REDCAR has always had a close connection with seafaring – the first known building in the area was a 15th Century chapel, on a sandbank, probably dedicated to St Sulpitius, where the bodies of lost sailors were buried when they washed up on the beach.

“From the 21st Century, we must wonder at the panorama of the seascape with upwards of 50 sailing ships passing between Hartlepool and Huntcliff (Saltburn) each day,” says a newly re-published book about the 1820s.

The book, Redcar & Coatham by Janet Cockroft, was first published in 1975 but has now grown into a fourth edition, updated by Peter Sotheran, tells how in the winter of 1820, 73 boats were wrecked between Redcar and Whitby, with a single storm accounting for more than 30 of them.

Redcar tried to do something to turn this terrible tide. In October 1802, the townspeople and Lord Dundas raised £200 to buy the first lifeboat – now the world’s oldest surviving lifeboat – and until its retirement in 1880, it saved about 500 lives.

The big problem on the east coast was that there was no easily accessible haven harbour between the Tyne and the Humber, so ships had nowhere to run for safety – try getting into Whitby with gales tearing at your sails. In the 1830s, there was a plan to build a harbour at Redcar, known as Port William, on top of the rocks that were sinking so many vessels, but it would have cost £300,000 (£32m in today’s values) and Stockton, fearing for its position as a port, did its best to sink it.

The town’s biggest contribution to maritime safety came from one of its visitors. A blue plaque on the former Marks & Spencer’s shop on the High Street marks the site where Samuel Plimsoll stayed in a guesthouse and was inspired to create the “Plimsoll line”.

Plimsoll was a Bristolian – born, topically, in Colston’s Parade in 1824 – but grew up in Sheffield. His brother, Thomas, worked in the coal trade (he was manager of the Sunderland & Hartlepool Coal Company in the 1850s) and Samuel tried to follow him. However, he became more interested in the welfare of workers, like miners, in heavy industry, which led to him becoming elected as MP for Derby in 1868.

His activities brought him to the Redcar guesthouse on several occasions, either as a holidaymaker or because of his work with the Cleveland ironstone miners – in 1874, he addressed their union in Saltburn, for instance.

During the 1870s, 3,000 sailors were drowning every year, and while Plimsoll was staying in Redcar, he was struck by the number of wrecks on the beach and the sight of “coffin ships” plying their trade through the waves. “Coffin ships” were poorly maintained and overloaded, lying dangerously low in the water, with their crews paid by the amount of cargo they carried and so encouraged to load on even more.

In his guesthouse, Plimsoll was inspired to create a symbol that could be painted on the side of a ship to show when it was too heavily loaded.

It took a bitter political battle – at one point, Plimsoll threatened Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and shouted “villains” and “scoundrels” at the Speaker when his Bill was voted down – but in 1876 the Plimsoll Line became an obligatory mark to show the safe waterline.

And, in the same year, the Liverpool Rubber Company invented a canvas shoe with a rubber sole. The two parts were joined by a line which ran horizontally around the shoe. Below the line, the shoe was watertight. It reminded the company’s managing director of the new safety feature that was being painted on the side of ships in the docks and so he called it “the plimsoll” – so Redcar can claim to have played an important role in the creation of the shipside safety symbol and the decktop shoe.

BLOB Redcar & Coatham: A History to the end of the 20th Century, by Janet Cockroft is available for £14.50 from bookshops in Guisborough and Saltburn and also from the lifeboat museum in Redcar