Today Orcadians awoke to the news that their passenger ferry, the Hamnavoe, had been commandeered as part of a rescue mission to Norway.
This might be okay if the other service, connecting Aberdeen and Lerwick, had not decided to miss out the Orkney stop! And the planes are not going properly yet! Thank goodness for the Pentalina....but it will be packed!
It's hard not to feel a little panicky and stranded. Who knows, by the end of the day there could be looting and pillaging in the streets of Kirkwall! Orkney will have split into two tribes and we'll all forget how to use cutlery and start wearing face paint and necklaces made out of each others' teeth!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, maybe not.
In order to put things into a little perspective, I have looked out an Edinburgh Advertiser from 1769. It contains an article about a party of sailors who were trapped on a small uninhabited island, just West of Orkney, when they disembarked and a storm blew their ship back out to sea 'where they continued feven days without fire or lodging, or any fubfistence except fcurvy grafs, fea weed, and brackifh water.'
Eventually, nine of them set out for Stromness on the one small boat they had left to raise the alarm. A sloop was dispatched to rescue the remaining sailors but kept being beaten back by wind and wave. At the time of publication, their fate was unknown.
So things could be worse.
Archive refrerence: D1/660/18 [H1]
In order to put things into a little perspective, I have looked out an Edinburgh Advertiser from 1769. It contains an article about a party of sailors who were trapped on a small uninhabited island, just West of Orkney, when they disembarked and a storm blew their ship back out to sea 'where they continued feven days without fire or lodging, or any fubfistence except fcurvy grafs, fea weed, and brackifh water.'
Eventually, nine of them set out for Stromness on the one small boat they had left to raise the alarm. A sloop was dispatched to rescue the remaining sailors but kept being beaten back by wind and wave. At the time of publication, their fate was unknown.
So things could be worse.
Archive refrerence: D1/660/18 [H1]
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