Would You Like to Go To Eynhallow?

Photo: Charles Tait Photographic, The Orkney Guide Book, Third Edition.

Who wouldn't? Eynhallow (from the Old Norse oyin helga, holy isle) is thought to be the site of Orkney's earliest monastic settlement and boasts the remains of a 12th century church.

Other names for Eynhallow include 'The Enchanted Isle' and 'The Disappearing Isle' as it was allegedly not always visible to human eyes and was the summer residence of mermaids and finfolk. Apparently, the only way to be sure to reach the island is for the pilot of the boat to never take his eyes from land and to be gripping iron at all times.

More Eynhallow folklore can be found here.

The uninhabited island is inaccessible for most of the year due to strong tides from both sides but the wonderful Orkney Heritage Society, put on a trip each year in July.

This year's trip should, weather permitting, take place on Monday 22nd July. Tickets are £20 for adults and £10 for under 12s and available from the Archive department (we are on the first floor of Orkney Library.) We accept cash or cheques and require the names of all ticket holders and a contact telephone number in the event of cancellation.

PLEASE NOTE, THE ARCHIVE IS CLOSED ON WEDNESDAYS.

The boat shall depart from Tingwall at 7.15pm and shall leave Eynhallow at 10.15pm.

Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult and no dogs are permitted.


Information taken from:
The Orkney Guide Book, Third Edition by Charles Tait.
Eynhallow by John Mooney
www.orkneyjar.com

Do You Like Boats?

TK1561 - Stromness Harbour

 We have a new item on the Archive page of the Orkney Library & Archive website. Thanks to the work of our wonderful volunteers, we can now offer you an index to the Orkney Customs & Excise Fishing Boat Registers. You can see it here

TK1563 - Stromness Fishing Fleet

 After months of indexing work, our lovely volunteers have completed this fine list. We have ordered it alphabetically according to the name of the vessel, but you can also search the whole document for other information.

TK1569 - Kirkwall Fishing Fleet

 So, if your ancestor had a boat with the number K212, which is tucked in on the left of the picture above, then you could use the index to find out that the name of the boat was Bonnie Lassie from Sanday.



TK1566

And in the picture above, if you can ignore the man at the front (who looks like he has thrown the lid of that box in the water) and find 1318K, you can discover in the index that its name was Laju and it was owned and skippered by Samuel Jones in 1893 and James Walls in 1906.

The Guide to Records in the Nation Archives of Scotland webpage states that:

"Ships and fishing boats must be registered in a port of registry before they can be navigated. Local customs officers frequently maintained shipping registers and sea fishing boat registers on behalf of the Registrar-General of Seamen from 1786, and surviving registers of these ports are included among the Customs and Excise records. Though the information contained in shipping registers can vary, they usually record the names of ships, their owners and changes in ownership, the ship's master and a basic description of the vessel, including the year it was built and its size and tonnage."

We have not included the extra information in the index, but if you are curious to know more about the fishing boat, then you can visit us to see the original book or ask us to look it up for you.

Surf While You Sail

A lot of Orkney dwellers dislike boats and are bad sailors. The Northlink ferries are often filled with recumbent blanket dwellers whose low chorus of groans make a trip South complete.

Sometimes, when one is meeting friends from a North-bound boat, they emerge green gilled and spattered, the unmistakable whiff of vomit enveloping them like a cape.

The ferries can be trying. But look! You can now read Orkney Archive's blog whilst aboard which can only improve your ferry experience:

Onboard internet access now available

People travelling on the Aberdeen-Lerwick-Kirkwall route can now surf the internet and check their e-mails while onboard, after the two vessels serving the route were fitted with satellite communication equipment enabling the ships to provide internet facilities in all public areas.

Coffee and tea making facilities are also shortly to be installed in most cabins.

Regular readers will know how strongly we approve of coffee and tea-making facilities in all areas of life.

We are currently cataloguing a large collection of books which was gifted to the library and found this copy of Patrick Neill's A Tour Through Some of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland published in 1806. As you can see, it is very overdue to be returned to Darlington Circulation Library whose lending period was two weeks with a fine of tuppence per day thereafter. If we assume that the book was borrowed around its publication date, then the fine would amount to £1489.20. In today's money that would be £50,574,93.

Not too shabby. Perhaps this retrospective fining is the answer for library budgets in these cash-strapped times. Sadly, our library does not exercise a fine system. Yes, you read that correctly, no fines at Orkney Library and Archive. Aren't we good?

Cruising in Orkney

When hearing the words 'cruise liner' most people picture the Caribbean, shuffle board, or cocktails with little umbrellas in them. Perhaps they then muse upon Poirot investigating a murder on the Nile or poor, frozen  Leo desperately scrabbling at the edge of the floating door hogged by greedy old Kate Winslet.

You may be surprised then to learn that little old Orkney is expecting SEVENTY THREE cruise liners this Summer with a record FOUR vessels all stopping in Kirkwall on August the 18th!

A timetable of these visits is published each year in the Orcadian and a copy is kept by the till of most shops and public buildings in the town.

We do not put on anything special for cruise visitors in the archive but it helps to be poised for the days when there are more tourists than regular inhabitants on the streets. We like to have maps handy for giving directions and  lists of eateries memorised in order of distance from archive, price and quality of cake.

We are often visited by voyagers who have family connections to Orkney and are wishing to explore this link. As delighted as we are to help, let one point be made; while it is incredibly flattering that some optimistic visitors think us capable of compiling a family tree in just 5 minutes, without any supporting dates or documentation, sadly our skills do not extend that far. Any genealogical visitors may get on a bit better with a birth date or two and perhaps at least an hour to spare.

Damn you, BBC's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' and damn you again! 

As The Bash Street Kids Would Say... 'Groo!'

By the way, this is the Hamnavoe on a routine crossing of the Pentland Firth. Imagine what it's going to be like on the open sea...

Lord of The Flies - Orkney Style

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]