No 100. My Worst Sea Voyage on the Leda. Dec .1959.

No 100. My Worst Sea Voyage.

To mark a Century of Articles for the Groat written under “Rain on my Window”, I took a long look back over the ones I have done, and enjoyed doing. I have had a lot of fun in writing of my long gone times, a lot of good crack with many readers nearly as old as myself, and with not so many now even older !!!
The sea is probably my favourite topic, with recorded family connections going far back into the early 1600s.
I turn to John Masefield’s memorable poem:-

“ I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down go to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.


On Monday 7th Dec 1959 Nettie and I made the first of our many trips to Norway to visit my sister Isobel, married Dec 1958 to Thorlief Johannessen. They lived in the town of Voss inland from Bergen.The sailing was from Newcastle to Bergen on the Leda of the Fred. Olsen Line. Sailing time from North Shields was 4 pm. On board we went out on the boat deck to have a brief look in the gathering gloom at the Tyne River. On the South Shields side were the huge cranes of the ship building industry that is no longer there. The wind had got up to a ferocious gale, the noise was horrendous, howling through the towering riverside cranes snugged down against the wind.

Going down the River Tyne at 4pm the ship was already listing to port with the weight of the South Easterly gale on her starboard side. Immediately the ship’s public address system called us all to assemble in the saloons where we had a head count and were told not to go outdoors under any circumstances. A crew-man at each door took care of that. When all heads had been counted the double steel outer doors were shut and locked. Porthole and window steel covers were likewise shuttered and locked. Ominous indeed.
We were told there would be no dinner that evening and were advised to go to our cabins forthwith and stay there. Suggested, indeed advised, was to change into our night attire and take to our bunks. We were in for a very bad crossing.
Our small cabin was well aft with an upper and lower bunk, probably about the cheapest we could get!! Drawbacks were closeness to the noisy propeller shaft and we would get an exaggerated movement compared to a cabin midships. No port holes either. We were entombed.

Abruptly the ship’s easy movement down the sheltered River Tyne changed as we crossed the Bar into the teeth of one of the heaviest South East gales ever recorded, immediately pitching and falling in the huge seas we could not see. Up and down, up and down, that stern cabin was no place to be that night.
We slept not at all. Our upper and lower bunks against the bulkhead had an outer rail like a hospital bed which kept us safely in place. As we pitched we would rise on the uplift, fall back down to meet our bunk on its way up again. Nearest thing to a bucking bronco is the best way I can describe it.
Over that long midwinter night we held on. The Leda pitched mightily. Then it rolled. Then it corkscrewed, a particularly bad movement. Then it tried to do áll three together. We could feel the ship was over shallower water, then deeper. The sea changed in direction and malevolence. Possibly the Captain changed course now and again as the sea dictated. I think he would have tried to head into the gale when he could as that pitching movement was the least uncomfortable.
Anyway we had every possible gyration a ship could go through other than turning turtle or just diving straight down. It did happen to a destroyer during the 1939/45 War which disappeared in an instant with all hands in full view of other ships, its back broken. I think we were too frightened to be frightened!! Just hold on, speak to each other now and again for re-assurance. That night was endless.
Morning came according to our watches but still the hell continued. Eventually a perceptible lessening of movement, enough to get our clothes tidy. By my calculation we had to be nearing the coast of Norway and coming into the lee of the land. We were due into Bergen at 1pm. No point in leaving the cabin just yet, and we were not hungry. No breakfast was served anyway that morning.
Then a calming, we were entering Bergen Fiord though still a fair bit to go. We ventured onto the now level deck to breathe deeply of fresh sharp air and enjoy the spectacular beauty of one of Norway’s wonderful fiords. The tops of far away inland mountains were snow capped.
Small islands slid past, wooden houses balanced precariously on the shore edge with small boats garaged to tiny timber jetties. The water was calm. The wind still howled above us but less so. The water-side wooden houses had splendid and varied colours, none of our British “You can have any colour you like as long as it is grey.”
Then a wonderful announcement, we would have plenty time for lunch before we docked in Bergen. The Captain came on over the public address thanking us in Norse and English, admitting it was the worst crossing he had ever done. He told us they would try to make up for it with the best lunch they could provide, and hoped we would enjoy Norwegian Cuisine.

And it was so. Buffet style, help yourself, unlimited lobster, crab, monstrous prawns, fresh salmon, smoked salmon with soured cream, gravalax salmon, pickled herring as only Norwegians can do, spiced herring, fairly tasteless fish balls like eating sea foam, nothing to get a bite on; meat balls Norwegian style which I liked, slices of cured ham Norwegian style, lamb in various guises, bowls of hot hard-boiled eggs, fresh bread and tasty rolls that the galley crew must have been working on as we neared the coast, croissants, real butter, real cream, jugs of good rich creamy milk, kultur milk very like the buttermilk of my youth and to which I became quite addicted, cheese in abundance, both Norwegian and French. Seriously good coffee with lumps of rock sugar that you put into your mouth and drank your hot coffee over, delicious. We made up for the missed meals, our appetites quite back to normal. Out of the now unshuttered windows we saw Bergen Fiord slide past, an ever changing kaleidoscope of colour.
Only when we reached Voss did we hear of the savagery of that storm. The eight members of the crew of the Broughty Ferry lifeboat Mona lost their lives going to the assistance of the North Carr Lightship which had broken from its moorings opposite Fife Ness. After the Lightship had been adrift for 36 hours the crew of seven were taken off by helicopter.
Two ships - the Norwegian freighter Elfrida and the German coaster Merkur, had foundered in the North Sea with a loss of 27 lives. Other vessels had been riding out the storm since it began, a number of ships had not been heard of for days.
Back home in Caithness there was another tragic loss that night of which we heard on the Radio. The trawler George Robb, outward bound from Aberdeen, was driven onto Duncansby Head, missing safety round Duncansby Head by a short half mile. The Coastguard helplessly watched the stricken vessel from the cliff top, unable to do anything to help. They fired a rocket to try to carry a line to the ship, the gale blew it back over their heads!!! At times they had to go on their hands and knees or be blown over. The twelve crew men of the George Robb lost their lives. So too did Eric Campbell, Station Officer of the Coastguard in Wick, who collapsed and died on the cliff top. Thirteen lost lives!!
A comment made by John Green, New Houses, Groats, summed it all up:- "The siren was being sounded at five minute intervals," he said, "but after it went four or five times, it became silent."

 

 

No 98. Old Threshing Mills.

No 98. SIMPLE THRASHING MILLS.
On a recent visit to Stroma, the birth place of my maternal grandmother Isabella Robertson, Sharon and I saw the remains of a very simple threshing machine. Little more than a device, it lay scattered on the barn floor in the steading just above the Haven. An old map shows the house as being occupied by Manson. It was a mirror image of an old hand mill I saw recentally with David Oag at Dalmore, Invergordon, photo attached. David keeps some wonderful old museum-worthy relics as a hobby. I hasten to add it was not his proper threshing mill !!
But it is in working order, if you felt like a bit of really hard work, while the Stroma one lay in scow. [ Orcadian for small bits!!! ] Really just a grain stripper to take the grain off a sheaf, one sheaf at a time and don’t feed too fast. The man on the handle had a hard job to do. That mill would just strip off the oats from the straw but not sort out the grain nor blow away the chaff, merely dump it on the floor below. The straw would come out over the end, thown out by the drum. It was so basic that you could hold on to the sheaf for a while till the drum had done its work of stripping. No shakers or any other frills at all, just a wooden pegged drum and light enough to be carried around by two handles at either end.
In my early days in Stronsay I saw crofters using something similar but never one quite so rudimentary. As I had seen David’s one some time ago at Dalmore, to find the same on Stroma gave me quite a shock, though it shouldn’t have. There are many other rusting relics of bygone farming days lying around Stroma, poignant reminders of the past. There was, among other items, the remains of an old Fordson tractor, an early petrol/paraffin Fergy, the starting handle still sticking out of its front, the carburettor still there along with some sparking plugs now rusted into it forever, a lorry chassis or two, many other odds and ends. Stroma could well supply a Museum if all was collected in one spot before it all rusts away entirely in the salty air!!
The Rousam crofters in Stronsay had some very simple and similar methods of threshing grain. The basic one was the flail, two hard wood staves joined by a leather souple, and very hard work indeed. To see a man using the flail was a ballet on its own, easy when you knew how. The tyro trying to emulate him was to court a crack on the back of the head, quite sore too!!
Next up the scale was indeed the hand mill, but the ones I saw were not so rudimentary as the Stroma relic. They still depended on a man laboriously turning a handle with someone else feeding slowly and carefully into the drum. As children we sometimes were allowed when visiting a croft to try one, there was little enough to go wrong. Still, one never knows with even the simplest of machines.
The next threshing mill was next Yernesetter in Stronsay, or rather the old steading that had belonged to one of the Churches, sometimes called the Chapel. Yernesetter was a frequent haunt of ours, their children and ourselves were of a time. The Chapel had a good barn with an old mill powered by horses walking the everlasting circular horse-course treadmill. It had a large diameter slow moving drum with hard wood replaceable pegs. There had been a similar one at Whitehall but Davie Davidson of Robert Scarth’s in Kirkwall, a most skilful millwright whom I got to know well over the years, had rebuilt it in my very early days with the high speed drum I really remember. The old one is but a faint memory, the drum lay out in the stackyard until it vanished.
The old mill at the Chapel still turned sweetly on the old bearings, and I think the Marshalls at Yernesetter used it to thrash their crop at one time and used the barn for straw and grain. It was in a fair sized building, still in use now as an implement store for another farm. The work rate was slow but quite enough for one pair of horses. These old mills were incredibly well made, even if using just wood and nails and skillfull joinery and big cast iron bearings with brass shells. The woods used I do not know entirely but ash would certainly have been one. Pitch Pine and Oak featured also for many farm uses other than just the trevise posts in the stable for the horses.
I still marvel going into an old steading and finding the mill still there. One remains at the old steading at Gillock, Wick. It turns as sweetly as ever, the belts still good, the bearings still well oiled though unused this long time.
I think the threshing mill at any place we visited as boys had a great fascination for us. The byres were predictable and somewhat smelly as byres were. But the mills with their sheaf lofts and grain lofts and straw barns provided a wonderful variety of styles and shapes and layouts. No two were alike, and had been modernised if at all as the buildings allowed. I never saw a new barn built in Stronsay, indeed apart from the Madhoos at our father’s other farm of Airy I never saw a new farm building built there in my time. Some of the old steadings were massive and lent themsleves to adaption. Others were a miracle of make do and mend.
Back in Caithness I looked in at Laidhay the other day just to remind me of what they had. Outside is the iron shafts and pinions of an old horse mill course though it would have been just under the surface when in use. In the barn stood two of these old hand mills I saw in Stroma, but these were in superb working order, standing one either way so you could see the ends without going to the wall, so to speak.
Next to them at Laidhay was a grain fanners. It reminded me that in bygone days fanners were an essential adjunct to these old mills, needed to separate chaff and odd bits of straw and weed seeds to leave a clean sample for the miller or for selling. We did such at Isauld in my time to clean up a sample to impress the meal dealer, or for our own seed oats, though the mill was excellent. Seriously hard work.
Fanners must have predated the full threshing mills that developed over the years. The diaries of William Tait of 1880 to 1941 contained monotonous and numerous references to dressing oats, practically every wet day was spent in the loft doing that boring task.
The example of a fanners at Laidhay is fully functional and of modern design. When I saw the two together, hand mill and fanners, the whole mileu of mechanising of threshing in bygone days fell into place. Only later would the full threshing mill be developed, Scotsman Andrew Meikle being given the credit for inventing the first one in 1784.
The later expansion of use of these machines with the need for not so many workers led to the Grain Riots. Notable were the Swing Riots of 1830 with farmers’ threshing machines being smashed as they were doing away with the need for so many workers. The rioters were dealt with very harshly, nine of the principal ones were hanged and 450 deported to Australia!!!

No 96. Pigeons. pb 8thy July, 2011.

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 97. One for the pot!!.

Today shooting is not so accepted as once it was but these were the times we lived in long ago. The old phrase “One for the pot” applied to many things, a salmon from a river pool, a deer off the heather hill, a pheasant out of a tall tree on a dark night. Pigeons were one of them but they were, though not domesticated, to some extent farmed.
Most farms and all large houses had a doocot for pigeons. At Whitehall it was at the far end of the sheaf loft, partitioned off and with a small door for entry. In the gable end were an array of pigeon-holes with a series of nest boxes inside along the walls which you can still visualise if you look in at any Post Office sorting office. The word will stay with us forever in daily usage though few might now know its origin.

Pigeon lofts, or doocots, were a feature of most farms and most large houses. In Caithness there is one at Freswick Castle but I believe the roof has now fallen in on this historic old building. The last time I saw it there was a wonderful heap of very old organic fertiliser inside. That must have been made good use of in bygone days in the Castle kitchen garden. There is one at Brabster House well away from the rest of the buildings, one at Dunbeath Castle just to seaward of the main road South, one at Stemster Mains up from the House. There is one on Stroma at the old Cemetary in the upper part of the famed Kennedy Mausoleum, beautifully built in stone. There is one at the Mill at Westerdale where I have shot pigeons as they escaped from the doocot. Fast work too while it lasted. There are many more scattered round.

At Cleat in Westray our Uncle Bill had a doocot, part of the farm steading. We had an adventure there. Our cousin Dave was home from studying Medicine at Edinburgh University. We were visiting and we had an evening after dark catching pigeons for the pot. A herring net was let down to close off the pigeon holes, then with tiny torches we caught our dinner. Today I would not, but this was how we lived long ago, and it should be recorded.
We take a different view now of these birds, they are not with us in the same vast numbers and we farmers have much to do with that. Modern farming has become much more efficient as we feed ever-growing numbers of people. The grain that sustained pigeons among so many other birds is swept efficiently up by combines and immediately into vermin-proof containers so the stooks and stacks and weed seeds that fed so many birds in my early days is long gone. There are some who would have us go back to the binder and stook, indeed there are schemes existing to be paid to grow grain and not to harvest it, to leave it for the birds. And there are people who are deadly serious about it, would have it increased and would indeed make it obligatory.

At Isauld in days long gone away we had flocks of blue rock pigeons sweeping across the Bay from Sandside Head on their way to feed on Upper Dounreay, or anywhere else. On occasion there would be one white one among the throng. They ran to their own clock, a predictable time in the mornings and a certain time in the afternoons on their way back to the Cliffs of Sandside where they dwelt in the caves. Called rock pigeons but just the same kind as the homing pigeon we still have. Or cluttering up Trafalgar Square for the tourists to feed, and adorning the adjacent buildings and Nelson’s Column in the usual manner!!! Fast fliers.
There were similar flocks at the back of Holborn Head, unfortunately featured in a really bad accident some years ago when three men I knew lost their lives on a pigeon shooting expedition into the caves with a boat. It was thought an unexpectedly big swell lifted their boat up against the roof of the cave and smashed the cabin with fatal consequences. The pigeons are no longer there.

We had our own litttle window on the pigeons. In the Whitehall straw barn pigeons at times would nest between the couple legs. There they laid their two white eggs which we would watch until they hatched. The chicks grew rapidly under our eyes till fully fledged and then out into the wide world. The pigeons were quite tame and not easily disturbed though we did not touch the nest nor come too close nor touch the eggs. Our vantage point for viewing was the sheaf loft looking out at a partition opening into the straw barn.
We could make friends, well, sort off, with a few pigeons. There was often some recognizable touch, a bit of white here, a mottled wing, a red or pinkish anyway pigeon or some other indivdual characteristic.
There were the ones that stayed close with us in winter, usually in the straw barn. A few grains of oats or some small titbits of bread were enough to make them quite friendly. Not to touch but to come down and pick our offerings off the ground. We tried to get them to eat out of our hands but, close as they came, we never quite succeeded. One would appear at the back door now and again for a few crumbs or to pick at a bit of stale bread thrown out for it, strutting proudly around with one eye cocked towards us, the other on the cat.

General feeding for the pigeons in winter was the stack yard. Blue clouds would descend upon the corn stacks, particularly when there was snow. Equally they descended upon the steadles after a stack had been taken in for threshing, cleaning up with many other birds, particularly blackbirds and sparrows. They would cluster on the barn roof, quite happy to share a bit of space with us. They would descend upon a field to pick up I know not what. They did not like the turnip field though an abandance of weed seeds were usually there. Landing among the turnips shaws I think was not to their liking.
Clover was, and both the rock pigeon and particularly the wood pigeon would take their share of the sweet leaves. The wood pigeons from the woods at Achvarasdal were lethal to young turnips at Isauld, sitting on the field dyke before swooping down for a good bite. Thankfully the young turnip plants grew fast and were soon beyond too much harm, though the headrigs took a battering.

There were some who had homing pigeons and now and again one would go AWOL and join up with the wild bunch. A ring on the leg denoted where from if one by mischance appeared among the shot ones. The owner was interested in finding out it’s fate and where found, but not in getting it back!! A homing pigeon that did not come back home was a dead loss in more ways than one!!!. You could not really blame one for joining up with it’s country cousins anyway.