging to the two-hundred-and-fourth regiment, at that time in garrison at Portsmouth. ”

“ For the next few days he cruised along the southern coast of Scotland on the lookout for other enemy prizes. Nothing of great moment occurred, and with better weather conditions than had previously prevailed, he made up his mind again to try an attack on Whitehaven.
The hills were covered with snow when the Ranger came within sight of them. In the harbor of the town of some fifty thousand inhabitants were collected almost three hundred merchant-ships and fishing-smacks. ”

“ The waters of the firth are shallow, and a tidal bore occurs periodically. The fisheries are extensive, and though there are no ports of the first magnitude on the firth, a considerable shipping trade is carried on at Whitehaven, Harrington, Workington, Maryport and Silloth in Cumberland, and at Annan, Kirkcudbright, Creetown and Wigtown on the Scottish side. ”

“ Bees, secured additional grants of land from Charles II in 1666 and 1678, developed the great mineral wealth of the district, formed the present harbour of Whitehaven, to the wharves of which countless sacks of his coal were borne on the backs of small Galloway ponies, was commissioner of the admiralty 1689–96, and died very wealthy in January 1705–6, leaving his property to his son, Sir James, on whose death in 1755 it passed to James Lowther, first earl of Lonsdale [q. v.] ”

“ We often use nouns adjectively; and Areios is an adjective: I would therefore write this name Mars Hill, as we write Bunker Hill. Again: Whitehaven and Fairhaven are commonly written with single capitals; but, of six or seven towns called Newhaven or New Haven, some have the name in one word and some in two. Haven means a harbour, and the words, New Haven, written separately, would naturally be understood of a harbour: the close compound is obviously more suitable for the name of a city or town. In England, compounds of this kind are more used than in America ”

“ From Arbigland Mr. Younger had more than once before obtained excellent sailors, as had indeed many another ship-merchant and short-handed captain.
Mr. Younger's hopes of securing good seamen in Arbigland were soon fulfilled. He found no trouble in signing up nearly enough that very evening, among them several officers. The following morning he completed his list, but did not attempt an immediate return to Whitehaven on account of bad weather. That day the winds increased and the sea became constantly more and more violent. ”

“ Gilpin of Whitehaven has seen many Roman coins found at Papcastle, especially of Adrian.
52
WHITE-HAVEN.
This is a new sea-port town, standing in a little bay, sprung up from its conveniency for the coal-mines hard by. There are many salt-works upon this coast. Rock-samphire grows here. This western country, left beyond the monstrous hills, is sand and clay. Skidhaw is in view from hence, and with the rest deceives one exceedingly in its distance; for one of these hills, which we should be apt to compute a mile off, is seven ”

“ Marriott Watson's Down poem—Newhaven—A Sussex miller—Seaford's past—A politic smuggler—Electioneering ingenuity—Bishopstone.
The road from Lewes to the sea runs along the edge of the Ouse levels, just under the bare hills, passing through villages that are little more than homesteads of the sheep-farmers, albeit each has its church—Iford, Rodmell, Southease, Piddinghoe—and so to Newhaven, the county's only harbour of any importance since the sea silted up the Shoreham bar. You may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as anywhere twice the distance from London ”

“ You can do nothing with Newhaven except leave it a port. Littlehampton refuses to be the pleasure ground that its landlord desires it to be. Bosham is still the ancient harbour and village which its history demands that it should be. Shoreham will not consent to become a lesser Worthing or a second Brighton, and this is the more remarkable from the fact that these harbour towns and villages are geographically more in touch with London than those other towns whose special character it is to lie sheltered by the hills and far from the gaps by which a railway could approach them from the north. ”

“ The day being clear, they found themselves upon the coast of Norfolk, and, as they guessed, about eight leagues from Yarmouth, where they supposed their guns might be heard the last night. The wind being good, Whitelocke ordered to weigh anchor, and they sailed along the coast, sometimes within half a league of it, until they passed Orfordness and came to Oseley Bay, where they again anchored, the weather being so thick with a great fog and much rain that they could not discern the marks and buoys to avoid the sands, and to conduct them to the mouth of the river. ”

“ To be the head-man of any other village, and the captain of its fishing fleet, might prove no lofty eminence; but to be the leader of Springhaven was true and arduous greatness. From Selsey Bill to Orfordness, taking in all the Cinque Ports and all the port of London, there was not a place that insisted on, and therefore possessed, all its own rights so firmly as this village did. Not less than seven stout fishing-smacks—six of them sloops, and the seventh a dandy—formed the marine power of this place, and behaved as one multiplied by seven. ”

“ The hostile fleet was destroyed; brave France would never more come out of harbour to contend with England; the foggy fear of invasion was like a morning fog dispersed; and yet the funds (the pulse of England) fell at the loss of that one defender.
It was a gloomy evening, and come time for good people to be in-doors, when the big news reached Springhaven. Since the Admiral slept in the green churchyard, with no despatch to receive or send, the importance of Springhaven had declined in all opinion except its own, and even Captain Stubbard could not keep it up. ”

“ It has the same treeless, marshy sides, highly embanked for the formation of water meadows, the same strong, scouring tide, the same violent current, but, luckily for the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, not the same bar. The entry at Newhaven is particularly easy, the best in the county, and would be fairly easy even without the dredging that is carried on, or the breakwater that defends it from the south-west. ”

“ The scenic attractions of Fairhaven and the other Bellingham Bay towns are fully as great as any of the cities farther on Puget Sound, and its natural resources appeared to me to be almost identical with those of Anacortes, except in the matter of distance from the Strait and length of water-front. Vessels require no towing to the wharves of either. The same valleys are tributary to both, the same iron, coal, and marble deposits, the same timber, and the same fisheries. ”

“ In 1910 the last of the riders of the watery plains were still faring forth from Salthaven, but far more had gone down under the white hoofs of their own steeds, or else were drawn up on the beach like battered hulks, useful at best for mere rowboat voyages between house and wharf or the post-office on Preble Square, their cargoes,—a weekly newspaper, a spool of thread. However, for a last port there could have been no more peaceful, no lovelier spot than Salthaven.
To the North, the superb lines of the Lighthouse upspring into the blue ”

“ Although the establishment of a harbour has operated greatly to the advantage of Newhaven, by giving additional value to every rood of ground in its vicinity, it has not materially interfered with the internal economy of the village, which retains most of those ancient characteristics which for ages has given its inhabitants an isolated position in the community. ”

“ The people of Newhaven fitted out a ship, and sent her richly laden for England, to procure a patent for the colony and a charter for the city. After the ship had been at sea some weeks, there happened in New-England a violent storm, which induced the people of Newhaven to fast and pray, to inquire of the Lord whether their ship was in that storm or not. This was a real fast: for the people neither eat nor drank from sunrise to sunset. ”