This was revised and rewritten 30 January 2022 with many thanks to Stella Sterry for her information
Thomas Atkinson, the writer of the Whaling Journal of Thomas Atkinson of Kirkleatham, 1774, was a young man of 21 when he made the voyage to Davis Straits.
He was born in the spring of 1753 in Kirkleatham, a North Yorkshire village a couple of miles from the mouth of the River Tees.
His father Thomas was Master at the Hospital founded in Kirkleatham in 1676 by Sir William Turner for the relief of ten "poor aged" men and women and the relief and upbringing of "ten poor boys and ten poor girls".
The "poor boys" and "poor girls" usually entered the Hospital at the age of eight and left at sixteen. At this time most of the boys came from the North Riding, from Scarborough to Askrigg, but some came from much further afield – from Ticknall in Derbyshire, Bristol and Hertfordshire. They included the sons of a local clergyman, a Darlington bookseller and a Northallerton attorney, which must indicate that, in addition to the poor children, the school was taking paying scholars. This was usual in schools that began as charitable foundations.
Thomas Atkinson's mother was Elizabeth Featherstone (c1720-1805). His parents were married in Westerdale in 1749, so Elizabeth may have been the Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Fetherstone, who was baptised in 1720 at Danby in Cleveland.
It seems very likely that Thomas Atkinson's sons were taught alongside the boys of the Hospital. Wherever they went to school, he and his brothers clearly received a good education; Thomas's second son William was to become a Doctor of Divinity and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.
The career chosen for young Thomas may have been influenced by the surgeon employed at the Hospital (at a salary of £50, compared to the £45 paid to the Master), but the Hospital was also in contact with the York Infirmary whose surgeons pronounced one boy's "scrofulous disorder" as incurable in 1773.
In his mid-teens Thomas's parents sent him to Ripon to be apprenticed for 6 years to William Chambers of Ripon, described by Thomas's father in the family Bible as "an eminent Surgeon and Apothecary".
Then on 27 February 1774 at the age of 21, he went to sea as a surgeon on the Hope of Whitby, on a whaling voyage to the Davies Straits.
We don't know why he decided to make the trip. Perhaps it was a hankering for adventure; perhaps he wanted to find out how he would cope in harsh conditions. We don't know how he came to choose the Hope, but it's interesting to see that at this time one of the boys at the school was Thomas Peacock, son of the Revd John Peacock, curate of Stainton in Cleveland. Perhaps they had a family connection to Captain Robert Peacock of the Hope.
It is clear from young Thomas Atkinson's journal that it wasn't the sea that took his interest, but the strange new lands he encountered and, above all, the Inuit.
So it isn't surprising to find that, the following year, his curiosity and love of adventure led him to work for the Hudson's Bay Company.
At the beginning of June 1775 he took up his post as a surgeon at Moose Fort (now Moose Factory), the Company's oldest settlement in Ontario, established in 1673 about 11 miles from the mouth of the Moose River on the shore of James Bay.
This was the home of the Cree and Anishinaabe peoples, but from the 17th century it was where the British and French fought over the fur trade.
In 1776 the Company was planning to establish a post on Lake Superior. So they sent out a party of 5 men – Thomas was one of them – with two Indian families and instructions to "Build a Halfway House". They set out on 16 October 1776 from Moose Fort and travelled about 200 miles by canoe along the Moose River, and by sledge, until on 11 December they reached "Wapuscogamee" Creek.
Thomas chose a site for the Company's post – it was half a mile or so from the mouth of the creek, on the west bank of the Missinaibi River, which flows into the Moose River. On 14 December they began to build a log tent in which they were to spend the rest of the winter.
When the spring came, they laid the foundation for the post and by early August 1777 Wapiscogamy House was ready for occupation. Thomas was in charge there until 31 May 1778.
I hope he was a good doctor, because he wasn't very good at choosing a place for a trading post, or at planning its building.
A report to Edward Jarvis, chief at Moose Fort, in 1781 described a site vulnerable to attack with no way of seeing the attackers coming. There was a large creek within 200 yards of the back of the house and a ridge of high land within 100 yards, and at one end of the small, inconvenient house (it measured 26 feet by 18 feet) there wasn't a window or a port hole.
The foundations were laid direct on the ground, so it wasn't possible to dig a cellar without undermining either the chimney or the frame of the house. They couldn't find anywhere to keep the gunpowder except "directly under the fireplace" and the summer heat spoilt their "Salt Geese". Edward Jarvis decided it would be better to build a new post somewhere else.
By this time, Thomas Atkinson had been moved on to Henley House, a transit post on the junction of the Albany and Kenogamy Rivers. He was Master there for 3 months from September to December 1779. Perhaps he was filling in for the arrival of another man because he dropped down to Assistant for the next few months. From June 1780 he was Assistant at Albany, the company fort on the James Bay, and then he left for home on the Royal George on 21 September 1781.
On 21 September 1788, when his father repaired the family Bible and recorded the most recent details of his children's lives, he wrote proudly that his eldest son had been "sometime Governor" of one of the Company Forts and was now "Surgeon at the English Settlement in Honduras Bay".
So Thomas, having experienced the extremes of heat and cold in Northern Ontario, had taken a post in Central America, where the British were cutting logwood and mahogany. There had been a British settlement in Belize for over a hundred years.
An undated entry in the family Bible records that it was there that Thomas died.
The manuscript is a contemporary fair copy of Thomas Atkinson's original journal and may not be in Thomas's own hand. It is possible that it was transcribed by a relative. It bears a strong resemblance, particularly in the decoration and flourishes, to his father's graceful hand.
By the end of the 19th century the journal was in the possession of his sister's granddaughter, Miss Margaret Langborne of Whitby, who gave it to one of her great-nieces.
Further posts on Thomas Atkinson and his family:
Sources
Parish Registers of Easington and Kirkleatham
Turner Hospital Records (Teesside Archives and NYCRO)
The Will of the Revd William Atkinson, TNA (PROB 11/1771)
The Will of Thomas Galilee, TNA (PROB 11/1296)
'Biographical Register Volume II 1666 – 1905', Christ's College
Venn Alumni cantabrigienses, Cambridge 1940
(with thanks to Suzan Griffiths, Librarian of St Catharine's College, and Ruth Waite, alumni officer of Christ's College, Cambridge)
Hudson's Bay Company Archives online at the Government of Manitoba's Culture, Heritage, Tourism and Sport website: Biographical Sheet for Thomas Atkinson
