Live Webcam at Whitby Harbour

More info: The harbour at Whitby has a total area of about 80 acres (32 ha) and is used by commercial, fishing and pleasure craft. Whitby Harbour has two lighthouses. Both are set upon the end of their own piers. The West pier was built in 1831 out of local sandstone and stands at 73 feet high. The East followed later in 1855 and stands at a slightly lower 55 feet.

Whitby harbour was originally the only viable ‘road’ into the town, and was used as early as the 1300s by merchants from Northern Europe to trade goods with the wealthy Abbey. At that time wine was the most common import and salt herring the most common export.

The first records of coal arriving in Whitby harbour were in 1392, from Sunderland. Coal was to prove invaluable later in the 1600s when it was used to process locally discovered alum. It would be alum that really made Whitby’s fortune.

As the alum industry grew Whitby needed larger cargo ships to export the product. They began to build their own vessels and shipyards sprung up along the West Bank of the upper harbour, so much so that by 1790 Whitby was competeing with Newcastle to be the second-largest producer of merchant ships.

Whitby was also an important town and port for the whaling industry up unitl the 1830s and on West Cliff stand huge jawbones of a whale which are a monument to those whales caught by the Whitby fishermen.

Whitby was the home port of Captain James Cook who made his first voyage of discovery aboard a Whitby-built former colliery, HMS Endeavour.