The Yorkshire Mary Rose

The ship 'General Carleton' was built in Whitby in 1777 and sank off the coast of Poland in 1785. When she was excavated in the 1990s a wide range of artefacts were recovered many of which, due to being coated in tar from the ship's cargo, were in a remarkable state of preservation - most notably a unique collection of sailors' clothing. It is because of the picture these objects give us about life, both aboard and ashore, for 18th-century mariners from Whitby and other coastal towns in the North-East, that 'General Carleton' has been called the 'Yorkshire Mary Rose'. This book is the story of 'General Carleton', of those who built her, owned her and sailed on her in an age of war, shipwreck, privateers and press-gangs; it is the tale of an ordinary merchant ship in extraordinary times.

Stephen Baines is Yorkshire born and bred, and has ancestors who were mariners of Whitby in the 18th and 19th Centuries. After studying at Cambridge University he did a post-graduate year at Oxford before training as a teacher in London. After his marriage he moved to East Anglia where he has lived ever since, within easy reach of the North Sea. He taught for several years in a local comprehensive school before moving to the Sixth Form College at Colchester where he introduced the International Baccalaureate. After retiring from full-time teaching in 2006 he worked for two years part-time at the University of Essex, lecturing in Philosophy.
He has written articles on problem-solving, educating very able children, Anglo-Norman sculpture, the sheep-breeder Jonas Webb, mediaeval drinking habits and on the ship 'General Carleton'. His other interests include gardening, ornithology and croquet. He has three children and three grandchildren.

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