Shadowmancer author Graham Taylor is writing a film script about the day, almost 100 years ago, when the German High Sea Fleet bombarded Scarborough. STEPHEN LEWIS reports.

DECEMBER 15, 1914 was just another day for Mr A Bell, the road foreman in Burniston, near Scarborough. Until he was approached by an erect, sprightly gentleman with white hair and a clipped moustache, that is.

According to an article on the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre’s website, the stranger spoke with an odd accent, which Mr Bell thought at first was Scottish. And what he said was: “You will be safe here behind that rising ground when the Germans come.”

Mr Bell was perplexed. Britain was at war, yes: but the prospect of the Germans coming to Scarborough seemed laughable. He said so. “But they will, and quickly too, you’ll see,” the stranger replied.

And come they did. There was no land invasion. Instead, early the next morning, warships of the Imperial German Navy’s High Sea Fleet opened fire on Scarborough and two other east coast towns, Whitby and Hartlepool. Within an hour, 135 people lay dead.

The first shells fell on Scarborough at just after 8am on December 16. According to the Scarborough Mercury, a Mr Crossland, who lived in Queen’s Parade, saw three battleships as they steamed towards the town. At first, he assumed they were British warships – and that the spits of fire he could see were signals. But then, he told the Mercury, “a shell came hurtling through the roof of the house… the room was left in intolerable confusion, and holes were torn in walls”.

The bombardment continued for three quarters of an hour. Several important targets were hit – including the coastguard station on the castle hill, and the castle itself: its ten feet thick walls were ‘shattered as though mere timber’, according to an account.

Historian Bob Clarke, in his book Remember Scarborough published last year, describes how the Grand Hotel was hit more than 30 times, and how shells fell on numerous other guesthouses and hotels, and on shops and other properties in the Esplanade area.

Worst of all was the shell that hit No 2 Wykeham Street – home to the Bennett family and a number of paying guests. Four people died: Johanna Bennett, 58; Albert Bennett, 22; John Ward, ten; and George James Barnes, aged five.

The loss of life was terrible – in addition to the 135 people killed in the three towns, more than 500 were seriously injured.

But as Mr Clarke makes clear in his book, the attack was a catastrophic miscalculation on the part of the Germans. It incensed the nation – and fuelled a government recruiting campaign. “Men of Britain! Will you stand this?” screamed one poster, featuring a picture of the Bennetts’ house.

Among the people in Scarborough the morning of that attack were the two grandfathers of bestselling author Graham ‘GP’ Taylor. One was a local policeman, Talla Taylor, originally from York. He was, says Graham, a “hit ‘em first, question them later copper” – and he was on duty the morning of the attack. As was Graham’s maternal grandfather Robbie Barnes, a member of the coastguard.

“When the bombardment began, he rushed up to the castle, thinking the Germans were invading, and burned all the maps,” Graham says. “Then when he saw the Germans sailing out to sea, he stood there shouting ‘come back, you b******s!”


With the anniversary of the bombardment only a few years off, Graham, a former policeman and Vicar of Cloughton who lives in Scarborough, is now working on a film script about the events of that day.

It is, naturally enough, the human drama that interests him: that white-haired stranger with the odd accent who warned a workman the day before, and the woman who had apparently been bedridden for 40 years, “then when the bombardment started she jumped out of bed and ran down the street!”

But there is more, much more, Graham says.

In the course of his researches he claims to have uncovered evidence of German spies in Scarborough, and even of IRA terrorists lurking around. And there was the German U-boat captain who, Graham says, would row ashore and visit the cinema.

Most chilling of all, however, Graham believes there is evidence the British government of the day may have known about the attack in advance, and yet chose to do nothing. The reason? They knew the attack would cause outrage, and help their drive to recruit more young men into the armed forces.

“It was decided… to use the event to raise the 100,000 troops urgently needed in France,” he says.

If true, that would be monstrous. Graham hopes to explore this and other claims in a TV documentary he would like to make about the events of that day.

He’s also keen to see the town commemorate the anniversary in some way. “I would like to see Scarborough remember the event in a fitting way, with possibly an exhibition, memorial service and naval visit,” the bestselling author of Shadowmancer and Mariah Mundi says.

• GP Taylor is keen to hear from anyone with information or family records about the day in 1914 that the German navy shelled Scarborough. He can be contacted at revgraham@btinternet.com

• Remember Scarborough by Bob Clarke is published by Amberley, priced £12.99.