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Orkney and the Sea
 | Price: £15.00 Supplier: Orkney Museum Publications |
This absolutely fascinating and very readable book is a collection of first-person accounts of Orkney's close relationship with the sea. Beginning with childhood memories, the book covers everything - fishing, ferries, diving, whaling, piloting, ship wrecks, the herring industry, ferrying livestock. The book includes riveting accounts of the Longhope lifeboat disaster and the Earl Thorfinn's epic voyage to Aberdeen in 1953.
It is an excellent book to dip into but I found it quite hard to put down and could have read the whole book at once, if time had allowed.
The book is the result of a Millennium Volunteer project, run by Orkney Heritage, in which young volunteers interviewed men and women who had spent their lives closely connected with the sea. Kate Towsey turned these interviews into this well laid out book, illustrated with lots of black and white photos.
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[When the Longhope lifeboat was lost in 1969, she was on her way to the aid of the Greek ship, Irene, which had run aground on South Ronaldsay. The crew had all been rescued by breeches-buoy before the lifeboat was lost.]
They took seventeen men off of that ship and it was such a wonderful rescue and they were on such a high about that ... but ... in the meantime of course the Longhope lifeboat had been launched and it was only when she came oot between Brough Ness and the Lother, tremendous seas there and she wouldn't have known up in Longhope, just how bad the sea was in the Pentland Firth. She knew it was bad but she wouldn't have known how horribly bad and my father was on watch and there is a place called the Lother Head, very, very bad and she got through that and he thought, "Gosh, if she gets through there she'll get through anything", but then, just about nine o'clock she was towards the east of the Pentland Firth to a position half a mile south of the Lother Rock that she encountered the flood tide ease and he just saw her lights disappear there and och, he was just heartbroken, absolutely. I spoke to him maybe half an hour later on the phone and he said "Brave little boat, brave little boat", I can hear him still, saying that "But", he said "She's gone". He never saw the lights again.
They were all men that he knew and respected for what brave seamen they were. That blighted everything; the rescue was such a high it was great to save all these men but... Everybody was in mourning, every house in the place. It was as if you had thrown a blanket over the place - Nobody knew what to do or what to say - it devastated everybody. Helen Manson
[Willie Mowatt got caught out on the Pentland Firth once.] Just about half way across it just came down that Pentland Firth between Hoy and Dunnet Heid, just black sky. "My heavens" I said to the boys "look what's coming". I never thought to see the like of that on the sea. We had to take the sail off the boat and it just struck us with force and there was nothing for me but to run before the bloody lot. It was just lifting the sea out of the sea. I never thought ever to witness the like. Nothing but the bare mast on her and the sound on that mast was just like what you have heard the sound of the wind on the hydro poles. Just whining! but the roar that was with that broken sea going down past you, it was a frightening sound and I saw nothing else for it but to run right east, if she would go to Norway. I got into [the Pentland] skerries at the east end, at the landing and it was grand in there in the shelter, the sound was something terrible, about the lighthouse with the wind. When we opened the door and came on in the Keepers they just stood, stunned. They just said nothing for a blink and then says "Where on earth have you come from"?...
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