YOU have missed the performances on the coast, first in Whitby and then Scarborough, but York writer Graham Sanderson, director Jan Kirk and the Settlement cast do so much to evoke the Whitby shoreline and stormy North Sea that this week's shows in York will still have plenty of poignancy.

One hundred years ago, on October 30 1914, the hospital ship Rohilla ran aground off Whitby and there followed one of the most celebrated rescue missions in Yorkshire's maritime history.

The stage is divided into scenes on the stricken ship under the command of Paul Baxter's Captain Neilson and the lifeboat community of Whitby and in particular the family of Frank Potts (Ged Murray), his wife Dorothy (Beryl Nairn) and daughter Amy (Lucy Simpson).

Fact is mixed with artistic licence as Sanderson creates the characters of Amy and her young love, soldier Charlie Porter (Anthony Harrison), to whom she sends letters on the Front.

This enables Sanderson to contrast men heroically rescuing others from the sea with men killing fellow men in the Great War across the waves. It is a device that works superbly, aided by Simpson and Harrison's supreme performances.

Rohilla, York Settlement Community Players, Friargate Theatre, York, at 7.30pm tonight, 2pm and 7.30pm tomorrow. SOLD OUT.