18th century

The mass building of maritime vessels is recorded as having started around 1730,^[16] though this does not acknowledge the small-scale building of fishing cobles, which had been happening along the Yorkshire Coast for centuries beforehand. George Young attributes this to what was built before as being simply boats, whereas, after the early 18th century, the harbour was greatly enlarged which allowed ships to be built.^[17] The town had a fishing industry during this time, but it was a very small operation in comparison to the fishing fleets at Robin Hood's Bay and other ports on the Yorkshire Coast. However, until the expansion of the upper harbour at Whitby in the 1730s, fishing boats were built on the seaward side of the bridge straddling the upper and lower harbours.^[18] Also, vessels registered to the ports of London and Newcastle in 1626 are described as having been built in Whitby, with one ship, The Pelican, weighing 170 tonnes (190 tons), being constructed by Henry Potter and Christopher Bagwith.^[19]

But traces of shipbuilding can be found even further back; in 1301, the town was called upon to furnish a vessel for use against the Scots. Again in 1544, the town stated it would "provide ships for war", on condition that the harbour was repaired,^[20] and, in 1724, Daniel Defoe visited the town and claimed Whitby as a place "....where they build very good ships for the Coal Trade[sic], and many of them too, which makes the Town[sic] rich."^[21]

Shipbuilding on an industrial scale seems to have commenced around 1717, when Jarvis Coates launched William and Jane, a three-masted vessel weighing 237 tonnes (261 tons).^[22] Coates had been in business since 1697, when his name first appears in a rate book.^[23] By 1706, the town was the sixth largest port in Britain, having over 130 vessels built in Whitby.^[24] A dry dock was uncovered underneath a car park on Church Street in the town during building works in 1998. The town had a plethora of dry docks for the maintenance of ships during the 18th and 19th centuries. The dry docks at Whitby were the first in the region, and only the second behind those in Portsmouth which were built between 1680 and 1700.^[24]

Whitby shipyards produced a significant proportion of the merchant ships built in England and Wales. In the period 1790 to 1793, their market share of new merchant vessels ranged between 10.1 per cent and 11.6 per cent of the total. In 1792 and 1793 Whitby was the second largest ship-building port in England and Wales.^[25]: 59 (London and Hull were the other large ship-building towns in the last decade of the eighteenth century.^[25]: 13)

The most famous of the shipyards was that of Thomas Fishburn, who along with his business partner Thomas Brodrick, built many vessels, including the famous 'Whitby Cats'.^[26] Their yard built 88 ships between 1790 and 1815, making them easily the biggest yard in the town.^[25]: 59 The Cat was a particular type of vessel that was described as being "bluff in the bow and flat in the floors for maximum capacity".^[27][28] The ships were colliers, and transported coal from Newcastle to London and points between in the days before the railways.^[29] The Cat's shallow draught allowed them to beach and unload their cargo whilst stranded and be refloated come high tide.^[30][31]

The term 'Cat' could be seen as confusing, as at least two writers, Peter Moore and Karl Heinz, have identified differences between a 'Bark' and a 'Cat'.^[32] Three of Fishburn's vessels (Earl of Pembroke, Marquis of Granby and Marquis of Rockingham) were all purchased and renamed Endeavour, Resolution and Adventure. Resolution and Adventure were chosen by Cook himself when they were tied up in Whitby. All three had originated in Fishburn's yard, an impact that Moore states as being

...far from being an obscure business on a provincial river, Fishburn's shipyard was becoming something of a Georgian Cape Canaveral: a launch site for expeditions to new worlds.^[33]

Cook was known to be familiar with these ships, having served on board several cats and barks as part of his apprenticeship during his early days in Whitby.^[34]

The shipbuilding industry led to many other industries in the town such as rope-making and sail making. Two roperies were on the eastern bank, and three others on the western bank of the river. One ropery, at Spital Bridge on the eastern side of the river, where the Spital Beck flows into the Esk, was over 380 yards (350 m) long.^[35] This was used up until just after the First World War.^[36] At least four sailmakers were located in the town (usually in buildings known as sail lofts.)^[37] Whilst most of these were located on the side of the shipyards or the water, one, owned by Campion was situated in the upper part of Bagdale and produced a special type of sailcloth which did not use starch in its preparation as most other manufacturers did.^[38] The yardage of cloth produced in the late 1770s was about 5,000 yards (4,600 m) annually, of which, most was supplied to the Royal Navy in London.^[39]

Timber yards were also one of the main functions of the town before the use of iron and steel in shipbuilding. Timber, hemp, flax and tar were all needed for the shipbuilding industry, and many of these came from the Baltic States via ships.^[40] But as the Gulf of Riga traditionally froze over winter, many Whitby ships were in for repair, which led to an increase in the number of dry docks in the harbour area.^[41] The winter work that was carried out on the vessels was a lucrative sideline to the shipbuilders, as in the latter part of the 17th century, this brought in around £2,200 to the port every year. This sum can be compared with the wages earned over one year for a captain of a ship (£131) and an able seaman (£43).^[42]

Timber was originally sourced from Yorkshire, probably from the Vale of Pickering area, and it required a good number of oak trees per each ship built. Marquis of Granby (later HMS Resolution), was estimated to have been constructed from at least 200 mature oaks.^[43] As Whitby was isolated from the rest of Yorkshire by its surrounding moorland, transportation of the oaks was problematic as it took an old route over Lockton High Moor.^[44] It is believed that the 1759 act to provide a turnpike between Pickering and Whitby, was in part down to the necessity of transporting wood from the Pickering area to the Whitby Shipyards. The route still exists today as the A169 road.^[45] Timber was later also imported from Hull and other English ports.^[46]

During the 1790s, the ship- and boat-building industry in Whitby was at its zenith, with almost 12,000 tonnes (13,000 tons) of shipping launched in the year from 1790 to 1791. This made Whitby the third largest producer of shipping in Britain after London and Newcastle, with Hull, Liverpool, Yarmouth, Whitehaven and Bristol, being less productive than Whitby.^[48][49]

19th century

A peace treaty signed between the warring parties at the cessation of the Napoleonic Wars created a decline in the shipbuilding industry in Whitby; however, by the 1830s, shipbuilding was on the increase again.^[50]

In 1870, the yard of Turnbull and Son switched to constructing ships made of iron instead of wood. A year later in 1871, Turnbull's launched the first Whitby-built steamship, SS Whitehall.^[51] The number of ships and overall tonnage grew steadily and provided a keen income to the yard. In 1882, they launched eight ships with a combined weight of over 13,000 tonnes (14,000 tons).^[52] However, in the following year there was a depression in the market and Turnbull's only launched four ships with a combined weight of 7,000 tonnes (7,700 tons).^[53] This saw their workforce decimated from nearly 800 men to just 70.^[54] Turnbull and Son launched their last vessel, SS Broomfield in 1902, which brought an end to the great shipbuilding in Whitby as Turnbull and son were the last "significant shipbuilders".^[55] The last years of building ships into the early twentieth century, saw their displacement rated at over 5,700 tonnes (6,300 tons), which was proving too much for the width available at the swing bridge in Whitby.^[56] Even though the swing bridge was replaced in 1909,^[57] with a width of 70 feet (21 m),^{[58][note 4]} it was too late for the shipbuilding industry as the skilled workers made redundant from Turnbull and Son, went off to work in other shipyards away from the River Esk and Whitby.^[62] Another cause for the loss of the shipbuilding business was that by the turn of the 20th century, steel and iron were the materials that ships were mostly made from, and Whitby could not compete with shipyards on the Tyne, Tees and Humber rivers who had a plentiful supply of metals on their doorstep.^[63]

20th century

Other than an occasional or small boat build, ship and boat building disappeared from Whitby, though the widened 1909 swing bridge ironically allowed captured enemy ships from the First World War to be brought into the upper harbour and scrapped.^[64] Boats of that size, typically 5,000 tonnes (5,500 tons), would not have been able to reach the upper harbour through the old bridge.^[65] Also during the First World War, the former Turnbull shipyard was sold to the Albion Trust who were hoping for a resurgence in shipbuilding at Whitby to support the war effort. In 1917, two ferro-concrete vessels were launched from Whitby, but no further building was undertaken.^[66]

Boat building on a regular basis returned to Whitby in the late 1990s, when Parkol Marine Engineering, an established repair and engineering business, started constructing small fishing vessels such as trawlers and seine craft.

Many of the shipyards on the western bank of the River Esk have been lost, first under the railway, and during the latter half of the twentieth century, to a supermarket and marina development.^[67]