The taboo on using the cargo would not merely have been that people lost their lives in the wreck, it was that women and children had too. Muir considers that, ‘It’s probably based on the way that society was structured at the time, where men did go out and do dangerous things to make a living. They went to sea, they went down coal mines, they would climb down cliffs to get birds’ eggs. There was a lot of hazardous things they were doing, so the loss of a man was maybe not expected, but when it happened it wasn’t treated as so much of a tragedy because it was just one of those things. And there would be a widow and bairns left, and folk would be genuinely sad about it, but it was God’s will, and it was just the way things always were. Men did these dangerous things, and some were lucky and stayed unscathed, and some of them weren’t so lucky and never came back. Women generally stayed at home with the kids, so it was less usual to have female passengers on ships until the emigrant ships started going.’ But for women and children to die—that was a true horror, a reversal of the natural order. Who would touch the spoils of a ship from which children had been killed?
There is another story, very different in both form and conclusion, which illustrates an alternative side to Orcadian maritime ethics. This story has less sadness about it than that of the Johanna Thorden, and more of the sense of a tale enriched in the telling. During the winter of 1847, the Lena, a large Russian barque carrying many passengers, ran ashore on North Ronaldsay during the night. The islanders who went down to the wreck found some of the passengers lying dead or injured on the rocks, including the captain, half-drowned and knocked unconscious by the collision. The captain was therefore carried up to a nearby house in Sholtisquoy by the islanders, who roused the woman of the house—or guidwife—from her bed, and handed the captain over in the hope that she might be able to revive him. The guidwife placed the captain in her own bed and fed him a little brandy. The captain stayed senseless, and, since it was long before hot-water bottles were invented, the guidwife climbed into bed beside him, hoping that her own body heat might revive him. Her rough medicine worked and the captain revived, though, as one local wreck historian noted drily, ‘How long she stayed in bed after he recovered, I never heard.’
Once restored to health, the captain realised he owed his life to the guidwife, and swore that when he returned home he would send her a gift as a sign of his gratitude. A few weeks later, a fine silk dress arrived from the captain’s home town. This being the 1840s, all mail was routed through the landlord’s factor on the island. Tom Muir takes up the story. ‘There was this beautiful silk gown turned up, and the [factor and his wife] thought: that’s far too nice to waste on a crofting woman, so they substituted it for a cheap, printed cotton dress and kept the silk one. I can’t remember if it was the man’s wife or his daughter who was then seen at the kirk the following week with this beautiful dress on, and everybody knew where this had come from—they put two and two together, and also nobody trusted the guy. So his reputation, which was probably black before then, was blackened even further by the fact that he’d stolen this dress.’ Orcadians have long memories, and that factor’s reputation has never recovered since.
The constancy of connection between Orkney, Caithness and the sea has also inevitably provoked superstitions. All mariners, whether fair-weather sailors or foul, are by nature and practice superstitious. To take to the sea means taking a bet on the future, and in the seas around these parts, the sea frequently wins. The local understanding of that gamble, and the atrocious odds it sometimes offers, gave them advantages and rewards in the days when there were plenty of fish to catch, and plenty of ships needing piloting. Now, as the odds get shorter, the chances of making any living at all from fishing are minimal. Families who for generations have worked on the sea have turned back to the land instead, either looking to the mainland for more diverse forms of employment or taking up work recycling history in the tourist and service industries.
But if the days of the wreckers have passed, many old practices still persist. Between them, Orkney, Stroma and Caithness sailors managed more taboos than a coven of Victorian spinsters. At one time or other, there have been superstitions against rats, cats, pigs, rabbits, ministers, women, knives, Swan matches, whistling, going to sea on a Friday, and the naming of fish—if you called a fish by its proper name, so the thinking went, then you would never catch it. But as Tom Muir points out, there were elements of practicality in some of the superstition. Many fishermen refused to learn to swim, partly because the seas in this area are freezing and secondly because if a crew member on a fishing boat did fall overboard, they had very little hope or chance of being rescued. ‘So,’ as Muir says, ‘if you could swim, all you were doing was prolonging your death and stretching out that agony when you didn’t have a hope anyway. You might as well just get it over quick, and go straight down.’
On his trip through Shetland and Orkney in 1814, Walter Scott also made note of another variant of the same superstition:
A worse and most horrid opinion prevails, or did prevail, among the fishers—namely, that he who saves a drowning man will receive at his hands some deep wrong or injury. Several instances were quoted to-day in company, in which the utmost violence had been found necessary to compel the fishers to violate this inhuman prejudice. It is conjectured to have arisen as an apology for rendering no assistance to the mariners as they escaped from a shipwrecked vessel, for these isles are infamous for plundering wrecks. A story is told of the crew of a stranded vessel who were warping themselves ashore by means of a hawser which they had fixed to the land. The islanders (of Unst, as I believe) watched their motions in silence, till an old man reminded them that if they suffered these sailors to come ashore, they would consume all their winter stock of provisions. A Zetlander cut the hawser, and the poor wretches, twenty in number, were all swept away. This is a tale of former times—the cruelty would not now be active, but I fear that even yet the drowning mariner would in some places receive no assistance in his exertions, and certainly he would in most be plundered to the skin upon his landing. The gentlemen do their utmost to prevent this infamous practice. It may seem strange that the natives should be so little affected by a distress to which they are themselves so constantly exposed. But habitual exposure to danger hardens the heart against its consequences, whether to ourselves or others.
As Muir explained it, if you save a man overboard, ‘You’ve deprived the sea of its prey. And the sea will take you, or one of your family, in place of the person you’ve saved, because you’ve cheated it.’
In Orkney, those who did drown were also treated with caution. ‘There was also a tradition that drowned mariners weren’t buried in the kirkyard, they were buried by the shore,’ says Muir. ‘The belief here was that if you buried a sailor who had been washed ashore, the sea would try to claim its prey back. It was like taking a mouse off a cat—the cat would want it back. If you buried someone who had been drowned inland, the sea might flood the kirkyard trying to get them back, and you didn’t want all your nice dry ancestors getting soggy because of some bloody sailor. So they were just pulled up the shore and buried on the banks by the shore.’
In some areas, this superstition had a religious element—the fear of burying an unknown and possibly heathen sailor in a Christian kirkyard. That fear mattered less in Orkney than in many areas, though by the nineteenth century there were very definite traditions about where exactly in the kirkyard people should be buried. ‘The tradition in Orkney was that the south side of the kirkyard was reserved for the most important members of the community,’ says Muir, ‘and the north was reserved for paupers’ burials and shipwrecked mariners—when they did start burying them in the kirkyard, it was at the north end. In Westray, I mind when I was a kid going there visiting my auntie, there was a new extension to the kirkyard, and they were starting to bury folk against one wall—the top end or something. And then down at the bottom end, there was just this one grave by itself, down by the shore. It was an old sea captain, a
nd that was his request—he had wanted to be buried as close to the sea as possible. Not because of superstition, but just because the sea was his home. That’s where he was happy, so he wanted to be buried as close to it as possible. Nowadays they’ve filled up all the edges, and so he’s got company, but in those days, it was just this one. It was almost like somebody in a huff—there just by himself, not speaking to anybody.’
The days and times of superstition have not faded completely, but they, along with the wrecking, are not the things which are now uppermost. Scapa Flow has become the richest dive centre in Europe, attracting people from all over the world to examine—and, unfortunately, loot—the wrecks of the scuppered German fleet. Older men like Willie Mowatt regard the fading of a few old traditions with unconcealed disgust. What, I ask, would happen if a general cargo vessel went down in the Firth tonight? ‘Oh, there would be boats going to the ship right enough,’ he says, ‘but it ain’t what it used to be. By no means, because in no time at all there would be the lifeboat there, then if there would be any hopes of looting or anything, there would be the customs and police and coastguards and all that. The pirates now doesn’t have a bloody chance—these [SAR] helicopters, they just swoop down and lift like bloody eagles out of the heavens. This is the trouble now—the water’s got too small. There’s no right thrill attached to it now, like what used to be. How are you supposed to defend yourself if there’s a helicopter come right out of the sky?’ He gets visibly irritated at the thought of it all. ‘It’s changed the whole bloody place, and you’re photographed from above, and the first you know you’re up before the court or slung in jail or every damn thing, that’s what happens.’
So no-one would bother wrecking now? ‘Oh, they’re still bothering, yes, because the pirates was very helpful with salvage work and all, you see. They worked both ways. They was wanting to be paid a salvage award as well.’ But, as he says, ‘It wasn’t easy doing the pirates either. Oh no, it wasn’t. But with these helicopters and that now, you might as well stay home. Unless it was genuinely saving lives. But as far as loot was concerned, you’d just be inside in no bloody time, that’s what it’s come to, you know.’
Does he think that’s the end of the wreckers? ‘Oh, it will happen again, nothing surer than that, it will all happen again. It will not die out in a hurry. It’s just a piece of wild human nature, that’s what it is.’ He laughs ruefully. And then takes me next door to the parlour to show me some of his finer spoils, and his MBE.
Stilly Isles
FOUR
Scilly Isles
On a nondescript day in March 1997, the bulk carrier Cita left Southampton docks and set sail for Northern Ireland. A solid, ugly vessel of 3,000 tons, the Cita was carrying a mixed shipment of containers to Belfast. Each container had been hired and stocked by separate freight carriers, and each was carrying goods ultimately intended for shops in Dublin. The Cita’s eight-man crew—all Polish—regarded the journey as a routine one: a short passage through populous sea areas. To reach her destination, the vessel had to round Cornwall’s southernmost tip, keep well clear of both the Wolf and the Seven Stones, and ensure she was travelling north of the Scilly archipelago before heading up through the Irish Sea to Belfast.
The first part of that journey went according to plan, but as night fell on 25 March, fog began to creep round the Scillies. Though the weather initially remained calm, the short-range forecast promised worsening conditions. Unperturbed, and confident in the Cita’s ability to ride out all but the most severe weather, the crew made their arrangements for the night. By midnight, the barometer had fallen sharply. Though nowhere near gale force yet, the sea was jumpy and disruptive, and would need careful watching. Winter gales around Cornwall and the Scillies are notorious, and the area has always been known as a hazardous place to navigate. When most of the crew went below to get some sleep, the mate remained alone on the bridge. At around 1 a.m. he switched on the autopilot and adjusted the Cita’s course by a few degrees. A radar alarm, which would have warned him and the rest of the crew of any local hazards, was not activated. Shortly afterwards, he too nodded off.
In the small hours of 26 March the Cita ran full-tilt into the rocks of St Mary’s. At the time she struck, she was travelling at 14 knots and no-one on board was awake. St Mary’s is the largest of the five main Scilly Isles and home to its capital, Hugh Town. Like most of the islands, it is comparatively low lying and has a coastline frilled with beaches and rocky inlets. Conveniently for the Scillonians and the local RNLI, the Cita’s autopilot had selected an inlet a mere ten minutes or so from the town centre in which to run aground. The lifeboat and an SAR helicopter found her quickly and took off all eight members of the crew, including one man with a broken leg.
For a while, the Cita remained above water. To begin with, it was thought that it might be possible to refloat her, tow her to a place of safety, and repair her as necessary. But as the day wore on it became evident that the Cita’s injuries were going to prove fatal. The force of her arrival in the Isles had lodged her bow and bridge fast onto the rocks, leaving her stern hanging over open water. The position was placing an unsustainable strain on her hull, and it was evidently only a matter of time before the continuing high seas broke her back. Initially, what most worried the coastguard and many Scillonians was not so much the prospect of 3,000 tons of steel cluttering up one of their most beguiling coves, but the threat of environmental disaster. By cargo-carrying standards, the Cita was a comparatively small vessel loaded with only enough fuel to carry her safely to her destination. But the Scillies rely heavily on the tourist trade, and the consequences of any fuel spill, however slight, could have been catastrophic for the local economy. It was thus with considerable ambivalence that the Scillonians watched the Cita list heavily to starboard, shrug off her load of containers, and began to sink.
Not everyone was interested solely in the fuel oil, however. By the time the Cita began to submerge, much of the local interest had shifted from the contents of her fuel tanks to the contents of her containers. Throughout the morning, those gathering on the shoreline watched her cargo come ashore with the tide, and listened to the shriek of overstressed metal. Bobbing on the swell, many of the containers floated briefly around the bay as the air inside dwindled away and then vanished from view. Many of the containers split open as they reached the shore, some sank, and the remainder scattered themselves around the nearby inlets. Almost all of the accessible containers had originally been tied shut with plastic strapping and proved easy for either the sea or the Scillonians to open. By mid-morning, word had spread around the islands, and the surrounding headlands were crowded with locals picking their way over the littered rocks. Those containers which remained afloat long enough to arrive ashore proved to be the stuff of salvor’s fantasy.
For a fully-laden general cargo vessel to run aground in an accessible position on an island in winter is more or less like having Selfridges crash land in your back garden—a Selfridges with all the prices removed. It is an event, a treasure hunt, a rare and splendid opportunity. Spilling out into the daylight was everything the Scillonians never knew they needed: a divine lucky-dip of random consumables. For householders, the sea gave out laminate flooring, wooden doors, barbecue sets, bathroom accessories, washing-machine spares and toilet seats. Farmers could take their pick of car engines and power tools, Land Rover and tractor tyres. For the mechanically-minded, there were multiple brake cylinders, wing mirrors and exhausts. For the underdressed, the Cita dispensed Marks & Spencer dresses and nighties, Ascot trainers, Ben Sherman shirts, workmen’s clothing, and bright baby clothes. Even the children were not forgotten. Among the treasures on offer were several tons of toys, including Action Men. Lastly, for those who only required a souvenir or two, there were a million plastic supermarket bags (all printed with the instruction to ‘help protect the environment’), computer mice, twenty tons of tinned water chestnuts, and a million pounds worth of raw tobacco in bales.
T
he islanders did not hesitate. Some people waded into the water, grabbing bagfuls of clothing and computer equipment. Those who owned boats or dinghies took to the sea, motoring out to the more inaccessible containers and stuffing their vessels to the gunwhales with tyres, doors or golf bags. One man noted sourly that by the time he got down to the beach: ‘All that was left was one damaged computer mouse, a vast amount of plastic wrapping and sodden cardboard containers.’ The local museum has a small display of Cita memorabilia, and a sign beside it noting that, ‘from [a cargo of] thousands of tyres, the museum managed to obtain one inner tube.’
Though the one thing that the ship did not contain was alcohol, it was not long before the wreck of the Cita became known as Scilly’s own Whisky Galore. Walk through St Mary’s now, and it is remarkable how many of the islanders can be seen wearing Ben Sherman shirts or Ascot trainers, and whose houses boast piebald laminate floors. In the view of one islander: ‘We had a bit of fun out of it, that’s all. That’s what most of that type of salvage were—it were just . . . Most people don’t take much. You might get two shirts or something like that. The thing is, the stuff she had aboard, the firm wouldn’t have accepted it anyway. What good is it if it’s been in salt water? They’d never be able to sell it, and even if they were able to sell it, the cost of transporting it back, having it cleaned and so on . . . I mean, God, it would be dearer than buying a whole new outfit!’
The Wreckers Page 12
