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Year 2005
Friends of Orkney Boat Museum Newsletter
New Year 2005
PDF version of newsletter Chairman’s Letter
I should like to open this, our second, newsletter of the Friends of
Orkney Boat Museum by wishing everyone a happy and prosperous New Year
and many more to come. The year past has been an eventful one for the
Friends. As we are aware twelve months ago not only did we not exist,
for most of us the idea of a boat museum in Orkney was just a pipe
dream. For such a project to include the restoration of Dr. John Rae’s
childhood home was simply not imagined. Thankfully the work of those
stalwarts in the OIC who saw the need for a dedicated boat museum and
of the Craigie family, who wished to see the Hall of Clestrain saved
from dereliction, found a focus in the bid for funding from the BBC
Restoration programme.
I will not dwell too long in describing the hectic
days and weeks which followed the announcement that the Hall was to
feature on the TV programme. Most of you
will be aware of the race, firstly to form a Friends organisation and, secondly,
to arrange in quick succession not one but two open days at the Hall; complete
with musical entertainment and catering. My thanks must go to those members of
the committee who either volunteered or were pressed on board. We in our turn
must thank: - Steve Callaghan and his staff at the OIC for their great initial
support, the Craigie Family for their unfailing good humoured encouragement of
our efforts, the Stromness RBL and Kirkwall City Pipe Bands, Hadhirgaan and Shoot
the Piper for the music and everyone else who laboured during the summer to get
us off to such a splendid start. We must also thank all of you who have joined
the Friends and indeed everyone who supported our various events, in particular
the numerous local businesses who provided everything from magnificent draw prizes
to window space for advertising. Since our inception in May we have grown from
simply an idea to a membership of 416 and we have shown that we can organise
events of our own and participate in the major community events in the County.
Since
the summer we have continued, albeit at a less hectic pace. We have arranged
a programme of winter activities which opened with a competition for a logo to
be used by the Friends and, perhaps, by the Museum itself. The winner of the £50
prize was Colin Keldie from Kirkwall whose design may be seen at the masthead
of this newsletter .We were gratified at the number and the quality of the entries,
in particular those from children and young people. A prize for the best junior
entry was awarded to Tanya Craigie. This competition has been followed by an
ongoing series of talks, the first of these, given on a dreich October evening
by Bryce Wilson, was in two parts the first covered the youth of John Rae at
Clestrain and the second the life of William Baikie whose work on the Niger is
now largely forgotten. A pub quiz mastered by Steve Callaghan was the November
event and a further talk – this time by Len Wilson – is planned for
the New Year. Lastly but by no means least Iris Heddle donated one of her splendid
drawings of the Hall of Clestrain for use as the design for the Friends Christmas
card, which went on sale in November.
All of which is marvellous and we can afford
a degree of pride, we cannot, however, afford to become complacent. We were
not successful in the Restoration competition
and have thus been denied the massive kick-start that those funds would have
represented. So we must now settle ourselves down for the long haul. We have
the task of assisting the Board of Orkney Boat Museum in raising the sum of
almost five million pounds before we can enjoy the pleasure of visiting
a restored Hall
of Clestrain and a Museum worthy of the forty boats and other artefacts in
the County collection. Our own part of this task is to raise two hundred
and fifty
thousand pounds or five percent of the total. At first glance this seems to
be a daunting task and it is certain that we will not raise such a sum
simply by
holding prize draws and selling Friend’s merchandise at the County Show.
We can, however, raise funds from these and similar activities to use as seed
corn. Firstly, the board will require funds and support in order to present
their case to the major public and corporate funding bodies, such as the National
Lottery.
The existence of a thriving local fund raising base such as ourselves is of
prime importance in making the case to these organisations and the administration
of
these activities itself requires funding. Secondly we ourselves will need to
approach smaller corporate, charitable and individual donors for both direct
funding and sponsorship; again the evidence of a vibrant local fund raising
base will be of enormous value.
All of this work will require a supply of volunteers,
either as elected or
co-opted members of the committee or, simply as willing helpers. We will
need fundraisers
and promoters of the project but also workers to assist in the more mundane
but no less essential jobs; such as filling envelopes or assisting at public
events.
So I must appeal to all of you to support the committee and, if you are able,
to attend the annual general meeting and perhaps even put yourselves forward
for election.
For the immediate future we have: - the annual general meeting
(the calling notice for which you should have received with this newsletter),
the previously
mentioned
talk by Len Wilson, a celebrity auction for which plans are well advanced
which will take place in Stromness on 21st May, a major prize draw to be
drawn at
the County Show and a sponsored walk from Clestrain to Kirkwall in the
early summer.
We do need more ideas, for talks and fund raising events and we will require
volunteers to assist in all of the above events. In particular we would
like a volunteer to edit the newsletter. If you can help in any way please
contact
me or any other member of the committee, thank you.
Mick Bain
Chairman
John Rae and the Hall of Clestrain
The elegant Hall of Clestrain is known as the birthplace of one of the
greatest 19th century Arctic explorers; it also illustrates the remarkable
prosperity of Orkney’s 18th century lairds.
Decades of wars had
cut off trade with Europe. The seaweed rich shores of Orkney now became
Britain’s main supplier of alkali for the
country’s burgeoning glass and soap industries. After centuries
of uncertain income from primitive agriculture in an unreliable climate
unprecedented wealth now came to the lairds from the burning of kelp
on their sea-girt estates.
The Honeyman family’s Graemsay estate,
which included much of Orphir and Stenness, was one of Orkney’s
largest and most prosperous. Patrick Honeyman used his kelp riches to
build a new mansion house at
Clestrain. His son William went south to pursue a career in law and rose
to be judge of the Court of Session as Lord Armadale. Now with estates
in Lanarkshire, he appointed a Lanarkshire man, John Rae, to live in
the vacant Hall of Clestrain as factor and carry out agricultural improvements
on the Graemsay estate.
In the year 1819, when his youngest son and namesake
was six years old, John Rae extended his interests by becoming employment
agent in Orkney
for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Young John must have grown up hearing
tales of adventure in the wilderness of Rupert’s Land. All the
while he was enjoying an outdoor life at Clestrain, tramping the hills
and shores alone in all weathers in search of game. He shot grouse, snipe,
plover, curlew, wild duck, heron, rabbit and seafowl. He became adept
at fishing; at the sea outlet of the Stenness Loch he sometimes caught
a dozen or more sea trout. With his brothers he learned to sail in their
father’s lug-sailed yole Brenda, ’as long as a stitch of
sail could be carried’.
After graduating at the Royal College of
Surgeons in Edinburgh, Dr John Rae signed on as surgeon for a single
voyage on the Hudson’s Bay
Company ship Prince of Wales. Locked in the ice of the Bay all winter,
he so enjoyed the experience that he signed on with the company as surgeon/clerk
at Moose Factory. Here he continued the outdoor pursuits, which he had
enjoyed in Orkney, finding it natural to respect and learn from the methods
of the native people. As time went by he was noticed by the company governor,
Sir George Simpson, who appointed him to lead an expedition to complete
the mapping of the Arctic shores of Rupert’s Land.
Over the next
decade Dr Rae led three of the four expeditions in which he was involved.
His major contribution to Arctic exploration was reliance
on native techniques of survival, a distinctly unfashionable method in
the days of Victoria. Rae himself attributed his success to the self-reliance
and confidence gained through his childhood pursuits at the Hall of Clestrain.
A
major exhibition to mark the centenary of Rae’s death was held
at the Royal Museum of Scotland in 1993. His career is well portrayed
in several books, most recently in Fatal Passage, where Ken McGoogan
details the machinations of Victorian spin that deprived Rae of public
recognition for his achievements, including his discovery of the fate
of the Franklin expedition, and the last link - Rae Strait - in a navigable
Northwest Passage to the Orient.
Bryce Wilson
Orkney Boats in Publication
“In the Orkney Islands, less emphasis was attached to the fishery;
crofting was a better alternative due to the greater fertility of the land.
Nevertheless,
Orkney did produce its own type of fishing vessels that showed some Viking
influence, although this was probably derived from the mainland – only
a few miles away. The largest of the Orkney boats was the Orkney yole,
sometimes called the South Isles yole. These boats had a much fuller
stern and greater beam than the Shetland boats, and were similar to the
very early scaithes or scaffies, and to the mainland yoles. They were
clinker built in Norwegian fir on oak frames, iron fastened and were
built locally or on Stroma. They were generally between 16 and 20ft long – typically
18’3”x7’3” (5.6mx2.2m). Unlike the Shetland boats
that were often rowed, these yoles were primarily sailing boats, and
had two masts with spritsails carried on opposing sides of the masts.
Motors were introduced in the early part of the 20th century, but it
was found that the propeller slip-stream tended to suck down the stern
too low in the water. This was compensated by adding another strake.
Later boats were built with an even fuller stern to increase the buoyancy
aft. These yoles remained working until the 1960s, both fishing and generally
transporting goods around the islands, after which time they were rigged
with a gunter sail and used for pleasure purposes. Many remain for that
purpose today.
On the north shores of Orkney, similar yoles were to be
found, but these were rigged with two standing lugsails. These North
Isles yoles, or Westray
yoles, had very subtle differences both in their shape and in their method
of construction. Another type of craft, in reality a small yole it seems,
was called a ‘quill’ or ‘whill’, and these had
a similar shape at both ends.
The Orcadians also fished with much smaller
boats close inshore. Their traditional dinghy had a wineglass transom
with a slightly flared bow
and pronounced sheerline. They were rigged either with one lugsail or
a spritsail. Another small local type is the ‘flattie’ which
seems to have been introduced to the islands from Canada around the turn
of the century. As their name implies they are flat bottomed, anywhere
between 6 and 12ft long, and were essentially used as rowing boats. Len
Wilson of Kirkwall, to whom I am indebted for much of the the information
on these smaller Orkney craft, built a flattie as recently as 1964, and
several examples still remain.
The herring fishery had existed for centuries
in the Orkneys, often executed by outsiders – the Dutch being the
first to base a fleet there in the twelfth century. Stromness, Stronsay
and South Ronaldsay were
the three bases for the herring and up to 750 small boats of between
12 and 17ft were said to fish for the early summer herring in the first
years of the nineteenth century, half being local boats. These yoles
drift netted some ten miles offshore. By the middle of the century these
craft were up to 30ft overall. During the 1870s the majority of these
yoles were superseded by the larger imported herring luggers as in Shetland,
although many yoles survived in individual hands. Some luggers were even
built on Orkney, such as the fifie Pioneer K219, built at Stanger’s
Yard in Stromness. By the beginning of the twentieth century several
zulus had been brought into Orkney in addition to the hundreds that fished
annually from the mainland. These local zulus became known as the Burray
boats, of which they were twenty or so. Although boats had been built
on Burray, these zulus were all built south of the Pentland Firth.
As
we’ve seen, the yoles continued to be used by the local inhabitants
although primarily as transport between the islands and only for a limited
amount of fishing. Smaller versions of these yoles were the Westray skiffs,
from the most northerly island. These small boats were said to have been
used for fishing since the eighteenth century and probably not least
because they were easily hauled up the beaches. Their use was centred
particularly on that island and they were used for creel fishing for
lobsters and ward fishing for coal fish. The Marys, built by James Rendall,
Queensbrechan, Westray in the 1920s is 15ft 8in, and is rigged with a
standing lug and oars.”
(Traditional Fishing Boats of Britain and
Ireland, by Michael Smylie, published by Waterline Books. Reproduced
by kind permission of the author.)
For the amateur or enthusiast interested in vernacular craft, by whom
I mean those without the time or resources to carry out primary research;
the above paragraphs, taken from an excellent well illustrated study
of fishing craft from the whole of the British Isles, represent a significant
proportion of the recently published information on Orkney boats and
maritime history. Author Mike Smylie has also contributed articles to
magazines such as Classic Boat. There are also: Inshore Craft, by Greenhill
and Mannering, published by Chatham which covers very similar ground
to Traditional Fishing Boats of Britain and Ireland; Tom Cunliffe’s
Pilots published by Woodenboat, which has some paragraphs on the pilotage
in the Pentland Firth; Schooner Sunset by Douglas Bennet published by
Chatham, which has lines and general arrangement drawings of the Kirkwall
registered schooner Volant; and, closer to home: Kate Towsey’s
oral history Orkney and the Sea published by Orkney Heritage and Alastair
R Walker’s very recent Stroma Yoles published by The Orcadian.
These apart I can think of no other significant published information
without searching for out of print titles such as Alastair and Anne Cormack’s
Days of Orkney Steam and the works of Basil Greenhill and Edgar J March
of the 50s and 60s and Alan More of the 20s.
One of benefits which I hope
will accrue from the foundation of a boat museum in Orkney will be
the encouragement of research and subsequently
the publication of more information. I am aware that there is already
a body of both formal academic and amateur work as yet unpublished.
Perhaps this newsletter might in the future provide the means of putting
that
work before the public.
Contacts:
Mick Bain - Chairman
Karona
Garson Loan
Stromness
Orkney
KW16 3LE
01856 851339
Jack Drever – Secretary
Warbister
Dounby
Orkney
KW17 2JB
Email: jdreverboat@aol.com
How
to join the Friends of Orkney Boat Museum
Membership of the Friends of Orkney
Boat Museum costs £10 pa (£15 for a family) and gives
free entry to the museum when it is completed.
An application form is available to download
from this website in Adobe
Acrobat PDF format.
Completed forms should be sent to:
Jack Drever, Secretary, Friends of Orkney Boat Museum, Warbister, Dounby, Orkney, KW17 2JB, UK
If you wish a membership form to be posted to you, please telephone the Secretary of the Friends, Jack Drever, on 01856 771889 - (+44 1856 771889 from outside the UK) or email friends@orkneyboatmuseum.org.uk |
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