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Updated: May 14, 2025
The little haven of Stromness was ever a quiet place, but never did it seem so quiet as during the calm which succeeded the storm of the past week, especially as that calm came on a Sunday, that quietest of all days in the North.
Tom and Thora Kinlay lived at Crua Breck farm, distant from Stromness four miles; and little Hilda Paterson, the youngest girl in the school, lived at her father's croft away beyond Stenness, and walked the five miles barefooted twice a day. When I got home the brose for dinner was cooling on the windowsill, and my mother was frying the fish I had caught in the morning.
This was the ridge that runs in a southerly direction from Fortuna Bay, and our course eastward to Stromness lay across it. A very steep slope led up to the ridge and an icy wind burst through the gap. We went through the gap at 6 a.m. with anxious hearts as well as weary bodies.
I waited only to see the boat bend over in the fresh breeze as she sailed outward to the ships; then, armed with my harpoon and a knobbed stick, I hastened out of Stromness, followed by my dog. I got her from Colin Lothian, an old "gaberlunzie" man who travelled our countryside.
"He belongs to the Lydia, the barque that cam' in this forenoon." "Aw, yes, I ken his ship, but I dinna ken the captain. Yes, yes, he'll get a taste o' the troot, I warrant him that." Then turning to Mr. Gordon, she continued: "Ye were never in Stromness afore, captain? No? Ye maun speak loud it's terrible dull o' hearing I am."
Opposite Yarmouth a gale rose and forced them into a sheltering harbour. It was the middle of July before they rounded the north shore of Scotland. At Stromness in the Orkneys the Prince of Wales took on board a small body of emigrants and a number of the company's servants who were waiting there.
Southward, along the cliffs, a high steeple rock the Old Man of Hoy stood like a sentinel guarding the coast, his head on a level with the cliff behind him; and rounding Rora Head were the brown sails of a few fishing craft making for Stromness. "Come, Robbie," I said, when we had feasted our eyes on this scene. "Come, we must be getting home.
Renton's home was in Stromness, in the Orkneys, and he shipped on board a vessel bound to Sydney, in 1867, as an ordinary seaman, he then being a lad of eighteen. When in Sydney he got about among the boarding-houses, in sailor-town, and one morning woke up on the forecastle of the Reynard of Boston, bound on a cruise for guano among the South Pacific Islands.
Two men came aboard and bound my arms about me with my own rope, and conducted me into the boat, while the bailie got down into the stern, where he sat ruminating as we were rowed towards the landing pier. I was marched between two guards up the narrow street of Stromness, and the cold snow fell down upon me.
His note-book contains "nothing of general interest," says Knapp, except an imperfect outline of the journey, showing that he was at Oban, Tobermory, the Mull of Cantire, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen, Inverness, Dingwall, Tain, Dornoch, Helmsdale, Wick, John o'Groats, Thurso, Stromness, Kirkwall, and Lerwick.
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