This is an expanded version of the article that appeared on the Facebook page of the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire. I thought it would be quick and easy as away of adding a post without much work, as Julia has me down for various household jobs today. It took longer than I thought. Easy things are seldom as simple as they sound.

Wednesday 16 December 1914. 8 am. Three German warships appear out of the mist and open fire, sending 500 shells into the undefended town of Scarborough. Seventeen people are killed and eighty suffer serious injuries, two of them dying in the next few days. 

The ships then sail off to attack Whitby, killing 3 people and damaging many houses. Three shells hit the abbey, including a direct hit on the West Front. The damage they inflicted on Scarborough Castle and Whitby Abbey can still be seen today. The West Front at Whitby was rebuilt in the 1920s, using pre-war photographs and pictures as a guide. The remains of the barrack block at Scarborough were demolished and removed.

Meanwhile, another group of battleships bombard Hartlepool, which, with three guns in coastal batteries, is better able to fight back. According to research done in 1965, 122 civilians were killed and 443 wounded. Five soldiers and two sailors were also killed and 14 military personnel wounded. German casualties, inflicted by the Hartlepool guns, were 8 killed and 12 wounded.

Private Theophilus Jones of the Durham Light Infantry, killed at Hartlepool, becomes the first British soldier to be killed in Britain for 200 years.

Medallion commemorating the dastardly attack on Scarborough, 1914

In military terms little was accomplished. The Germans had multiple aims – to ambush and sink defending Royal Navy ships, to depress civilian morale, to tie up British troops to defend the coast, and to inflict losses on munitions production. They seem to have failed in every one. Equally, the Royal Navy failed to engage the retreating German ships in decisive action and were unable to demonstrate their control of the North Sea to either the Germans or the British public. Politically, “Remember Scarborough!” became a powerful recruiting slogan, and American attitudes began to harden against Germany.

Government propagandists chose to concentrate on Scarborough as it was the best known of the three towns, being a popular holiday resort, and had no defences or military production facilities. It did have radio stations working with the Royal Navy, but that was ignored at the time.

Scarborough would be attacked again, though there is no medallion for the second attack. On September 4 1917, a U-Boat surfaced and engaged anchored trawlers in South Bay. They were being employed by the Royal Navy as minesweepers and, being armed, were able to defend themselves. Shots were exchanged – one British sailor was killed and stray German shells killed two civilians on shore. After four years of war, showing how the nation had become accustomed to death, the reporting showed no more outrage at this news than it did to the rest of the local news.