The Shipping News

Or,

How Whitby’s Maritime History informed

Stoker’s Dracula

During the week 21st October to 28th October 1885,

there was a period of fierce storms which lashed the

coastline of Britain. Records indicate that during that

week, 38 ships were either lost or seriously damaged in

British coastal waters.1

1 As noted by Dalby, Richard, “1885 Schooner Wreck Inspired Stoker’s Fiendish ‘arrival;’” in Whitby Gazette,

8th

November 1985, p. 15

Stormy Seas, Whitby

which washed up on Colliers Hope near Tate Hill Pier in

Whitby, just below St Mary’s Church and the ruins of the

Abbey. The ship was from Varna in Estonia, but was

called Russian at the time by local reporters:

On 24 October 1885 the Russian schooner Dimetry

(sic) about 120 tons was sighted off Whitby about

2pm. Wind northeast Force 8 (fresh gales) strong

sea on coast (cargo silver sand – from mouth of

Danube ran into harbour by pure chance avoiding

rocks.2

2 Newspaper report detailed in Chapman, Paul M., Birth of a Legend: Count Dracula, Bram Stoker and Whitby

(York: G H Smith & Son, 2007), p. 38

One such ship

was the Dmitry

(pictured left;

photograph

captured by

Frank Meadow

Sutcliffe in

1885);

Sound familiar? A ship carrying boxes of earth

(“silver sand – from mouth of Danube”) which ends up

wrecked on Tate Hill sands? Indeed, the ship was

destined to become the “Narva” (an anagram of Varna)3,

carrying boxes of the Count’s home soil, along with a

snack for the journey (in the form of the unfortunate

crew).

3 As noted by Chapman.

Whitby-based artist John

Freeman’s gothicised

interpretation of the wreck of the

Dmitry, complete with black dog.

Yet, the wreck of the

Dmitry was not Stoker’s

sole source of inspiration

for his ghost ship. The

theme of the phantom

ship is an old one in

literature (Coleridge’s

Rime of the Ancient

Mariner or Marryat’s The

Phantom Ship are just

two examples).

Whitby is rich in maritime history. Famous explorers

from the area include Captain Cook (statue situated in

Whitby, pictured below with the obligatory seagull

perched on his head) and William Scoresby.

One such example, cited by Chapman in his study of

Dracula’s roots in the town, includes the fate of the

whaling ship, the Esk, which was lost in 1826 near

The waters

surrounding the coast

at Whitby are also

notoriously perilous

and it is likely that

Stoker would have

heard many stories of

danger and near

death experiences

from local mariners.

Redcar while attempting to reach Whitby. Chapman

notes:

Stoker learned of its master’s ominous vow to reach

‘Hell or Whitby tonight,’ which finds an echo in

Dracula when the correspondent of the (fictitious)

Dailygraph comments on the Demeter’s plight, ‘in

the words of one old salt’ she must fetch up

somewhere, if it was only in hell,’4

In addition, Chapman also notes that Stoker “may also

have read of the wreck of the brig Norwich Merchant on

Whitby Rock in 1850, in which the crew left only a dog

aboard.”5

A further story, penned by Stoker, was also reputed to

have been related to him by the Whitby coastguard

(again, noted by Chapman). His short story, The Red 4 Chapman, p. 37

5 Ibid., p. 39

Stockade: A Story Told by the Old Coastguard (published

in 1894), is a macabre tale of a group of plucky English

sailors who set off to

wage war against pirates.

The tale is a species of

southern gothic, replete

with sultry swamps and

alligators (who make a

meal of quite a number of

the crew) before they

arrive at the eponymous

“Red Stockade”, so called because it has been daubed all

over with human blood. Concealed within the stockade,

the pirates themselves are more bloodthirsty than

Dracula, and, indeed, exhibit one or two traits of Vlad III

of Wallachia (“Vlad the Impaler”; the historical character

on whom Dracula was allegedly based by Stoker),

despatching their victims with their weapon of choice

“the kreese” and placing heads on spikes afterwards,

much as Vlad III of Wallachia stuck spikes through the

bodies of his victims (see woodcut below).

Fortunately for British honour, the villainous pirates are

vanquished by the spirited sailors who manage to claim

the stockade for themselves by raising the British naval

flag over it and slaying them all.

Fifteenth-

Century

German

woodcut

featuring

“Dracole

Weyde”

dining

amongst his

victims,

featured in

Chapman, p.

48

The town’s strong links to the whaling industry should

not be overlooked as a source of inspiration for Stoker’s

famous text.

Tusks from the Narwhal; a

relic of the whaling

industry, as displayed in

Whitby Pannet Park

Museum

Whale harpoon; as displayed in Whitby

Pannet Park Museum

Mina Murray holds many

conversations with the eccentric

Mr. Swales, whom she describes as

follows: “He tells me that he is

nearly a hundred, and that he was

a sailor in the Greenland fishing

fleet when Waterloo was fought.”

When she tries to get him onto the subject of whaling,

however, she is disappointed, as “the clock struck six”

and Mr. Swales hobbles away, excusing himself thus:

“My grand-daughter doesn’t like to be kept waitin’ when

the tea is ready”6.

Gaskell featured the whaling industry heavily in her

novel Sylvia’s Lovers. Despite renaming the town

6 Stoker, Bram, Dracula (London: Arrow Books Limited, 1973), p. 70

A further literary

visitor to the town

was novelist

Elizabeth Gaskell,

who stayed at 1

Abbey Crescent,

Whitby, (see left) in

1859. Again,

inspired by the

historic town,

“Monkshaven” in her novel, the town featured therein is

clearly Whitby, complete with its “amphibious

appearance”7 and many steps leading up to the church

on the hill. Describing the inhabitants, Gaskell writes:

“Every one depended on the whale fishery, and almost

every male inhabitant had been, or hoped to be, a

sailor.”8 A tale of deception, adventure and romance, the

novel is set in the latter years of the eighteenth century

and describes a real event which occurred in Whitby

during a “hot press” (press-ganging event) in the town

which resulted in a riot in 1793. Subsequent to this

event, one Whitby man, William Atkinson, was convicted

of “encouraging the riot”9 and hung in York. To return to

Gaskell’s novel’s connection with Dracula however, we

need once again to return to Whitby’s famous graveyard,

which Gaskell describes as follows:

7 Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, Sylvia’s Lovers (London: A Public Domain Book, Kindle Edition, 2012), p. 5

8 Ibid., p. 5

9Anon., “Confession of William Atkinson of Whitby, Who was executed at Tyburn, near York, on Saturday, the

13th

April, 1793 from Whitby Repository and album of Local Literature 1868” in Ed. Dennier, Anne, Impress

Service: The Press Gang. Notes based on researches in the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society Library

(Whitby: Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society, 2005)

...it seemed strange how few other trades were

represented in that great plain so full of upright

gravestones. Here and there was a memorial

stone, placed by some survivor of a large family,

most of whom perished at sea:- ‘Supposed to have

perished in the Greenland seas,’ ‘Shipwrecked in

the Baltic,’ ‘Drowned off the coast of Iceland.’ There

was a strange sensation, as if the cold sea-winds

must bring with them the dim phantoms of those

lost sailors, who had died far from their homes,

and from the hallowed ground where their fathers

lay.10

The description recalls Mr. Swales’s “steans” in Whitby’s

“kirk-garth” “simply tumblin’ down with the weight o’ the

lies wrote on them”11 – tombs which are empty because

10

Gaskell, p. 51 11

Stoker, Dracula, p. 71

the “bones lie in the Greenland seas above”; those bodies

“slippy from lyin’ in the sea”.12

In terms of the wreck which most likely inspired

Stoker’s Demeter in Dracula, it is worth noting that none

of the crew of the original Dmitry perished in the wreck,

although the “crew were obliged to abandon her” [the

12

Stoker, pp. 71-2

Graveyard beside St. Mary’s Church, Whitby – ruins of the Abbey

behind.

Dmitry] after “her masts fell” and she became “a

complete wreck”13

13

Contemporary newspaper account of the wreck cited in Serena, “No. 44, The Dmitry” in Wreck of the Week:

A Historic England Blog (https://thewreckoftheweek.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/no-44-the-dmitry/) (accessed

18th

April 2015)

Famous Whalebone arch in

Whitby

Shape of the harbour in

Whitby, which almost

echoes that of the

whalebone above.

Val Derbyshire