This story appeared in a series of articles by Forrest Frank in 1920 in the Scarborough Daily Post - This story came from Captain John Wilson
Already, even when I was a boy, there were a few smacks, whose coming in the first place had been much resented, and the men who came in them and settled in the port were regarded practically as foreigners. But they brought trade to the sailmaker, the carpenter, the blacksmith, the butcher, and the baker, and their number increased so that Scarborough lads went prentice in them, yawls were converted to trawlers, and local money went in provision of more.
Some of the original Smacksmen lived in the little cottages on the sands, between where the Lifeboat House and the Salt-Water baths now stand, before the foreshore was built. Amongst them were the Besoms, the Tobeys, the Perkins, and the Buckets. Nicholas Maddick, who afterwards kept the Fishermen's Arms, between the Brittania and Pump Hill, was another who came to town as a smacksman. Old Mr Alwood, another of them, lived in Princess Street, where his sons, George and James, were brought up. They went 'prentice with their father out of Scarborough, and as young men went to Grimsby, where they developed the smack industry tremendously, took the flowing tide of steam trawling in its infancy, and founded the Alwood Fleet, which became one of the biggest firms in the Kingdom, and materially helped to make Grimsby what it is today.
