Monday, 30 May 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 27 May 2011
No 93. Brough Crossing.
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 93. The Pentland Firth. Edited from first copy //
With the Pentland Firth so much in the news at present as the answer to all our future power problems, I thought it time to take a look at the waters over which my g.g.grand father JamesTait, who died in Inkstack in 1854, had taken his cattle. So I got a copy of the 13 hourly tide charts either side of High Water Dover [HWD]. The Pentland Firth was much more complex than I thought, no way can I do justice to the many tides and swirls and eddies and counter flows in a wee article. But from family connection I took a look.
. The story Wm Tait told of his grand father James Tait above taking 18 boats with 216 cattle across the Pentland stays with me. Scapa Flow was easy, reasonably sheltered water, but setting off round Cantick Head into the Pentland Firth the weather broke so they turned back and went into the old Viking Anchorage of Long Hope. There they off loaded the cattle and waited a week. Off again, but once more the weather broke. Nine boats kept going, nine turned back to Long Hope for a further week before final crossing.
With the tide charts before me I noted that with the last three hours of the east going flood tide there is a west going eddy close in to the cliffs of Hoy from Cantick Head to Tor Ness. This strengthened westwards on the turn of the tide at the beginning of the ebb. Ride that eddy and with a good sailing wind the boats would have been well off Tor Ness long before the tide turned. They would have headed out anyway into the last of the flood tide and the first of the ebb and be across the narrow seven miles between Tor Ness and Dunnet Head very quickly. These boats could sail well with the right wind. The “birlin” trading vessel of the Hebrides or the “knarr” of the Vikings could do up to nine knots if the wind was right, approximately ten miles an hour Good boats.
At the start of the west going ebb tide the Merry Men of Mey begin their dance just off St John’s Point, close in at first. As the ebb gathers strength the Merry Men reach further across towards Tor Ness, but ease off next St John’s Head as the ebb continues. By the two hours at the last of the ebb the sea off St John’s Point is quite quiet, though the Merry Men are still dancing off Tor Noss. To be avoided.
I thought then of all the places where James Tait might have landed on the rocky Caithness shore. Not an easy coast for sailing boats with no engines. The phrase “at the mercy of wind and tide” had real meaning for a sailor.
With 12 cattle to a boat a safe and secure landing place was essential. Dunnet Head provided a choice. If the wind got up in strength, or changed direction, they could alter course to go either side of Dunnet Head.
. If a strong easterly was blowing, a good wind for crossing from Hoy but blowing right into Brough Bay, the boats could go west of Dunnet Head and into the beach inside Dwarwick Head below Dunnet. There the sand and the rocky shore meet just along from the present caravan park. They could beach their boats there and off load the cattle. If the wind was westerly, and that is a direction from where the wind can blow up quite quckly, the boats could go into the lee of the east side of Dunnet Head and slip quietly and easily into the shelter of Brough Bay. It was the preferred landing place anyway, a shorter voyage. It was from Brough that one of my great grandfathers John Tait emigrated from Inkstack to Orkney, also three brothers and a sister. Ham was also well used for Orkney traffic, mostly grain and horses but passengers too.
There were no harbours as now we know them in Caithness at that time. At Scrabster ships lay suspended between their anchors and the four rings attached to the rock face below the Lighthouse. They were loaded from the shore by many small boats. The old map of 1841 of Thurso Bay and Scrabster, of which I got a copy from the Records Office in Edinburgh and which is now in the Harbour Masters Office, showed no pier at Scrabster until after that date, just a small neb into the water suitable enough for small boats. It also showed four ships at anchor and attached to the rings.
Thurso Rivermouth was tidal, impossible at low ebb. Castlehill Harbour, built by James Traill circa 1828, was just that, a harbour to load and export James Traill’s flagstones. It was well built, making use of a natural verticle rock face on the west side, easy to see when the tide is out. Dwarwick Pier was not bult till the 1890s.
Small slipways were sanctioned by James Traill in 1831 to be built if need be by the Comissioners of Northern Lighthouses at the harbours of Brough and Ham for the building of Dunnet Head Lighthouse by Robert Stevenson in 1832. Traill stipulated and reserved the continued use of any piers so built for tne use of his tenants. Huna and Sannick Bay were good landings, Huna particularly for Stroma cattle. Sannick was well known as a landing for South Ronaldsay cattle, the old pens still to be seen there. The state of the tide had much to do as to when and where to land at Sannick, the Bores of Duncansby being deadly when running.
.
At Staxigoe they had rings either side of the harbour to suspend ships between them. Most of the export of grain from Caithness was from Staxigoe.
As Aneas Bayne wrote in 1734, “The Trade of export of the Shire of Caithness consists mostly in Corns, wherof they export in any good year 16,000 Bolls, at the Ports of Thurso, viz:- Scrabster Road, a small way West of the Town , and at the River Mouth, and at Staxigoe Harbour near the Town of Wick, half meal, half bear.”
Even before the ebb tide changes to flood there is an easterly eddy coming close in round Dunnet Head, the first of the flood tide. This strengthens on the early flood. So wind permitting east of and inside Dunnet Head was their first choice. A North easterly wind, the Helm Wind of the Vikings, rarely gets up without notice as a westerly can though it can be a strong steady wind. In the interests of safety it gave James Tait a wonderful choice to land his precious cargo.
The essence of cattle transport was to find a beach of sand or shingle on which to run the boats, off loading by simply laying the boat over on its side and walking the cattle off. Or jump maybe, but it would be a low jump. Built piers were of no value for loading cattle, nor needed. James Tait’s main cattle landing beach was Brough, well sheltered from most airts of wind, a good shore on which to land
and a good flat space just above the beach to use as hauling ground to get the boats out of the water if the weather dictated. It was used in my early recollection by many Brough boats, and others, but these are now very few in number.
The Clett Rocks there helped the shelter too.
From Brough Bay or Dwarwick as occasion demanded the cattle were a short drive to 93 acre Grotistoft in Barrock Hill, where James Tait farmed from 1818 till 1843. There the cattle would be got ready for the long drive South to Carlisle. Then his final move to Inkstack in 1843, but by then nearing 63 years old I think, with a better and larger farm of 300 acres and 8 labourers to work it, his droving days would have come to an end.
No 93. The Pentland Firth. Edited from first copy //
With the Pentland Firth so much in the news at present as the answer to all our future power problems, I thought it time to take a look at the waters over which my g.g.grand father JamesTait, who died in Inkstack in 1854, had taken his cattle. So I got a copy of the 13 hourly tide charts either side of High Water Dover [HWD]. The Pentland Firth was much more complex than I thought, no way can I do justice to the many tides and swirls and eddies and counter flows in a wee article. But from family connection I took a look.
. The story Wm Tait told of his grand father James Tait above taking 18 boats with 216 cattle across the Pentland stays with me. Scapa Flow was easy, reasonably sheltered water, but setting off round Cantick Head into the Pentland Firth the weather broke so they turned back and went into the old Viking Anchorage of Long Hope. There they off loaded the cattle and waited a week. Off again, but once more the weather broke. Nine boats kept going, nine turned back to Long Hope for a further week before final crossing.
With the tide charts before me I noted that with the last three hours of the east going flood tide there is a west going eddy close in to the cliffs of Hoy from Cantick Head to Tor Ness. This strengthened westwards on the turn of the tide at the beginning of the ebb. Ride that eddy and with a good sailing wind the boats would have been well off Tor Ness long before the tide turned. They would have headed out anyway into the last of the flood tide and the first of the ebb and be across the narrow seven miles between Tor Ness and Dunnet Head very quickly. These boats could sail well with the right wind. The “birlin” trading vessel of the Hebrides or the “knarr” of the Vikings could do up to nine knots if the wind was right, approximately ten miles an hour Good boats.
At the start of the west going ebb tide the Merry Men of Mey begin their dance just off St John’s Point, close in at first. As the ebb gathers strength the Merry Men reach further across towards Tor Ness, but ease off next St John’s Head as the ebb continues. By the two hours at the last of the ebb the sea off St John’s Point is quite quiet, though the Merry Men are still dancing off Tor Noss. To be avoided.
I thought then of all the places where James Tait might have landed on the rocky Caithness shore. Not an easy coast for sailing boats with no engines. The phrase “at the mercy of wind and tide” had real meaning for a sailor.
With 12 cattle to a boat a safe and secure landing place was essential. Dunnet Head provided a choice. If the wind got up in strength, or changed direction, they could alter course to go either side of Dunnet Head.
. If a strong easterly was blowing, a good wind for crossing from Hoy but blowing right into Brough Bay, the boats could go west of Dunnet Head and into the beach inside Dwarwick Head below Dunnet. There the sand and the rocky shore meet just along from the present caravan park. They could beach their boats there and off load the cattle. If the wind was westerly, and that is a direction from where the wind can blow up quite quckly, the boats could go into the lee of the east side of Dunnet Head and slip quietly and easily into the shelter of Brough Bay. It was the preferred landing place anyway, a shorter voyage. It was from Brough that one of my great grandfathers John Tait emigrated from Inkstack to Orkney, also three brothers and a sister. Ham was also well used for Orkney traffic, mostly grain and horses but passengers too.
There were no harbours as now we know them in Caithness at that time. At Scrabster ships lay suspended between their anchors and the four rings attached to the rock face below the Lighthouse. They were loaded from the shore by many small boats. The old map of 1841 of Thurso Bay and Scrabster, of which I got a copy from the Records Office in Edinburgh and which is now in the Harbour Masters Office, showed no pier at Scrabster until after that date, just a small neb into the water suitable enough for small boats. It also showed four ships at anchor and attached to the rings.
Thurso Rivermouth was tidal, impossible at low ebb. Castlehill Harbour, built by James Traill circa 1828, was just that, a harbour to load and export James Traill’s flagstones. It was well built, making use of a natural verticle rock face on the west side, easy to see when the tide is out. Dwarwick Pier was not bult till the 1890s.
Small slipways were sanctioned by James Traill in 1831 to be built if need be by the Comissioners of Northern Lighthouses at the harbours of Brough and Ham for the building of Dunnet Head Lighthouse by Robert Stevenson in 1832. Traill stipulated and reserved the continued use of any piers so built for tne use of his tenants. Huna and Sannick Bay were good landings, Huna particularly for Stroma cattle. Sannick was well known as a landing for South Ronaldsay cattle, the old pens still to be seen there. The state of the tide had much to do as to when and where to land at Sannick, the Bores of Duncansby being deadly when running.
.
At Staxigoe they had rings either side of the harbour to suspend ships between them. Most of the export of grain from Caithness was from Staxigoe.
As Aneas Bayne wrote in 1734, “The Trade of export of the Shire of Caithness consists mostly in Corns, wherof they export in any good year 16,000 Bolls, at the Ports of Thurso, viz:- Scrabster Road, a small way West of the Town , and at the River Mouth, and at Staxigoe Harbour near the Town of Wick, half meal, half bear.”
Even before the ebb tide changes to flood there is an easterly eddy coming close in round Dunnet Head, the first of the flood tide. This strengthens on the early flood. So wind permitting east of and inside Dunnet Head was their first choice. A North easterly wind, the Helm Wind of the Vikings, rarely gets up without notice as a westerly can though it can be a strong steady wind. In the interests of safety it gave James Tait a wonderful choice to land his precious cargo.
The essence of cattle transport was to find a beach of sand or shingle on which to run the boats, off loading by simply laying the boat over on its side and walking the cattle off. Or jump maybe, but it would be a low jump. Built piers were of no value for loading cattle, nor needed. James Tait’s main cattle landing beach was Brough, well sheltered from most airts of wind, a good shore on which to land
and a good flat space just above the beach to use as hauling ground to get the boats out of the water if the weather dictated. It was used in my early recollection by many Brough boats, and others, but these are now very few in number.
The Clett Rocks there helped the shelter too.
From Brough Bay or Dwarwick as occasion demanded the cattle were a short drive to 93 acre Grotistoft in Barrock Hill, where James Tait farmed from 1818 till 1843. There the cattle would be got ready for the long drive South to Carlisle. Then his final move to Inkstack in 1843, but by then nearing 63 years old I think, with a better and larger farm of 300 acres and 8 labourers to work it, his droving days would have come to an end.
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 93. 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.
No 93. 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.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
No 92. Droving Cattle to Carlisle. 27.04.2011
No 92. DROVING CATTLE to CARLISLE.
A Long Time Ago I wrote in The Orkney View about John Tait of Campton. He was one of my great grandfathers, born in Grotistoft in Caithness, a 93 acre farm in the Hill of Barrock. The two old houses and the steading there were cleared in 1843. They now lie deserted, roofless, the walls broken down, another fading monument to the past. He was the father of my grand uncle William Tait of the Diaries, and it is from William that I got the story of their far off days cattle droving from Orkney to Carlisle. That entailed boats. In his own words my great grandfather wrote :-
“Two weeks ago, after making my will in Kirkwall on the 18th of July, 1894, and prodded by my wife Jessie Steven, I wrote down a few words about my early years, dealing and shipping cattle from Orkney to Caithness, then droving them South to Thomas Morton in Brough near Carlisle. I was born in Grotistoft in 1822 so it is a long, long story.
My father James Tait, tenant of Inkstack after May 1843, my elder brother William and my brother-in-law John Tait married to my sister Janet, were staying the Census night of 1841 at the Ferry Inn in St Marys in Holm in Orkney belonging to a man called Annal. Two Swanson lads were with them and they were enumerated as cattle dealers. They were going round the Orkney farms to buy cattle where they could.
.
William was born in 1809 in Dunnet and was followed by five daughters before four
more sons appeared. Never was that close to him, though, with that 13 year gap, and
he was grown up and had left school before I remember him. He was pretty much our
father's boy and he was away with our father most of the time I mind, dealing for cattle
and droving them south. He was the first of the Grotistoft Taits to move to Orkney. Our
father James and brother William often went to Orkney to buy cattle, usually in early June when the grass was growing and the cattle were picking up a bit after the hard wintering the Orkneymen gave them. The weather was also better for shipping by then and grazing them on the long way South. This dealing and droving went on for a lot of years and they must have done well enough at it, or at least “Got by”.
Anyway, William saw a chance in 1845 to establish himself better in Orkney when Quanterness came up for let. It had been the Town Moor of Kirkwall, just poor grass and a lot of heather. It had been sold in 1836 by the Town Council to Leut James Cumming, rtd on half pay. Cumming died a young man suddenly and accidentally in Quanterness House, newly built by him. So the farm was put up for let on an improving lease by his brother William Cumming, Commissariat General for the Forces and living in Regents Park in London. An “Improving Lease” was on utterly untouched land with no buildings. That had to be built by the incoming tenant. The first seven years of an “Improving Lease” were rent free, the next seven at a third of a rent, the final seven at two thirds. After 21 years the land was expected to bear full rental. And the Laird had a farm.
They used to load the Mainland cattle on Orkney boats on the Ayre at Skaildaquoy Point, holding twelve cattle each, running the boats aground about the last of the ebb tide, a gey coorse loading job needing strong men. The boats were pretty dour to sail against the wind with a dozen cattle aboard, but the Orkneymen knew their tides.
The year after the Census of 1841 when I was 19 year old I went with them to Orkney dealing, and most of the time I was in the North Isles. I got on better with the North Isles men, some of the Mainland men were pretty sharp.
We made a bargain where we could and the terms were that the North Isles men had to take their cattle within a certain ten days to Camess near Kirkwall which was rough grazing ground at that time and part of Kirkwall Commons. They were herded and grazed there until it was time to load for Caithness.
The North Isles men got paid for their cattle when they delivered them to Carness and some of their boats stayed on to get the hire from us to take the beasts over the Firth. I think at that time they got about £4 for a good beast, less for a smaller one.
We had lads out of Kirkwall to herd the cattle on Carness and had many a good laugh with them. One of the biggest lots we had was about 216 cattle and we hired eighteen boats to carry them at 12 cattle each, mostly North Isles boats. They loaded inside the Bay of Work, usually on the beach.
There were no harbours then along the coast, all we needed was a sandy or gravelly beach to run the boats ashore. We then tied a rope to the top of the mast and pulled the boats over on their side and the cattle literally walked on or off. All that was needed was some strong men who knew the sea. When loaded the boats floated off on the rising flood tide and got into the east going flood through the String which took them round Mull Head in Deerness in no time at all, and then set southerly off Copinsay and ran through Lamb Sound at St Mary’s in Holm into Scapa Flow, and then to Caithness if the weather held. Otherwise they could go into St Margarets in South Ronaldshay into Longhope in Hoy to shelter for a while and wait for better weather.
About 2,000 cattle a year went out of Orkney that way in my early days but now with steam navigation most of them are going South by steamer to Aberdeen and some to Leith. A lot of farmers liked to get a price for their beasts on the farm, especially in the North Isles. We took the cattle to Grotistoft to rest up after the crossing and shoe their hooves with iron plates for the long walk South. At times we had other grazing in Caithness if we had a lot of cattle to hold because Grotistoft was only ninety acres. After we went to Inkstack in 1843 we did less dealing.
Carlisle was about 400 miles to drove the cattle to Morton and we used to take about four weeks to move 250 cattle south. We could hurry them if need be but they did not travel so well. Mostly we stayed overnight in bothies or at inns on the way, but sometimes we slept rough with the cattle. It was a tough life.
My father thought Morton had consumption as he died early at the age of fifty-two. Morton knew a man called John Tate in Carlisle who had been a Topsman or Conductor of Drifts of cattle in his early days but I doubt if there was any connection.
Morton came from Ayrshire originally though around Carlisle.there were some Taits/Tates. Most of the Orkney cattle were grazed by Morton at Brough on the saltings of the Solway. Then they were driven across the Pennines into Yorkshire and even into East Anglia to be winter finished on better land. Leicestershire was also a good market in summer, rich grazing farms.
The Orkney cattle fattened very easily but they were poor sorts when I first saw them. They were of the old native black breed and I have seen first the Argyle or Highland coming in and then the Shorthorn and now the Aberdeen Angus. No doubt in another hundred years there will be other breeds coming into Orkney but the Aberdeen-Angus crosses I see now are very good cattle, no comparison at all with the little black runts I used to drove. Come to that the farming has changed as well beyond recognition. So that was how I spent my early days, brought up and farming in Caithness, dealing in Orkney for cattle, taking them across the Pentland Firth in small open boats of about twenty-four feet keel with one mast and a big lug sail and six oars when we needed them to get off or on the beach, then droving the cattle 400 miles to Carlisle. Later we did not go so far, mostly to Falkirk as the English buyers came north to meet us. I think I could walk that old road in my sleep.”
John Tait died at Campston, St Andrews, Orkney on 21st November, 1901, aged 79. .
A Long Time Ago I wrote in The Orkney View about John Tait of Campton. He was one of my great grandfathers, born in Grotistoft in Caithness, a 93 acre farm in the Hill of Barrock. The two old houses and the steading there were cleared in 1843. They now lie deserted, roofless, the walls broken down, another fading monument to the past. He was the father of my grand uncle William Tait of the Diaries, and it is from William that I got the story of their far off days cattle droving from Orkney to Carlisle. That entailed boats. In his own words my great grandfather wrote :-
“Two weeks ago, after making my will in Kirkwall on the 18th of July, 1894, and prodded by my wife Jessie Steven, I wrote down a few words about my early years, dealing and shipping cattle from Orkney to Caithness, then droving them South to Thomas Morton in Brough near Carlisle. I was born in Grotistoft in 1822 so it is a long, long story.
My father James Tait, tenant of Inkstack after May 1843, my elder brother William and my brother-in-law John Tait married to my sister Janet, were staying the Census night of 1841 at the Ferry Inn in St Marys in Holm in Orkney belonging to a man called Annal. Two Swanson lads were with them and they were enumerated as cattle dealers. They were going round the Orkney farms to buy cattle where they could.
.
William was born in 1809 in Dunnet and was followed by five daughters before four
more sons appeared. Never was that close to him, though, with that 13 year gap, and
he was grown up and had left school before I remember him. He was pretty much our
father's boy and he was away with our father most of the time I mind, dealing for cattle
and droving them south. He was the first of the Grotistoft Taits to move to Orkney. Our
father James and brother William often went to Orkney to buy cattle, usually in early June when the grass was growing and the cattle were picking up a bit after the hard wintering the Orkneymen gave them. The weather was also better for shipping by then and grazing them on the long way South. This dealing and droving went on for a lot of years and they must have done well enough at it, or at least “Got by”.
Anyway, William saw a chance in 1845 to establish himself better in Orkney when Quanterness came up for let. It had been the Town Moor of Kirkwall, just poor grass and a lot of heather. It had been sold in 1836 by the Town Council to Leut James Cumming, rtd on half pay. Cumming died a young man suddenly and accidentally in Quanterness House, newly built by him. So the farm was put up for let on an improving lease by his brother William Cumming, Commissariat General for the Forces and living in Regents Park in London. An “Improving Lease” was on utterly untouched land with no buildings. That had to be built by the incoming tenant. The first seven years of an “Improving Lease” were rent free, the next seven at a third of a rent, the final seven at two thirds. After 21 years the land was expected to bear full rental. And the Laird had a farm.
They used to load the Mainland cattle on Orkney boats on the Ayre at Skaildaquoy Point, holding twelve cattle each, running the boats aground about the last of the ebb tide, a gey coorse loading job needing strong men. The boats were pretty dour to sail against the wind with a dozen cattle aboard, but the Orkneymen knew their tides.
The year after the Census of 1841 when I was 19 year old I went with them to Orkney dealing, and most of the time I was in the North Isles. I got on better with the North Isles men, some of the Mainland men were pretty sharp.
We made a bargain where we could and the terms were that the North Isles men had to take their cattle within a certain ten days to Camess near Kirkwall which was rough grazing ground at that time and part of Kirkwall Commons. They were herded and grazed there until it was time to load for Caithness.
The North Isles men got paid for their cattle when they delivered them to Carness and some of their boats stayed on to get the hire from us to take the beasts over the Firth. I think at that time they got about £4 for a good beast, less for a smaller one.
We had lads out of Kirkwall to herd the cattle on Carness and had many a good laugh with them. One of the biggest lots we had was about 216 cattle and we hired eighteen boats to carry them at 12 cattle each, mostly North Isles boats. They loaded inside the Bay of Work, usually on the beach.
There were no harbours then along the coast, all we needed was a sandy or gravelly beach to run the boats ashore. We then tied a rope to the top of the mast and pulled the boats over on their side and the cattle literally walked on or off. All that was needed was some strong men who knew the sea. When loaded the boats floated off on the rising flood tide and got into the east going flood through the String which took them round Mull Head in Deerness in no time at all, and then set southerly off Copinsay and ran through Lamb Sound at St Mary’s in Holm into Scapa Flow, and then to Caithness if the weather held. Otherwise they could go into St Margarets in South Ronaldshay into Longhope in Hoy to shelter for a while and wait for better weather.
About 2,000 cattle a year went out of Orkney that way in my early days but now with steam navigation most of them are going South by steamer to Aberdeen and some to Leith. A lot of farmers liked to get a price for their beasts on the farm, especially in the North Isles. We took the cattle to Grotistoft to rest up after the crossing and shoe their hooves with iron plates for the long walk South. At times we had other grazing in Caithness if we had a lot of cattle to hold because Grotistoft was only ninety acres. After we went to Inkstack in 1843 we did less dealing.
Carlisle was about 400 miles to drove the cattle to Morton and we used to take about four weeks to move 250 cattle south. We could hurry them if need be but they did not travel so well. Mostly we stayed overnight in bothies or at inns on the way, but sometimes we slept rough with the cattle. It was a tough life.
My father thought Morton had consumption as he died early at the age of fifty-two. Morton knew a man called John Tate in Carlisle who had been a Topsman or Conductor of Drifts of cattle in his early days but I doubt if there was any connection.
Morton came from Ayrshire originally though around Carlisle.there were some Taits/Tates. Most of the Orkney cattle were grazed by Morton at Brough on the saltings of the Solway. Then they were driven across the Pennines into Yorkshire and even into East Anglia to be winter finished on better land. Leicestershire was also a good market in summer, rich grazing farms.
The Orkney cattle fattened very easily but they were poor sorts when I first saw them. They were of the old native black breed and I have seen first the Argyle or Highland coming in and then the Shorthorn and now the Aberdeen Angus. No doubt in another hundred years there will be other breeds coming into Orkney but the Aberdeen-Angus crosses I see now are very good cattle, no comparison at all with the little black runts I used to drove. Come to that the farming has changed as well beyond recognition. So that was how I spent my early days, brought up and farming in Caithness, dealing in Orkney for cattle, taking them across the Pentland Firth in small open boats of about twenty-four feet keel with one mast and a big lug sail and six oars when we needed them to get off or on the beach, then droving the cattle 400 miles to Carlisle. Later we did not go so far, mostly to Falkirk as the English buyers came north to meet us. I think I could walk that old road in my sleep.”
John Tait died at Campston, St Andrews, Orkney on 21st November, 1901, aged 79. .
Sunday, 17 April 2011
No 91. A Bigger Boat. pb 15.04.2011
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.
.
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.
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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