Whitby
On the North Sea coast, at the mouth of the River Esk, Whitby is a busy fishing harbour particularly herring fishing. There are remains of a 13th-century abbey. Captain James Cook served his apprenticeship in Whitby and he sailed from here on his voyage to the Pacific Ocean in 1768. Whitby was an important whaling centre and shipbuilding town in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 664 the Synod of Whitby, which affected the course of Christianity in England, was held there. The abbey was built on the site of a Saxon foundation established in 657 by St Hilda and destroyed by the Danes in 867. A Benedictine abbey was established in 1078, and the present ruins, reached from the town by 199 steps, date from 1220. Caedmon, the earliest-known English Christian poet, worked in the abbey in the 7th century. Near the abbey ruins stands the partly Norman parish church of St Mary. Captain Cook’s ship Resolution was built in Whitby, and the Captain Cook Memorial Museum commemorates the life of the explorer.