Crofter's Tale: The REAL Story behind the Hartlepool Monkey Legend

There has been much written and spoken about the legend of The Hartlepool Monkey. Legend has it that one stormy night, a french cargo ship was stranded just off the Hartlepool headland. Such was the ferocity of the storm that the ship quickly broke up and sank, killing all souls on board. All that is except one. Locals looking for survivors came across a monkey, dressed in miniature French sailor uniform. It was alive. Because of the ongoing battle with Napoleon's forces, the locals (Crofters) interrogated the beast. Unable to understand it's responses they quickly assumed the beast to be a French spy. He was immediately tried and sentenced to death. But was it a monkey? or was it a 'monkey' - the term given to young boys whose duties on board an eighteenth century sailing vessel included loading gunpowder weaponry and shinning up the mast to the crow's nest to act as lookout? Either way, whatever it was, the good people of Hartlepool in the North East of England, saw fit to hang it for being a French spy. This book looks to tell the real story behind the legend and reveals for the first time how the 'monkey' came to be washed up on the shores of the Hartlepool headland and the sinister purpose behind his desperate, but futile, fight for survival.