Lil
speaker
737 appearances
4 recordings
2 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Lil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
But before we begin our climb to catch up with Mina on her quest to rescue Lucy, we must take a short detour to Tate Hill Sands and a different chapter of Dracula in which Stoker's story weaves together real-life events with his own imagination and a healthy dollop of local folklore.
Nearing the end of Church Street, the cobbled road veers to the right and begins to slope upwards as it begins the ascent up East Cliff. But we carry on straight ahead, squeezing down a narrow gaff between a pub called the Broad Inn and the Whitby Jet Heritage Centre, emerging at the top of a short flight of stone steps that take us down onto Tate Hill Pier.
This pier is much shorter and plainer than the newer East and West Piers, a nod to its much older and more humble beginnings.
There are no wrought iron lamps, railings or lighthouses here, just a broad, sturdy stone pier jutting out into the harbour, a pile of lobster pots at one end and a small sandy beach known as Collier's Hope nestled in the elbow-like crook where it joins the base of East Cliff. The name Collier's Hope hails from the days when coal-carrying vessels known as Colliers would offload their cargo here.
but it's also served as a safe haven for many a ship seeking refuge from raging storms over the centuries, including one that made it from the front page of the Whitby Gazette newspaper straight into the pages of Dracula, the Dimitri of Narva, or, as Bram Stoker calls it in his novel, the Dimita of Varna.
Through journal entries and cuttings of the fictional Daily Graph newspaper, Stoker paints an atmosphere of expectant tension, as at the end of a sultry summer's day, a great storm starts to brew.
In a clever juxtaposition, we have the lightness and innocence of happy holidaymakers making day trips to nearby tourist attractions such as Mulgrave Woods and Robin Hood's Bay, whilst off the coast, dark clouds begin to gather. Old salts squint at the horizon from their favourite weather-watching spots on the East Cliff and warn of something vicious rolling in.
And, as readers, we understand that those gathering storm clouds signal something even more vicious than they know, because Dracula is about to arrive at Whitby.
Tensions suitably built, the tempest breaks with terrifying speed, sending small fishing boats hurtling for harbour before a growing fury of spume-topped waves. Onlookers watch in horror as a schooner just off the coast, still in full sail, and having apparently ignored all warning signs of the coming danger, careers towards a treacherous reef that lays between it and the port.
With the tide high, gale force winds in her sails and mountainous waves lashing the vessel, no one can see how the ship could possibly make entrance to the harbour without being dashed to bits on the reef. But then, in a rush of dank sea fog and a crash of thunder, the schooner sweeps between the piers and into the harbour to the relief of the onlookers.
But the celebrations are short-lived because the vessel does not pause, instead hurtling on towards Tate Hill Pier. And as the ship crashes into the sand and gravel bank of Collier's Hope, the onlookers realise that the steersman, who had seemed to so skilfully guide the ship's perilous entry, is actually a dead man, whose lolling corpse is lashed to the ship's wheel.
As the schooner rams into Tate Hill Beach and parts of the rigging come crashing down, a huge black dog appears from below decks and leaps onto the sand, pelting away towards the cliff and the churchyard of St Mary's. Dracula has arrived.
This event was immortalised by pioneering local photographer Frank Meadows Sutcliffe, who became famous for branching out from the Victorian trend of posed portrait photography and made a name for himself, capturing candid shots of Whitby life.
Featuring working class residents going about their daily chores, children playing, scenes of the town's picturesque landscape, a glimpse into the real Whitby of the 19th century and a chronicle of the events that affected its residents, including the wreck of the Dimitri.
I purchased a print of the scene a long time ago on one of my younger visits to Whitby and it's a photograph that I can stare at for hours. Sutcliffe's candid photographic style that tells a story with every shot is so unexpected for the era that I almost feel like if I look hard enough at the scene I'll be able to see the characters moving and the story will play out in front of my eyes.
The sepia photograph conveys the aftermath of the destructive power of the storm. A ship rests tilted at an angle on the beach beneath a shelf of the East Cliff, with the tombstones of St Mary's Church are just visible above.
Its masts and rigging lay in a broken pile in front of it like so many snapped twigs, while the small figures of people swarm around it, clambering on and over the broken timber. The figures are slightly blurred.
They were likely moving during the relatively long exposure time required for Victorian plate photography, and the movement evokes a sense of frenetic energy and a frisson of excitement that would have doubtless accompanied the unexpected event.
I can't help but feel that the photograph helps to blur the line between fact and fiction, as this feels like something that could have come straight out of Mina's collection of newspaper cuttings pasted in her journal. I'm almost disappointed not to spot a large black dog in the photo, scampering off up the cliff. And what of that great black dog?
Well, that brings us to another chunk of Whitby's lore and legend that Stoker cleverly worked into his story.
Showing 661–680 of 737 · page 34 of 37
← Previous
Next →