In 1785 when the Henrietta made her annual voyage to the northern seas she had on board William Scoresby who in five years’ time was to become captain of the vessel.  He was the son of a small farmer at Cropton and was born on the 3rd of May 1760.  His parents wished him to keep to agricultural pursuits and after a very brief education at the village school he commenced this arduous form of labour at the age of nine.  He kept to this work until he was twenty when he could no longer resist his longings for a broader sphere of work.  To obtain this he went to Whitby and apprenticed himself to a ship-owner.  He acquired a thorough knowledge of seamanship with great rapidity and in his second year of service at sea detected an error in the reckoning which would otherwise have caused the loss of the ship.  For this, his only reward was the ill-will of the mate whose mistake he had exposed.  He therefore joined the Speedwell an ordnance ship carrying stores to Gibraltar but falling in with the Spanish fleet the Speedwell was captured.  Her men having been taken to Cadiz they were sent inland to San Lucar de Mayor.  From that place, through being somewhat carelessly guarded, Scoresby and one of his companions were successful in making their escape.  They reached England after various adventures and Scoresby having endured many hardships at sea settled down again to farm work at Cropton for two years.  Although having only the very smallest means he was married at this time to Lady Mary Smith (she was born on Lady-day), the eldest daughter of Mr John Smith, a landed proprietor in a small way and a native of Cropton.

Having reached the position of skipper of the famous Henrietta, in 1790, when only thirty years of age, Scoresby was saved from the financial extremes to which he was likely to have been reduced, owing to his small income and the increasing expenses of his family.  Having successfully commanded the Henrietta for seven seasons and having augmented in this way the incomes of the half-dozen Pickeronians interested in the success of the ship, Captain Scoresby’s reputation stood high in the Greenland trade.  In 1798 he accepted the more advantageous offers of a London firm to command the Dundee.  It was on his third voyage in that ship that, having called at Whitby as usual to say good-bye to his wife and children, Scoresby allowed his third child, William, to go on board the ship as she lay in the roads.  When the time came for him to go ashore he was nowhere to be found, for having taken into his head the idea of going the voyage with his father the little fellow had hidden himself.  The shouts for “Master William,” however, brought him to the top of the companion at the last moment, but his father, understanding the boy’s great desire to stay in the ship, decided to take him.