No 94. St Ola.

A 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 94. St Ola No 1. 1892 to 1951

No series of mine would be complete without reference to the first St Ola. A steam ship of 230 tons GRT, dimensions 135 ft x 22ft x 11 ft draft. I think she was built by Hall Russell in Aberdeen, based on a now old-fashioned trawler design. The Ola was small indeed compared to the present Hamnavoe, little bigger than one of her lifeboats!!
She crossed the Firth for 59 years from 1892 – 1951, making six daily return sailings per week with only a few cancellations in the interests of passenger comfort and safety.
The original layout of the St Ola had a bridge but no wheelhouse which was added later. Canvas dodgers were all the shelter the crew had on the bridge against the elemental fury of many of the Pentland Firth crossings. Behind the funnel was a small deck-house that gave access to the stuffy cabin below. For’ard was a doored scuttle giving access down to the forecastle, the domain of the crew when not on duty.

I was eight years old when I got my first sight of the St Ola, probably in September 1937. The Ola came from Stromness in the early morning to tiny Scapa Pier one mile from Kirkwall to collect passengers en route to Caithness. Charlie Tait of J. & W. Tait, our father’s first cousin, took us by car to Scapa Pier from his house at Buttquoy where we had stayed the night before while in Kirkwall. Our mother was taking us to Caithness for our first visit to our Granny in Inkstack.
Father stayed in Stronsay, probably still engaged with the herring fishing or perhaps more likely the harvest, so our mother had myself, David, Norna and Isobel in tow. We did one more crossing through Scapa Flow in 1939 with our father with us, then the Flow was off limits with the War and the Ola went west of Hoy for the remainder of my many experiences of her.
From Scapa Pier we scanned the coast to the West to catch our first glimpse of the Ola. A plume of far- distant black smoke, then a small dot which grew with each passing minute. Our excitement was intense, we were going abroad to Caithness in Scotland!! To an Orkneyman Scotland was, and still is to many, going abroad, called “The Sooth” or often just “Scotland”.
During these pre-war years the St Ola called on occasion at St Margaret’s Hope in South Ronaldsay or at Lyness in Hoy, touching briefly to pick up passengers and mail.
We did both. Lyness was in 1939 as father took us down the gangway to set foot on the Island of Hoy, and then back on board again!!
On the 1939 crossing he pointed out the tiny rock called The Barrel of Butter, one of the features of Scapa where he had been in the Army for a time in 1914 to 1918. In the far distance we saw it, a knob of an Island where the Territorials had hauled guns up the sheer cliffs. I think they might still be there, too arduous to recover.
Our first part of the crossing was within Scapa Flow, sheltered water. From Lyness a short sail took us round Cantick Head and out into the Pentland Firth. It would have been summer time when we did that trip but the sea was still restless. Scapa Pier to Scrabster was at least two hours, probably more. We spent all the time up on deck savouring new surroundings, the cliffs of Hoy, Dunnet Head far off to the South but getting closer, Stroma, our Grannie’s Island, well off on our port side.
We landed at Scrabster Pier to be met by our Uncle Hamish from Inkstack. I still remember the new leathery smell of his car, different from our own smaller Morris Ten.
Then to Inkstack and my first sight of real trees as we went down the Planting in Castletown.
I had not met our grandmother as yet and her Caithness dialect was almost incomprehensible to us. A foreign tongue. Plus her rapid delivery of words so we were lost. She being a native of Stroma did not help either!!!
Another St Ola voyage was in September 1941 going to school in Inverness when I was 12, the first of many such trips. By now it was War. This time it was Kirkwall to Stromness in a wooden seated bus, through a barbed wire gate and Identity Card inspection by rifle-armed soldiers at the head of the pier and on board.
It was my first introduction to Hoy Sound. Even in September the Ola met the incoming swell from the West, pitching heavily. Then round the corner of St John’s Head to head South towards Caithness and past the towering cliffs and The Old Man of Hoy.
In Sept 1942 my brother David joined me in Inverness. David Macrae from the Hotel in Stronsay had gone to Inverness the year before myself, and his brother Don was with David. Over the next few years when not flying with Fresson I went to Scrabster by the St Ola, then on by 6 hour train journey Thurso to Inverness. Even during the War it had a good dining car, attached to the train at the Mound. Officers travelled by the train on occasion in First Class, and any rank and file of course in Third.
Adventures during the War with the St Ola were seeing grey Navy ships passing, the Earl of Zetland or the St Ninian meeting us laden with Forces personnel going to “Bloody Orkney”. They came North to Thurso on the Jellicoe Express, a train for Forces only.
There were usually some Forces people on the St Ola. It gave us quite uncalled-for malicious pleasure to see a sailor being violently sick more than once. It was anyway a good Navy tradition, Admiral Nelson was said to be always sick when he went to sea.
I remember an Army officer rushed to the rail, unfortunately just as the Ola rolled. He got soaked to the waist by an incoming wave, and I do not think he felt it. Sea sickness is not funny.
We did our utmost to stay on deck in the fresh air, warmed at times by standing with our backs to the funnel. Down below the sea-sick atmosphere in the cabin was not conducive to anything.
In command of the Ola was Captain Swanson, a well-known tough old red-faced product of many long years at sea. In the forecastle we sometimes found Davy Logie, a good friend of our fathers. He featured in many a scrape but the two I remember were when he took a bag of rabbits infected with Myxymatosis to Orkney, a gift from our father off Greenland Mains to his fellow Orcadian farmers !!! .
The other incident was inflicted on Davy by his fellow crew-men. Knowing his friendship with our father, and having had a similar gift before, one of the crew gave Davy a bag and said it was some hens from Tom Pottinger who could not wait to give them personally as there was a sale on at Hamiltons Mart he had to rush off to it.
Leaving Scrabster Pier and off duty for a spell, Davy sat down on a box in the forecastle to pluck the hens. I did not hear the language when he opened the bag to find an offering of dead cormorants, but believe it was spectacular.