Beautiful Star and Other Stories

by Andrew Swanston

  In the storms of the 19th and 20th of November 1875, St Monans lost twenty-one men, who left eleven widows and forty-five children. My mother lost her husband, her son, two brothers, three nephews, a brother-in-law and a cousin, and her mother lost two sons, two nephews, a son-in-law and two grandsons.

  The following week, wreckage of Janet Anderson was washed ashore at Cullercoats and the next day, Vigilant was found by a Trinity House cruiser, sunk in six fathoms on the Inner Dowsing. Both boats were little over a year old. There was no trace of either of the two skippers, James Murray and Robert Stewart, nor of any of the eleven members of their crews. Like St Monans, Cellardyke had suffered grievously. Eight more women were widowed and twenty-seven more children made fatherless. In addition, Robert Stewart’s widow was expecting her fifth child.

  The people of both villages had endured the agony of not knowing what had happened to their missing men, followed by the certainty of their deaths. For some there came the release of a proper burial, but for most there did not. The sea had taken them. The Fife Herald reported that, ‘Every face is clouded with sorrow and everywhere you hear the wail of broken-hearted mothers and children weeping in despair.’

  The small group that made the journey by train to Lynn for the funerals included no member of the bereaved families. We did not even consider it. There was barely time, it was too far and not one of us would have been capable of it. My mother hardly spoke for a week, sitting staring at Willy’s model on the mantelpiece and surviving on bites of food and sips of water that we put beside her. If we had let her, I think she would have quite happily drifted away.

  We had three visitors. Mr Foggo came and said something about God’s will and praying for us. With difficulty I refrained from telling him that loaves and fishes would have been more helpful. Lady Anstruther called, as she did on every bereaved family, and on Christmas Eve Willy knocked on the door. He asked if there was anything he could do, wrapped me up in a huge hug, which only made me cry, and left quietly. Otherwise, we were left to our grief. For three weeks, Margaret and I took turns to go out to buy food, returning as quickly as we could. Neither of us could face talking to anyone and not even church got us out of the house.

  Even before all the wrecks were found an appeal had been launched for the bereaved families, and this letter from Sir Robert Anstruther appeared in most of the leading national newspapers, including The Times which published it on 29th November 1875:

  Sir,

  I do not think I need apologise for asking some assistance from the public through your columns for the many among the fishing population in our immediate neighbourhood who have suffered from the late storms. We have lost two boats belonging to Cellardyke and three belonging to St Monance, with the whole of their crews; and the sorrow, misery, and want in those towns are of a kind that I cannot attempt to describe.

  Such a catastrophe, under any circumstances sufficiently dreadful, is in these cases rendered still more calamitous by the fact that many of the boats’ crews are closely related to each other by family ties.

  In the town of St Monance, one unfortunate woman, Mrs Paterson, has lost at one blow her husband, her son, two brothers, three nephews, a brother-in-law, and a cousin; another, Mrs Allan, about seventy years of age, has lost her two sons, her two nephews, her son-in-law, and two grandsons.

  A public meeting will be convened by the Provost of Anstruther on Monday, the 6th day of December, in order to obtain aid for the sufferers; and I am authorised to say that subscriptions will be gladly received for them by the Rev. David L. Foggo, the Manse, Abercrombie, St Monance; Mr Thomas Nicol, Chief Magistrate, St Monance; the Rev. Dr Christie, the Manse, Kilrenny, Anstruther; Mr Martin, Provost, Kilrenny; Mr Tosh, Provost of Pittenweem; and W.R. Ketchen Esq of Elie.

  The above two small towns have lost at one blow 37 of the flower of their sea-going men; 19 women are left widows; and 72 children are made orphans; besides, several aged persons dependent upon the deceased men have been deprived of their support.’

  I am, &c,

  Robt. Anstruther

  The letter had an immediate effect. The loss of thirty-seven men, leaving nineteen widows and seventy-two fatherless children, was, as Sir Robert said, a catastrophe. They included all ten of the Paterson and Allan family members who had sailed south with the fleet. It was also a catastrophe all the more poignant for being just a few weeks before Christmas, a time when fishing families looked forward to being together.

  The Fife Herald spoke of the wail of mothers and children weeping but it was the silence which descended upon the village that was most eloquent of its pain. Men and women had still to go about their business but the daily hustle and bustle were muted by the knowledge that, behind so many doors, women and children were grieving for husbands and fathers they would never see again. And those who had not lost a relative had lost a neighbour or friend. Not a person in St Monans was left untouched by what had happened. There were no street games, no peevers on the sea shore, no hornie up and down the cobbled lanes, none of the usual hubbub by the harbour; even the carters’ ponies, seeming to sense the mood, hung their heads. It was a time of misery, tears and despair.

  School had not reopened for what would have been the final week of the term. ‘I can’t bring myself to open the doors,’ Miss Brown said, ‘and if I did, I doubt that many would come. The Education Board will just have to show some compassion for once.’ Her pupil-teacher would certainly not have come. She would have been worse than useless.

  Meanwhile we were aware that contributions to Sir Robert’s appeal were arriving from all over the country and that the people of Fife had lost no time in getting organised. Meetings were held, committees formed in each village and The St Monance and Cellardyke Shipwrecked Fishermen’s Fund was established. The Fund committee included Mr Nicol, the Chief Magistrate, and two Bailies, Mr Macfarlane and Mr Robertson. Between them, they knew almost everyone of consequence in the area and would spare no effort in raising money.

  The response from all sorts of people was extraordinary. At a meeting in Anstruther, for example, Sir Robert reported good progress, substantial donations having already been received from several distinguished gentlemen, including the Secretary of State for War, Mr Gathorne-Hardy, and the London banker Sir Coutts Lindsay. While donations received by Mr Foggo included one pound from an elderly man in Dundee, who wrote that he ‘had sent his all’. Public sympathy knew no boundaries.

  A meeting in St Andrews was not well attended, but the Scotsman reported that the mood was one of determination to help in any practical way possible. The Pastor, Dr Boyd, normally a forbidding and aloof man, had spoken with typical directness. ‘The calamity has come near to our own doors,’ he said, ‘and nothing can move the heart so much as the contemplation of so many children made fatherless and so many wives widows at one blow. It is a rough gauge of human feeling how much a man will give and I trust all will give liberally.’

  They did, and a variety of local money-raising events were hastily organised. A Grand Bazaar organised by Lady Anstruther in Colinsburgh raised £346-6s-81/2d.

  At the bazaar she sold copies of a lament she had written. They were printed in copperplate style on thick cards with black and gold borders:

  Their rest is calm and deep

  No tempest now can wake

  The silence of their sleep.

  Above them storms may break,

  And billows rage, and winds blow high,

  And brave hearts sink, and brave hearts die,

  In waters cold they sleep,

  While wives and children weep,

  They sleep, they sleep.

  Hark! How the wild waves roar,

  See how the white foam lies

  On bleak St Monan’s shore,

  Beneath the wintry skies.

  No fishers may return today,

  Oh no! They lie far far away;

  In waters cold they sleep,

  While wives and children weep,

 
They sleep, they sleep.

  Fundraising went on well into the New Year. Among the events arranged was an exhibition and sale in Edinburgh of paintings by several distinguished members of the Scottish Royal Academy. Even in the city the plight of the bereaved families was such that everyone wanted to help in whatever way they could.

  Contributions to the fund continued to arrive daily and, aware of the material hardship the disaster had caused, the trustees met urgently to make an immediate distribution and to decide on the fairest basis for allocations in the future. When their calculations were made public, we learnt that they had determined ‘as a rule’ to make weekly payments of 4s to each widow, 1s/6d to each child under sixteen and 3s to each other dependent relative. £450 was divided among those who lost boats with a further £320 for nets and equipment. They also made a special payment of £5 to Robert Brown who had been struck on the head by the foreyard. Faced with the difficult task of estimating how much income the capital would produce and for how long it would be needed, they calculated that these allocations would amount to £585 in the first year. This meant that mother received a single payment of £154 and weekly payments of 8/6d. As Margaret and I were working, we were better off than most.

  The final amount raised of £7,206-15-3d was so large that it caused some resentment on the part of others in need. Ironically, the generosity of some was resented by others. It was not as if anyone was worse off than they had been. And it was not so much when you consider how many people it had to help. But the terms of the Trust Fund did not allow for allocations to anyone other than the families and dependents of those who had perished in the November storms, so widows and orphans, and there were many, of Fife fishermen who had lost their lives at other times and in other places could not be helped. Some had even been forced to resort to their Parochial Boards for help from the Poor Roll, from which they might get a shilling or two a week.

  Most villages did have Sea Box Societies, some of the smaller ones joining together to save costs. Sea Box Societies are an ancient idea. Ours, formed in 1784 to help ‘widows, orphans and fisher folk fallen on hard times’, made a contribution of £5 to the appeal.

  On the first Sunday after Christmas – a Christmas that went unremarked in the villages – mother said that she would like us all to go to church. On a grey morning, we trudged together up the hill and over the stone bridge. We walked over the ground on which the monastery and the nunnery had once stood – Robert had always insisted that there had been a secret tunnel between them – and entered from the main door on the seaward side.

  After a mercifully brief service, we gathered outside with our aunts and cousins and walked back with them. Without knowing it, we were taking the first steps on a long road to recovery.

  Seven years have now passed since that terrible time. For nineteen widows and seventy-two children life has never been the same, nor can it ever be, yet in the villages much is unchanged. The rhythms of life are still dictated by the seasons and the annual journey of the herring shoals around the coast. Our fishermen still go north in spring and south in autumn and the Lammas Drave still breathes energy into our communities. I have qualified and teach at the Adventure School, James is a fisherman, Margaret is married to one, Agnes and Alexander are at school and mother mends nets and makes clothes. Father’s prins – those that were not lost with him – sit on the mantelpiece, and so does Willy’s model.

  Mr Foggo has gone, although the Church Elders have not, and Mr Nevin still runs the Parish School. The improvements to the harbour foreseen by my father have been carried out. A breakwater to protect the harbour entrance and new middle and west piers were designed by Thomas Stevenson, the son of Robert Stevenson, designer of the lighthouse on the Isle of May.

  One afternoon in May, two years after the disaster, Willy asked me to marry him. I was not surprised. I thought he was going to. I told him that he would have my answer when I returned from the trip to Lynn that Margaret and I were planning. We wanted to see the memorial to the lost men erected by the people of Lynn.

  In July, before the Drave started, we made the long journey by train. We spent our first night in a small lodging house in the town, and next morning walked down the Hardwick Road to the cemetery. As we approached the memorial we could see that it was in the form of a Fifie, with straight stem and stern, but without masts, rudder, or bowsprit. That was how the wrecked Beautiful Star had been found by Captain Farr of the Sea Nymph on his way from Hull to Lynn in November 1875. It was bigger than I expected, constructed from a white, flecked stone and standing on a stepped, immensely heavy-looking pedestal.

  Hand in hand, we walked slowly around the memorial, admiring the fine workmanship and reading the inscriptions. On the boat itself had been carved BEAUTIFUL STAR and KY1298 ST MONANCE. On the upper face of the pedestal were the names of the men buried in the graveyard.

  On the port side: JAMES PATERSON BORN 18 JULY 1826; DAVID DAVIDSON BORN 1 FEBRUARY 1852; WILLIAM PATERSON BORN 18 JANUARY 1836; SON ROBERT PATERSON BORN 31 OCTOBER 1857. And on the starboard side: DAVID ALLAN BORN 28 AUGUST 1827; ALEXANDER DUNCAN BORN 7 JUNE 1829; THOMAS LOWRIE BORN 3 OCTOBER 1854; THOMAS FYALL BORN 27 JUNE 1851.

  There were other inscriptions on the lower faces of the pedestal. At the stem: THIS MONUMENT ERECTED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION TO THE MEMORY OF EIGHT SCOTCH FISHERMEN DROWNED ON THE NORFOLK COAST IN THE NOVEMBER GALE 1875. At the stern: LIFE, HOW SHORT! ETERNITY, HOW LONG? On the port side: WHILE WE LINGER ON THE SHORE OF LIFE, A WAVE WAFTS US TO ETERNITY. And on the starboard side: WHEN THE SHORE IS WON AT LAST, WHO WILL COUNT THE BILLOWS PAST?

  That evening a Mr Finney called at our lodging house. He had heard that we had travelled from Fife and wanted to pay his respects. He was a small, weatherbeaten man with the shoulders and arms of a sailor. Mr Finney remembered the storms well and told us more about the memorial. It was made of Kenton stone, brought down especially from Newcastle for the local masons to work on.

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ he said, ‘the whole thing, memorial and pedestal, weighs about seven tons. As you probably know, it’s modelled on the Grace Darling memorial at Bamburgh. It took the best part of a year to complete. There were two funerals because Thane was found later near Boston Deeps. Both were attended by several thousand mourners who followed the procession down the Hardwick Road. It was an extraordinary sight and one that spoke of the high esteem in which the men were held. The first boat found was Quest, at Blakeney, but there were no men on board her. The other two were found the following week, one of them up at the Farne Islands. They were Vigilant and Janet Anderson.’

  ‘And the second boat was Beautiful Star,’ I interrupted. ‘She was brand new and on her first voyage south.’

  ‘I know, and if ever a boat was well named, she was. She stood out in the harbour even among the larger boats we build down here. Everyone admired her.’

  ‘Her skipper was my father, Mr Finney. That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Ah, James Paterson. And Robert must have been your brother. I knew them well. They were good men and your father was one of the finest skippers I ever met. I’m sorry for your loss. It must have been a terrible time for you all. It’s St Monans you come from, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is. The boats came from St Monans and Cellardyke. Have you ever been to Fife?’

  ‘I fear not but I’ve heard a good deal about the East Neuk and its villages from your fishermen. Very devoted family men they all are.’ He laughed lightly. ‘The English fishing, you call it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, we do, and it’s made quite a difference to us. My father always said, ‘The herring won’t come to us, so we must go to them.’

  ‘Still, it’s a long journey and it takes brave and skilful men to make it. We were astonished when the first boats came down from Scotland – they were tiny compared to ours and some weren’t even decked. It must have been a cruel voyage. But we soon found out how good they were in the right hands. There are no better fishermen than the Scots.’


  ‘Thank you, Mr Finney.’

  ‘No at all, my dear. I counted your father and brother as friends and it was one of the saddest times we have ever known in Lynn when the men were lost. You had other relatives on the boats too, if I recall?’

  ‘We did. Ten members of our family died in the storms. Mr Finney, I never understood how my father and four of the crew came to be found in the cabin as they were. Were they trapped?’

  Mr Finney looked surprised. ‘Are you sure you want me to talk about this, my dear?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Very well. They weren’t trapped. The cabin had a sliding door, the mast wasn’t blocking it. James Allan had a fractured skull and two men were already lost overboard, remember, one of them Robert. The other four must have been worn out and when the cabin became waterlogged, they hadn’t the strength to escape. That storm was the worst any of us could remember. It was ferocious beyond words and it seemed to go on and on. The waves would have been enormous. It was a miracle any of the boats survived. And what’s more, the wind swung round to the north-west. Any boat near the Wash when that happened was doomed and there were only four able men left on Beautiful Star. They could not have saved her. Most of the boats which got home were further north when the storm struck and a few were close enough to Yarmouth or Grimsby to make harbour. Your father was not so lucky.’

  He went on, ‘If I may, there is one more thing. I am a man of the sea but I have always loved poetry. May I read you two verses I wrote at the time?’

  ‘Of course you may.’

  Mr Finney produced from his jacket pocket a single sheet of paper, cleared his throat, and read.

  Twas bleak November and the nineteenth day,

  They left the port their season’s labour done,