Henry Wyrill was born in Scarborough on the 25 August 1809, the son of James Wyrill also a fisherman and Mary Harris. Aged twenty-two, on the 31st May 1832 he married Jane Stanhope and they went on to have seven children, three boys and four girls. He lived on Whitehead Hill before moving to Sandside and by the time he retired he was employing 48 men on his fishing smacks. He died on 16 August 1885 aged 75
On the 14th November 1857 the Sunderland brigantine, Elizabeth, with a crew of five was making its way from Memel in Prussia to London; as she was passing the Yorkshire Coast a storm blow up. The crew fought hard to control the ship, but by the time it was passing by Scarborough they were fighting a losing battle. The Elizabeth hit rocks to the south of Scarborough Spa and started breaking up from the pounding of the waves.
The Scarborough fishing community could see the difficulty the Elizabeth was in and there was no means of reaching the crew from the cliff side and the waves were too strong for anyone to swim to shore. Henry Wyrill, a local fisherman, immediately put together a small crew and set to sea in his small fishing smack. They courageously fought their way across the swirling South Bay seas and somehow pulled alongside the Elizabeth getting all five of the Elizabeth’s crew into the fishing smack. Even as the rescue was being made the Elizabeth was breaking up. Henry then returned the fishing smack back to the safety of the harbour. It was said that by the time they had reached the harbour the Elizabeth had been totally destroyed.
At the time of the incident Scarborough’s lifeboat facilities were run locally and RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) had not been adopted at Scarborough. However, at that time the RNLI didn’t just award lifeboat men but also anyone who affected a special rescue by wading or swimming into the sea from the shore or other such rescues, and as such Henry Wyrill was awarded the RNLI Silver Medal. He was only the fourth Scarborough man to receive such an award, and to date there have been fourteen RNLI Silver Medals and four Bronze Medals awarded to Scarborough men.
Visit :
Scarborough RNLI Lifeboat Station, Foreshore Road
Read :
Shipwrecks of the Yorkshire Coast A Godfrey 1976
Shipwrecks of the Scarborough Coast C Coupland 2014
