A ship of war was stationed in the Humber to board incoming whalers and impress men for service in the navy. To escape, numbers of the men were landed at Easington or at lonely spots farther north, and these would make their way home as best they could by land. Another very ingenious trick was worked successfully by the captain of a whaler which was boarded by a revenue cutter off Flamborough Head. This is how Captain Barron in his _Old Whaling Days_ tells the story:— A revenue cutter hove in sight off Flambro’ Head when Captain Scoresby was returning home with a full ship. When he saw it in the distance, he let four or five feet of water into the hold through a large brass tap which some whalers had in their counters on purpose to fill their casks for ballast. This was kept running, so that the pumps could not gain upon it, and when the officer boarded the ship he was told she made so much water that the crew would not be able to keep her afloat if he took any away. The officer sounded the pumps, and was satisfied in finding when they stopped pumping the water rose in the hold. He took his departure. The tap was at once turned off, and the water pumped out. This clever trick saved his men from being forced on board His Majesty’s ships. On another occasion—in 1798—the _Blenheim_ was boarded in the Humber by _H.M.S. Nonsuch_, and a free fight followed, in which two of the warship’s crew were slain. For this the captain of the whaler was brought to trial at York. But he was acquitted on the charge of murder laid against him; and when the York coach brought him safely home to Hull, ‘the crowd took out the horses, dragged it to the Market Place, and ran it three times round the statue of King William’ by way of showing their joy. The warships of this period, were, of course, vastly different from the battleships of which English seamen are so proud to-day. Many were built in the Humber; the largest being the _Humber_, an eighty-gun ship, launched at Hessle Cliff in 1693. _H.M.S. Hector_ was built by Hugh Blaydes fifty years later. During the years 1739–1774 three warships were built at Paull, six at Hessle, and fifteen at Hull. A memento of the _Hyperion_, built at Hull in 1806, still exists in the name of a small street running off Great Union Street, and a neighbouring street bears the name of a very popular whaler, the _Aurora_. [Illustration: A HUMBER PILOT BOAT.] * * * * * The first steamship used on the Humber was one built in Scotland, and hence appropriately named the _Caledonia_.[66] This steam packet ran between Hull and Selby in 1815. Five years later the _Rockingham_ was built at Thorne, and the following year the _Kingston_ began the ‘expeditious and easy conveyance’ of passengers from Hull to London. Footnote 66: