Absent pupils minding babies, ‘Miraculous escape’ for crew and Ferry quay plans for Scrabster
LOOKING BACK: News from the John O’Groat Journal of yesteryear
Absent pupils minding babies
From the Groat of July 3, 1925
The children of herring workers were being kept off school to look after their younger siblings, members of the Wick School Management Committee were told.
Rector Alex Robertson had raised the question of attendance at West Banks School and the lower classes of the high school which, he said, had “suffered as a result of the women going to work in connection with the herring fishing”.
He told the members that “pupils were being kept at home to mind babies” and that “this practice was practically killing attendance during the last month of the session”.
Chairman John Harper remarked that the committee could do nothing about the situation for the current year and it would not arise again until the next May. But Mr Robertson said it would “be going on from August until people come home from Yarmouth”.
Elsewhere, Wick Town Council heard that a burgh surveyor’s report on a property in West Banks which housed two families on the ground floor had deemed it “unfit for habitation”.
Broken windows and loose slates were letting in rain and a lack of rones had led to damp in the walls and floors.
Councillors agreed to allow the families to stay in the building if the landlord boarded up the broken windows and made the roof watertight.
‘Miraculous escape’ for crew
From the Groat of July 4, 1975
The crew of the Thurso seine-netter Star Divine were recovering at home after their “miraculous escape when their vessel caught fire and blew up in Loch Eriboll”.
Skipper Denny Simpson, his teenage sons James and Angie and Billy Munro had been fishing off Whiten Head when a fire started in the boat’s engine room.
Skipper Simpson “noticed smoke coming from the engine room and when the crew looked below they found the compartment an inferno.
“They fought the fire with extinguishers but it was out of control. They tried to radio for help but it was out of operation.
“Realising the ship was in a dangerous condition, the crew scrambled into an inflatable life raft and paddled away. But they had only travelled 100 yards when the vessel blew up and sank.”
The crew had begun to paddle for shore five miles away, and after an hour and a half their emergency flares were seen by those on board a local lobster boat which picked them up.
They finally arrived in Durness at 4am – six hours after the drama had started.
Elsewhere, Wick Old Parish Church’s popular annual exhibition “See Wick and Meet the People” had opened in the church hall. Among the items on show were photographs and fossils along with a box bed donated by local MP Robert Maclennan.
Ferry quay plans for Scrabster
From the Groat of July 7, 2000
Major development of the inner basin at Scrabster harbour had been shelved, despite getting the seal of approval from Scotland’s rural affairs minister Ross Finnie.
The £13 million project designed to attract new fishing, oil-related and cargo trade had been mothballed while the port focused its efforts on accommodating a new and larger Pentland Firth ferry.
Scrabster Harbour Trust faced a race against time to have the work carried out before the new vessel to make the daily crossings to Stromness came into service in April 2002.
The existing Ola pier would not have been able to accommodate the length and draught of the new ferry other than on a makeshift basis.
Meanwhile, blueprints for the two new quays, a finger pier and breakwater and extensive dredging of the harbour would remain firmly on the drawing board.
Harbourmaster Lt Com Pierre Bale explained that the port had been “overtaken by events” and that it had to give priority to the ferry.
Elsewhere, unique live pictures of Europe’s smallest bird of prey, the merlin, could be seen at RSPB Scotland’s nature reserve at Forsinard.
Visitors to the Peatlands visitor centre could watch stunning images on a large screen of a merlin’s nest.
The clutch of three eggs had started to hatch earlier in the week and the chicks were expected to remain in the nest for a further three weeks.
