long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 91. BIGGER BOATS.
At Midgarth in Stronsay Dod and Alex Tait, our granduncles, had several small boats and a towed flat bottomed barge for carrying sheep and Shetland Ponies to and from now deserted Midgarth Holm. The old houses once lived in are still there. More usually called Linga Holm, our gulls eggs Island, now taken over by the RSPB and a Grey Lag Goose sanctuary with devastating effects on nearby Stronsay farms!!
Dod and Alex also had the Hindenberg, the Admiral’s boat from the German Battleship of that name, scuttled in Scapa Flow with the German Grand Fleet in 1919. Many ship launches survived as they were used to take the German sailers ashore from their sinking warships. Only a few sailers were shot in the kerfluffle and lie forever in the local Cemetary at Lyness. A beautiful boat as befitted an Admiral’s Barge, but also very well built and practical, fitted with a superb engine. Used by Dod and Alec for towing the barge to the Holm and sometimes for special trips.
There was one occasion when our Uncle Steven from Birmingham in Staffordshire was home at Whitehall on holiday. Actually he came from Willenhall where his medical practice was but we always said Birmingham as that was the Big City for which Willenhall was and is an outlying town.
The Midgarth men, Dod and Alex,, our father, his brother Steven, and I think one or two more for company, went with the Hindenberg a day to Eday to visit Jamie Stevenson in Carrick House, then farming there. He eventually moved to Midhouse in Evie on the Mainland,.still family owned.
Carrick House was spectacularly positioned on the Eday shore of Calf Sound and from it’s own small pier the boat came out to the Steamer when it did not call at Eday Pier, lying at slow speed in the Sound till loading and unloading was done. On the west going ebb tide it always fascinated us as the ship turned round to face the ebb tide but the wrong way round for us going to Westray,, keeping position as need be with the engine slowly turning at half speed or slower.
In bad weather narrow Calf Sound could be spectacularly and notoriously a sea-sick passage, with the Red Head on the Eday side and the Grey Head on the Calf of Eday on the other. Indeed there were not many places in the North Isles where a bad passage could not be encountered when wind and tide declared it.
Calf Sound also always fascinating for us on our way to Westray to visit our uncle Bill as it was there that the Wick born pirate John Gow and his vessel “The Revenge”, ran aground on the Calf of Eday by missing stays in the narrow tidal channel. They were captured on February 17th 1725 by his so called friend James Fea of Carrick House, also of Clestrain in Stronsay. Gow and seven of his crew were subsequently hanged together at Execution Dock in London.
Quote- “Gow had asked for a speedy dispatch so the executioner pulled him by the legs, but so hard that the rope broke. So Gow, still alive and sensible enough to climb the ladder a second time, returned to the gallows to be hung for a second time. Their bodies were left in the Thames for "three tides" after which the corpses of the two ringleaders were bound in chains and tarred before being hung on the river bank of the Thames - a grim warning for those who might follow in the footsteps of the Orkney Pirate”
John Gow was the hero, if you can call him that, for Capt Cleveland in Sir Walter Scott’s Book “The Pirate”, set in the Orkneys and Shetlands. Scott was given credit for coining the modern name “Jarlshof” for that wionderful Archeological site at Sumburgh Head in the South End of Shetland. There we find well preserved remains of Stone Age dwellings right through to the Viking Age and on to a Middle Age Mansion House, now a roofless ruin and sitting on top of a very ancient Brough.
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The trip from Midgarth on Linga Sound to Carrick on Calf Sound must have been memorable and Jamie Stevenson and his wife provided a sumptious dinner centred around very fat roast ducks. It would be described as “A Grand Feed, boy.”.
I do not know what they had to drink but it must have been copious, probably Home Brewed Orkney Ale, deadly at times. Our father, who was nornmally an excellent sailer, admitted to being sick on the way home across the tide. A man’s stomach can only take so much!!! His brother Steven was quite unsympathetic!!
One of father’s friends was Robbie Stout from Linksness, a good smallish farm at the western tip of Stronsay. He was originally from Westray and a very good. seaman,
David and I went out with him in his boat one evening long ago to have a quiet night’s fishing in Eday Sound. We were equipped with long bamboo rods we called wands, three hooks on each, white goose feather lures, no reels. . We used various other lures for fun but all were taken. The white goose feathers were the best though. It was a good night, we caught almost too many fish to handle. Baskets of them.
Robbies son Jim, a yamal and old school mate of mine, in later years had a seine net fishing boat working out of Stronsay. He was in Kirkwall one time long after we had come to Caithness when I was looking for a passage out to Stronsay, so I hitched a lift, so to speak. He said it would be a rough trip. So I wedged myself tight into a corner of the wheelhouse for the 2½ hour voyage. The sea between Islands could be quite ferocious depending on the tides and the wind, Stronsay Firth being notorious. It lived up to it’s reputation that night.
After safely getting to Stronsay and on dry land once again, I asked Jim just how bad he had seen it. Quite laconic, he said he once took the Stronsay team to an Inter-Island football match with Sanday. On the return trip late in the evening with a bad sea running, he said his seine boat had been laid totally on her side. He thought she would not come upright again. But it did !! Such was Island life. Jim was for a time Coxswain of the Stronsay Lifeboat.
Tom Sinclair of St Catherines near Rousam, on 26 May 1954, set off from St Catherines at the inner end of Rousam Head in Stronsay for Kirkwall in his 23 ft converted ships lifeboat. He was last seen near the Green Holms in Stronsay Firth. It was thought his boat was overwhelmed there by a sea in the strong tide. Wreckage came ashore near the Black Craig in Shapinsay and on Deerness on the Mainland, but Tom’s body was never found. The Stronsay Lifeboat, Edward Z. Dresden, under command of Coxswain Tom Carter, searched the area for 24 hours. Of Tom’s boat they found the mast and some other wreckage but of Tom there was never a trace. He had gone right through the War in the Navy I believe without harm, and was an accomplished seaman.
The last word belongs to Valtheof Olafson, a brother of Swein Asleifson, Asleif being their mother’s name. He was a wealthy Viking farmer in Breck or Brekkur in Stronsay, the old name for Whitehall Farm. A field at the back of the Village is still called Corcubreck. . With his men and a ten oared boat he was heading for Kirkwall en route for the Yule Feast with Earl Paul in his Great Hall in Orphir,.of which traces still exist..
. Crossing the Stronsay Firth towards Kirkwall for the celebrations, about 1100 A.D., they were overwhelmed and never heard of again!!. It was reckoned a sad loss as Valtheof was very accomplished and well thought of.
You never do know with the Sea.
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