David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.
No 95. One man and his dog.
My first friend was Spot, father’s old dog, a bowfert on the old style with shaggy coat, brown and white, heavy and capable of dealing with sheep or cattle without fear or favour. Not many of these hardy old-style dogs around now, the sleek nervy Border Collie has taken over.
Spot was coming on a bit and you could teach him nothing. But he was big enough that when we were still small we tried to ride on his back. Very patient. We tried to make and put a harness on him to pull our sledge but not too effective. He would lie patiently at the back door until father came out, then off they went. Trim was his younger companion, a more traditional dog but chained up when not working. I think our father did not trust him too much, but it is also a truism that two dogs can get up to mischief if allowed loose together that neither would do on their own.
I had little to do with dogs then for many years until working at Greenland Mains. Donald Nicholson was our shepherd then and I was in my very early years of learning a trade which you never cease to learn, i.e. farming.
Donald had a Beardie, I forget his name or where he came from. Possibly I think from his Coghill relatives at Kirk, Bower. Lets call him Beardie. Again not many left. Hair down over his eyes like a Romney sheep. Quiet, but when we were going out of Dickies lambing field heading for our 3 o’clock cup of tea at Donald’s nearby house, we would find the dog no longer at our heels.
Maybe three hundred ewes or more in the lambing field. But out of that number Beardie would appear gently moving a ewe towards us, picked out by himself I know not how.
If Donald said ”Leave it and come here”, Beardie ignored him. He knew better. And sure enough when he had taken the ewe up to us it was in the process of lambing. We had not seen it, but he had. And knew what to do. Take the ewe to us for assistance, even if it was a perfectly normal lambing with no distress. No hurry. And he was always right. Quite uncanny, we could only marvel.
He would catch any lamb we wanted by nosing it over on the run, then lying on top of the lamb and holding it down gently with his fore paws until we came up. That was sometimes needed when we saw what we called a “Stuck Lamb” out in the field, a few days old, a euphemism for a lamb that badly needed it’s bottom cleaned. Not attended to that lamb would die. Beardie knew it, and again would take appropriate action even on his own. Beardies had a great reputation for brains, and no way am I going to dispute it.
Donald had various dogs but had one bitch who produced a litter to Beardie, though none of them were Beardies. I was usually working at the Square in winter with the cattle and brother David was working out doors. But going down to the lambing field in the evenings was our normal practice.
We each got a pup from Donald, I think David’s was white, mine was the traditional black with a very little bit of white under his throat.
We were introduced by Donald to the choosing of a pup, six weeks old and time to wean them. Donald told us to pick one and lift him by the tail. If he squealed or struggled, reject him. If he had a wall eye, reject him. If the pup neither squealed nor struggled but just looked at you, put him on one side as a possible. Such stoicism was desirable.
I am sure today that process would be banned if the Welfare people knew of it, but we were picking a working dog to share the hard vicissitudes of life with us and that method of choosing had a long history. Then final choosing. Which one did we fancy. Which one met your eye without looking away. Look at the pup’s feet - big feet, big dog. Even at six weeks they would show very positive individuality, a foretaste of what they would become when grown up working dogs. I called my pick an unimaginative Ben. He was a good friend of mine for many long years.
We had a few milking cows at Greenland Mains that in summer went out to the field to graze, to be brought in at milking time morning and evening. The gate of the 36 acre field of New Hansel was left open, the cows found their own way there after milking.
Came 4.30 pm, and, whatever we were doing, and in a quiet conversational voice I could talk to Ben. But if I said the words “Fetch the Cows, Ben” off he would go, take the cows out of the field entirely on his own and gently and without any chasing or fuss up the road and round to the milking byre door. If I forgot to send him off he went anyway at the appointed hour. A great time keeper. The cows were pretty well trained too, each went into their own stall and waited to be milked, often without tying the neck chain. They knew their names and their places.
Ben had another characteristic. About 4 o’clock in the afternoon he would disappear. The mystery was solved when Danny Morrison, who drove his bus up to Barrock and then back down to go to Wick, told me Ben waited for him to go up, raced alongside him in the field, waited for Danny’s return to race him back. Then, honour satisfied, he came home. He never went onto the road, just had a good chase with the bus. Not interested in cars.
Time went on. I bought Lower Dounreay and Nettie Dunnet from Keiss and I married on 23rd Nov. 1953 and went to our first home, the excellent farmhouse of Lower Dounreay, built 1860, demolished by UKAEA Oct. 2003. We left it unwillingly in May 1956 for Isauld, but had no choice in the matter. Ben came too.
Ben had the most useful trait of his father of knocking down any lamb we wanted, but as gentle as could be. To see him nudge the lamb over with his nose was a treat. Just say “Catch the lamb” and he did. No biting or nipping at all, just that nudge under it’s backside.
He would catch a ewe for us when asked, gripping it under the throat by the wool but never biting, holding it for us to take over. Very good at it too. Though the ewe would be much heavier than Ben, it seemed mesmerised by his grip and would stand still. Made lambing outdoors feasable but now we are long moved on to indoor lambing, and could do no other.
I went to Aberdeen late one October to buy some Leicester Ram Lambs. Borrowed father’s Ford Consul car as the Ford 5 cwt I had then was mighty cold with no heating. Went to Aberdeen late one day, sale next day, home third day. I forgot that I had transferred Ben from my van into the boot of father’s car.
Home again at Isauld I opened the boot. Ben regarded me with his usual patient charm, jumped out and relieved himself for what seemed a long hour, though that was I think impossible. All the long way to Aberdeen and back he had not uttered a sound, and his manners had been impeccable !!!.
He lived to be 16 years old, died peacefully one night. He lies buried at Isauld under an apple tree in the walled garden.
Friday, 17 June 2011
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. .
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