Mysha

Of course, I meant "1889". Dohhhh!

With regard to the "many hundreds" debate, I still think this is an exaggeration. A disaster of that magnitude would have made national news. The main fishing ports along the coast between Scarborough and Grimsby are: Scarborough, Filey, Flamborough, Bridlington, (Hornsea and Withernsea to a lesser extent), Hull, Cleethorpes and Grimsby. There's no record of massive fatalities along the Yorkshire coast – certainly not to the extent of the 1871 storm. Flamborough was a particularly tight-knit fishing community, and certainly until a few years ago, when the Great Storm was referred to, it was 1871. The point I'm making is that I doubt the scale of fatalities that occurred in Grmsby would have been repeated all along the coast.

The loss of seventy from one port is a huge disaster, and this might have been exaggerated even further in the belief that other ports had suffered to the same extent. Just to change the subject slightly, I'd always been under the belief that a huge number of whaling ships were lost from Hull in the 1830s – the height of the industry there – whereas, in fact, the number actually lost was 8.

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