26 November 1925: In newspaper reports alerting readers to the disappearance of the steam drifter Research off Flamborough Head, John Robert JENKINSON was referred to as ‘Jack Sleddie’ or ‘Jack Slade’. The Leeds Mercury explained the variant name…

…a characteristic of Filey fishermen, being that all of them and their families are known by a by name.

The Mercury’s Own Correspondent went on to say of Jack…

[he] has saved lives on several occasions at the risk of his own, jumping overboard more than once to rescue men who have been swept off by a wave.

The fear on this day was that Jack had drowned, with two of his sons, two sons in law and two distant cousins. Eight Filey Men in Lost Boat.

There was some confusion initially. The storm that caused the disappearance of Research sank the Scottish boat Ardilley, but its crew was rescued “at the last gasp” by the trawler Beryl and taken safely to Hull.

Confirmation that the fishermen on Research had perished came the next day when objects from the vessel were pulled from the sea at Hornsea. They included a couple of bits of wood, one bearing the letter ‘Y’ and the other ‘42’. Built in 1902, Research had previously been registered at Lowestoft, Peterhead and North Shields. Although a recent arrival to Scarborough, she still carried her Great Yarmouth registration mark, YH421.

Here is the Hull Daily Mail report on the 26th.

FILEY CREW MISSING

FEARED LINK WITH FLAMBOROUGH DISASTER

SCARBOROUGH, Thursday – There is no news up to this afternoon of the steam drifter, Research, which went out of Scarborough, in company with the steam drifter, Boy Hector, on Tuesday night at 11 o’clock, and ostensibly was fishing off Flamborough Head on Wednesday morning, when the fierce gale arose.

There are now grave fears that the Research was the boat that was seen to go down off Flamborough Head, but there is no confirmation as yet.

The Research, which is one of the oldest drifters sailing out of Scarborough, was manned by a Filey crew, under the charge of William Cammish, of Scarborough, as follows:

John Robert Jenkinson, better known as Jack Sleddie;

Robert and George Jenkinson (his sons);

George Cammish and William Colley (sons in law of J. R. Jenkinson);

Ted Colley, and

Ted and George Jenkinson (two brothers, younger members of the family).

The engineer is a North Shields man.

The owners of the vessel are Messrs. T. Melrose and sons Ltd, North Shields, but she is run out of Scarborough under the management of the Filey Utd. Steam Trawling Company Ltd.

VAIN SEARCH ON THE ROCKS

Nothing to trace the identity of the steam drifter which was sunk off Flamborough Head in Wednesday’s storm is yet available (wires the “Mail” Flamborough correspondent).

Searchers have been on the rocks all night, but nothing has been found.

A party of Filey fishermen have just visited Flamborough to gain a description of the craft, as a Filey crew – skipper Jenkinson, his two sons and another six members of the crew are missing.

The reporter got a couple of the crew names wrong. There wasn’t a George Cammish or William Colley aboard. Other newspapers published mangled family names. The most accurate in the first couple of days was a Shields newspaper but they named the only man who wasn’t from Filey as “engineer Southern”, a married man with five children.

Three headstones in St Oswald’s churchyard bear the steam drifter’s name.

Joseph Edward COLLEY was the Mate on Research and not related to the Jenkinsons. Named in some reports as skipper, William Cappleman CAMMISH is remembered on his mother’s stone. She had died nine years earlier. Not surprisingly, the grave of Jane Baxter Crimlisk, Jack Sled’s daughter, remembers most of the drowned fishermen.

In loving memory of JANE B. CRIMLISK, born 1885, died Sep 20 1931.

Also of her husband GEORGE J. CRIMLISK, born 1885, and her father and brothers, JOHN R. JENKINSON born 1862, ROBERT JENKINSON born 1890, GEORGE F.B. JENKINSON born 1897, WILLIAM C. CAMMISH born 1895, all drowned in the ‘Research’ disaster, Nov 25 1925.

JAMES H.N. JENKINSON, born 1892, lost at sea 1911

‘Loved in life, treasured

in memory’

Also of FANNY ELIZABETH, widow of JOHN ROBERT JENKINSON, died March 27 1939, aged 75.

‘She suffered much, but murmured not’

Also of LILLIAN her daughter, widow of WM. C. CAMMISH, died Aug 6th 1949, aged 54.

‘Reunited in Heavenly love’

MATTHEW JENKINSON, died in infancy.

This man, photographed in a group outside the Ebenezer Chapel between 1910 and 1913, is named as “J. Sled” in an album kindly loaned to me some years ago by Ann Wilkie (WILLIS).  He would have been about 50-years-old. Photographer: Rev Stanwell.)

Find Jack and his family on the Shared Tree­ and their story told in more detail here.

Research is constantly remembered on Filey Promenade.