Today's Object of the Week is a monument to a North-East naval hero – Jack Crawford.

A MONUMENT to a sailor whose actions led to the creation of a phrase still in common use stands in a North-East park.

The statue in Mowbray Park is dedicated to the Sunderland sailor, Jack Crawford.

It was unveiled in 1890 and depicts Jack in his most famous act – nailing a flag to a ship’s mast during the Battle of Campberdown of October 11, 1797.

On that day, a British fleet under Admiral Adam Duncan was engaged in the battle off the coast of Holland against the Dutch fleet .

Jack, a 22-year-old keelman from Sunderland, had been pressganged into the Royal Navy in 1796 at South Shields.

He was serving on Adm Duncan’s flagship, HMS Venerable, which led the charge into enemy lines.

With cannonballs flying everywhere, the top was blown off the Venerable’s main mast and Adm Duncan’s blue command flag – a flag that was only lowered as a sign of surrender – came crashing down.

Crawford, under intense fire, shinned up the remaining stump and, high in the air at the top, bravely nailed his admiral’s colours back to the mast.

And so a hero was born, along with the phrase ‘nailing your colours to the mast’.

In the victory procession in London, Jack was presented to the king and awarded a £30-a-year pension. The people of Sunderland gave him a silver medal.

Back on dry land, Jack fell on hard times, turned to the bottle and even sold his medal to pay for his drinking.

Jack Crawford died in 1831. He was one of the first victims of the horrific cholera epidemic that entered the country through the port of Sunderland.

The disease swept across the nation where it killed about 32,000 people.

Originating in India, this epidemic had already killed millions before entering Britain via Sunderland where the first fatality was a 12-year old girl called Isabella Hazard who lived near the River Wear. She died only a day after contracting the disease.

Because of his fall from grace, Jack didn’t get a headstone until 1888. Two years later, a monument was erected in his memory in his hometown’s Mowbray Park.

The park is also home to Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens and other notable monuments – including one to the Victoria Hall disaster, near the site of the Victoria Hall Theatre where, on June 16, 1883, an incredible 114 boys and 69 girls died in a crushing incident caused by a door that could only be opened one way..

lThanks to David Simpson of England's North East – englandsnortheast.co.uk – and Chris Lloyd for their help in compiling this article.