Orkney Pride

It's London Pride today and so we thought we'd see if we had any rainbow-themed archives to celebrate...

The obvious place to start was with John W. Scott's wonderful book of Orkney and Shetland weather words:


gaa: a fragment of rainbow... a small rainbow in the horizon... a spot or ray of a rainbow colour which appears near the sun, generally in dry windy weather, and which indicates some change in the weather


The word also appears in The Orkney Dictionary by Margaret Flaws and Gregor Lamb:


gaa n. sun-dog, bit of rainbow before or behind the sun.weather-gaa


'A gaa behind ye needno mind,
A gaa afore, lukk for a roar'


Ernest Walker Marwick's papers were the next port of call and they contain a paper written by George Marwick on the subjects of Rainbows, Aurora Borealis, Igasill The Tree of Life and a legendary Stronsay Wedding:

Rainbows foretold the birth of a baby boy. Orkney Archive Reference D31/4/1/2

Our last (tenuous) rainbow themed archive is an excerpt from a 1783 edition of The Morning Post, and Daily Advertiser which briefly reports the Orcadian exploits of a piratical smuggler aboard the Rainbow Cutter:

Orkney Archive reference D1/660/25 [H1]

New Displays and Strange Old Customs

 

We are proud to announce that we now have a new display of archives about Deerness in the Library foyer and continuing upstairs in the Archive Searchroom . [Now over.] This display is to help promote the Deerness in 100 objects event at Deerness Hall from 24 June - 7 August.

Our display includes school log books, kirk session minutes, photos of ploughing cups and medals, and one of the Deerness Coastguard Station books.

We have also provided some nice colour photocopies of some of the contents of the archive items to the Deerness Hall for the public to view there.

We are all waiting impatiently for our day off so that we can go down to Deerness and experience it ourselves.

We have not forgotten all you pirate fans out there though - do not despair! We have copied and moved the display of Orkney Pirate archives and Tall Ships photos down to the wavy wall in the library. The wavy wall (a very apt place to put it!) is near the childrens area on the way to the Marwick Room and the Computer Room in the main part of the Library.

And just to keep you laughing through the weekend here are a couple of drawings we found recently in the Customs & Excise Records. These are instructions to Kirkwall Customs Officials to watch out for some ingenious ways of smuggling tea and lace from ships in 1834.

Archive reference: CE55/2/6 Customs and Excise Records : Board’s Orders: Board to Collector, 1834.



Ahoy me hearties! More Pirates!?!

As you've probably guessed, I'm a bit obsesssed with Pirates and so tend to spot anything related to them in any other records we have. I was looking through our Customs and Excise Shipping Registers for Orkney from 1855-1904 and found a ship with the unusual name of Pirate!

Intriguing, I thought, I wonder who would buy a ship called Pirate. It isn't a name you would instantly trust. According to the register, it was built in Stromness in 1888 by Peter Johnston Copeland who also owned 16 shares of it which amounted to a quarter. Many people invested in ships as a way of making or saving money in the nineteenth century. Each ship was divided into 64 shares. The other three owners were Elisabeth Ross, James Spence and David Smith who all had 16 shares. Then in 1898 everyone except David Smith sold their share to William Cowper Ward which meant he had 48 shares. Then in 1900 both David Smith and William Cowper Ward sold their shares onto someone else and the ship left Orkney.

Where did it go? Who bought all 64 shares? You'll never guess...(well you might)....it was Francis Drake, master mariner from Braunton in Devon!!! And this Francis Drake was a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake of the Elisabethan age who himself was considered to be, in some places, particularly Spain,  a PIRATE!

Ok that's my last blog on pirates...for a while anyway. I promise to write about other things from now on. Maybe eggs...

Reference: CE55/11/2 Orkney Customs and Excise: Shipping Register 1855-1904

Pirates & Privateers

We have a new archive display [Now over] in the Archive Searchroom! Its all about pirates and particularly Orkney's famous pirate John Gow.

Gow was born in Wick in 1697. His family then moved to Stromness where he grew up before running away to sea. He rose to be second mate on the ship The George by 1724. When sailing from Santa Cruz on 3rd November that year, he and a few others of the crew mutinied, took over the ship and renamed it Revenge. They plundered around the coast of Spain and Madeira for a while, then came up to Orkney in 1725. Gow wanted to plunder the houses of the gentry. They raided the Honyman mansion, the Hall of Clestrain in Orphir and then headed up to Carrick House on Eday. It was here at the Calf of Eday that his ship ran aground and he was captured.  He was later tried and hanged in London.

Gow was the inspiration for Captain Cleveland in Sir Walter Scott's novel The Pirate.

Another pirate mentioned in the display is John Fullarton who, according to Ernest Marwick, possibly came from Stromness or Orphir and was known to be smuggling around the Channel Islands in the 18th century before becoming a privateer for the Royal Navy. Privateers had permission from the government to rob enemy vessels at sea. He soon became greedier and became a partner in a pirate ship with a Royal Navy captain called Keppel. He made a lot of money, some of which he spent on an estate in Orkney for his family. He was eventually shot by the wife of Captain Jones of the Isabella. She was then known as 'Mary Jones, the Pirate-Slayer'.

If you are in Orkney, please come along and see our display. It will be up until the end of June 2011 in the Archive Searchroom and I hope to put a copy of it on the wavy-wall in the library soon too.

References: D31/2/5 Ernest Marwick Collection - Orkney's Other Pirate John Fullarton and D36/3/5 R.P. Fereday papers - extract from The Pirate's Who's Who by Philip Gosse, 1924.