THE legacy of a Whitby man will fund a £100,000 project to restore rare records which give a unique insight into the town's seafaring past.
The Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society has purchased the Muster Rolls of the Whitby Merchant Seamen's Hospital thanks to a substantial grant from the Thomas WV Roe Deceased Trust Fund.
Mr Roe was jet curator of Whitby Museum and died in 200
7, leaving a £1m bequest to the society which runs the museum.
The documents were discovered in the 1980s in the attic of the Whitby Merchant Seamen's Hospital Houses in Church Street and were deposited with the society for safekeeping.
They represent 71 years in the history of the town's population and its ships and have been hailed as a rare survival of records relating to merchant shipping by the National Archives.
They begin in 1747 and continue up to 1818 providing an unbroken record of almost 4,500 rolls.
The documents list the names of the crew often with their age, place of birth, the port where and when they enlisted, when they left their ship along with its name and the name of the vessels' owners.
Honorary librarian and archivist at Whitby Museum, Christiane Kroebel, said: "Their importance to Whitby cannot be understated."
The muster rolls were the result of an Act of Parliament in 1747 to support maimed and disabled seamen as well as their widows and children.
One of its provisions was that every sailor over 14 years old was to contribute sixpence per month.
