Yes, the Civil War thing is a makem myth.
The way they tell it, the brave folk of Sunderland defeated the cruel oppressors of Newcastle at the Battle of Boldon Hill. This was mentioned on Sky before one of the derby games a couple of years ago, they did a big feature on it with film taken just along the road from me.
In reality, their town, which was no more than a small port at the time, was used as a landing place for the invading Scots army, who fought the English forces, who were barracked at Newcastle, on Boldon Hill. The result according to all sources, apart from the one that apparently all makems use on the subject was an indeterminate draw. It was a week later that the Scots took Newcastle. Nowt to do with makems at all, in fact they'd have been hard pushed to raise a division of soldiers from Sunderland in those days, seeing that their population was less than 1000.
only less than a thousand cos of the sea, and the dead ones, and what about massive lads fans in the land in between?