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Display in Whitby shows what was found after General sank
ONE of Whitby's most tragic seafaring disasters was when The General Carleton, a 400-ton merchant ship built in Whitby, sank in the Baltic Sea in 1785.
With it sank with its crew off the coast of Poland during a storm.
Leader of the excavation project, Dr Waldemar Ossowski of the maritime museum and his team uncovered fascinating discoveries from the bed of the Baltic.
The Polish Maritime Museum set about its excavation work in 1995 and one of the first discoveries was the ship's bell.
The ship was on her way home when she went down with a load of tar and iron.
The tar had leaked out of the crushed barrels resulting in the wreck being preserved including the ship's bell, clothing, bottles, and a stove.
General Carleton was discovered in the Baltic off Gdansk and excavated by the Polish Maritime Museum in 1995.
A new exhibition at the Captain Cook Memorial Museum in Whitby features clothing which has been preserved in cold mud.
Dating from the 18th Century, it's the kind of clothing sailors were supplied for an expedition of Polar exploration, organised by the Admiralty in 1773.
The exhibition sheds fresh light on exploration in the 18th Century Navy and is now open for people to view.
Northward Ho, a voyage towards the North Pole 1773, features perfectly preserved items excavated including items of clothing preserved in the Baltic.
Dr Ossowski brought the artefacts to Whitby.
The items on display are stockings, a knitted hat with the remnant of a pompom, black leather shoes and a pair of hand-knitted mittens.
Dr Sophie Forgan, chairman of Trustees of the Cook Museum Trust, thanked trustee Barbara Woroncow for arranging it for the 225-year-old items to come here.
Northward Ho, is about Captain Constantine Phipps' voyage towards the North Pole in the Racehorse and Carcass, naval vessels specially strengthened to withstand the ice.
The main purpose was to test the belief that ice only formed near land and that beyond the ice around Spitzbergen lay an open polar sea, an easy route to the east.
The exhibition tells how the ships were nearly lost in the ice and how a young Nelson famously encountered a polar bear.
Phipps and Cook were both connected to Whitby and both were exploring at the same time.
Phipps hosted the Polynesian Omai at his home.
It was a small world.
The clothing from Gdansk helps bring that world to light.
While Cook was searching for the Great Southern Continent, the Admiralty sent Phipps towards the North Pole to test the belief that the sea itself did not freeze and that ice only formed near to land, with implications for the search of that elusive northern passage to the east.
Captain Phipps, sailed north of Spitsbergen (modern day Svalbard), but were trapped in the ice, only extricating themselves with difficulty.
The Captain Cook Memorial Museum, Grape Lane is now open for the season and the exhibition will run until the end of October.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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