Frank Henry Algernon Mason was an exceptionally talented artist. Born in 1875 at Seaton Carew, by the age of eleven Mason was undertaking cabin boy duties on his grandfather�s brig delivering coal from West Hartlepool to Shoreham in Sussex. In February 1888 he undertook a course of study on the premier naval training ship HMS Conway and for two and a half years he learnt many practical skills for a future seafaring life. When he left in December 1890 he was too young to enter his chosen career as an apprentice with the Bengal Pilot Service so he went back to sea for a short while and then, abandoning the idea of the pilot service, he came ashore and took up an engineering apprenticeship with Pollock, in Leeds and later with Parsons who partly based him in Scarborough. Mason�s life was spent in the atmosphere of shipping and he once said �the sea and ships are in my bones�During the early 1890�s Scarborough had a colony of artists including Thomas Bush Hardy and Ernest Dade who cou...