TAKE THE FERRY from Scrabster Harbour to Stromness. Cross the Pentland Firth from the north coast of Caithness to Mainland, Orkney, and already there is a growing feeling of vast distance, of wide horizons. A majestic, ponderous swell rolls in from across the North Atlantic on to the ferry's port beam—and that is on a fine day! The forbidding, dark vertical cliffs of Western Orkney, rising up as high as 1,000 feet, increase in grandeur as the ferry approaches, and there, to starboard, is the upstanding pillar of rock, The Old Man of Hoy.

Then on to the port of Stromness. Away to the east are the deep, sheltered waters of Scapa Flow, where navies may find haven. And not only in modern times. A description of Orkney published in THE LIFEBOAT of August 1, 1876, goes back many centuries: 'In the waters of Scapa Flow, which wash the southern coast of Pomona Island [Orkney Mainland], Rollo, son of the then Earl of Orkney, and grandfather of our William the Conqueror, assembled his fleet, and for six months recruited his forces, preparatory to his descent on Normandy; and the bulk of the men who formed that successful invading army were "Orkney bred or born". . . .' Look to the west and the north, and this same description speaks of the time when Stromness Harbour would have been . . .

'. . . thronged with whaling, exploring, seal-hunting ships, privateers and ships of war, outward or homeward bound . . .

Here rendezvoused the great Arctic explorers Franklin and Parry, and from here sailed the great circumnavigator and explorer Captain Cook, bound on his attempt at the Northern mystery.' The Hudson's Bay Company ships called at Stromness each year. Whether ships were bound for Canada, Greenland, the Davis Strait or the Arctic, the young men of Orkney would have been recruited for them all.

At one time line fishing was very good, for tusk, cod, ling and halibut. For many years the herring fleet came to Orkney, when perhaps 30 or 40 herring boats might have been found unloading their catch or sheltering in Stromness.

Now deep sea trawlers have largely taken over. There is still line fishing, of course; in fact for six years former Provost William Knight, the lifeboat station's present branch chairman, was credited in The Guinness Book of Records with the largest halibut caught in this way. Some seine netters and small trawlers work out of Stromness, too, but the most prevalent inshore fishing is for lobsters. Modern lobster boats may carry up to 400 creels and the lobsters, kept ashore in covered ponds near the harbour, are shipped as far away as Norway, France and Southern England. It is a thriving business.

The horizons are wide and, for the people of Stromness, always have been. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is for the long distances covered on rescue missions and the very long hours sometimes spent at sea that the lifeboats and lifeboatmen of Stromness are perhaps most renowned.

The station was first established in 1867, following the total wreck on New Year's Day, 1866, on the island of Graemsay just south of Stromness, of Albion, an emigrant ship bound for Canada. Although most of the 100 passengers and crew were saved by boats which put out from the shore, 11 people in one boat drowned.

Pulling and sailing lifeboats At that time Stromness was the most northerly of the RNLI's stations. Its first two lifeboats were, of course, pulling and sailing boats; the 33ft Saltaire, 1867 to 1891, and the 42ft Good Shepherd, 1891 to 1909. Not only were tremendous strength and effort demanded to contend with the strong tides, the ferocious winds and the swell and rough seas coming in from the Atlantic on to the rocky coast, but the crews also suffered much from exposure in these early open lifeboats. On one occasion, when a fishing boat was lost in a gale, Saltaire was out searching all night through a snow storm, going right up the coast as far as Birsay.

Good Shepherd launched on December 11, 1907, after a farmer from Breck Ness had galloped over the hill to report a trawler, Shakespeare, wrecked on the Point of Spoil. Only the trawler's masts and funnel could be seen above the water when the lifeboat arrived but, although often herself standing on end in the raging surf, Good Shepherd managed to bring off by line two men clinging to the trawler's foremast and another man hanging on to the funnel. Three men on the mizzen mast were brought to safety by the rocket brigade on shore. For this rescue Coxswain Robert Greig was awarded the silver medal for gallantry.

John A. Hay Long years of service are given at Stromness, whether on sea or land, and it is a station where the close bonds between lifeboatmen and the people who back them up on shore are well illustrated. There have only been ten coxswains and seven honorary secretaries in Stromness lifeboat station's 117 years history.

One of the most outstanding of the honorary secretaries, deeply concerned in every aspect of the work and needs of the station and spanning the years from the time of sail and oar to twin-engined motor lifeboats, was Mr G. L. Thomson; he served from 1903 to 1944. Mr Thomson had been in office for some six years when John A. Hay came on station in 1909.

She was one of the Institution's first boats to be built as a motor lifeboat and of course she had a much greater range than the older boats. Mr Thomson himself went out on her first service. One of the sudden violent gales which can occur in these waters came up from the north east while the coxswain and nearly all the crew were at sea. Mr Thomson and the harbour master mustered a scratch crew and were successful in rescuing a fishing boat with four men on board. It was the first of two occasions when Mr Thomson went out with the lifeboat himself.

On January 1, 1922, the Grimsby trawler Freesia, homeward bound with a large catch of fish, was wrecked in strong winds and a heavy sea on Costa Head, more than 20 miles north of Stromness. As soon as John A. Hay was launched, Mr Thomson motored across the island to the headland. He found that the trawler had already sunk and that the only survivors, two men, were adrift on a small raft. His first concern was to place signalmen round the cliffs to guide the lifeboat, and he then appealed for shore boats to put out.

Three boats did put to sea but they could not reach the raft.

For John A. Hay it was a long and stormy journey along a lee shore. She was continually swept by waves, her crew, soaked to the skin and very cold, were blinded at times by the rain.

When she arrived she was guided by the signalmen to the raft and rescued the two men minutes before they would have been carried to certain death. For this service the bronze medal was awarded to Coxswain William Johnston.

In these days of advanced electonic aids, it is well to remember the.vital part once played by the shore signalmen.

Before the days of radio, making their way across the land to vantage points where they would take up station, perhaps for long periods and in positions exposed to the full force of the weather, they provided the only means of communication with lifeboats at sea, by morse or semaphore, or, in the event of a recall, Very pistol or small rocket.

In November 1920, John A. Hay had travelled 70 miles on one service; in January 1922, as we have seen, she travelled 50 miles to rescue the men from Freesia, being at sea for nine hours. On September 22, 1922, she travelled 114 miles and was at sea 14 hours when nine men were rescued from the trawler The Cornet of Aberdeen stranded off Sanday, one of the north-easterly islands of Orkney. All long distances for an early motor lifeboat, in which the crew were still exposed to the weather.

An interesting point came out in another long service, in 1923. John A. Hay launched to go to ss Cormorant in distress in Eynhallow Sound, about 20 miles away. She carried enough petrol to last 16V2 hours at full speed, but on this occasion her petrol was in fact exhausted in 13 hours. On the way north the boat was under sail and motor, running before a south-easterly gale of exceptional severity, and, as the sails were taking the load, the engine was running a third as fast as its normal speed. It is also interesting to read once again that, when the lifeboat did not arrive back as expected . . .

'... at four in the following morning the honorary secretary arranged for a drifter to go in search of her, he himself, with a party of signalmen, searching the coast by motor car. . . .' In June 1926, John A. Hay set out at 2330 in thick fog to go to the help of a steamer, Hastings County of Bergen, which had gone ashore at Auskerry, an island on the east of Orkney. Thirty-one men were taken off and landed at Kirkwall, and when the lifeboat reached Stromness the following afternoon she had been out for 17 hours and in that time she had travelled 85 miles.

J.J.K.S.W.

By now, a new lifeboat had been laid down for Stromness.

She was one of the new Barnett twin-screw boats being built for stations where long distances might have to be travelled.

These Barnetts, 60ft overall, were intended to lie afloat but, at the station's request, the new Stromness boat was built to a modified, smaller design, 51ft by 13ft 6in, so that she could be housed. Mr Thomson had travelled to London and put a number of suggestions to the designer, J. R. Barnett, for what was to become the Barnett (Stromness) lifeboat, and the designer himself freely acknowledged how much help he had received from Mr Thomson and the crew at Stromness.

The new 51ft Barnett lifeboat went on station in 1928; she was named J.J.K.S.W. on June 6 by HRH Prince George, who also named a new lifeboat at Longhope on the same day.

The range of Stromness lifeboatmen had once again been extended.

Early on February 14 the next year, at about 0400, three separate messengers arrived at the house of the honorary secretary to report a trawler, Carmania II of Grimsby, ashore on Kirk Rocks in Hoy Sound. Half an hour later J.J.K.S.W.

was on her way. Arriving off the rocks she found that the trawler was too far off for the team ashore to get a line to her and too far in for the lifeboat to be able to reach her in the darkness and across an intervening 100 to 150 yards of breaking seas. About an hour later a huge wave lifted the stricken trawler 'as if she had been a cork', swung her completely round and threw her on top of the reef.

When the tide turned and began to make, the seas grew heavier and heavier, but two hours later, with the rising tide, Coxswain William Johnston manoeuvred the lifeboat through the breakers and dropped anchor. On the second attempt a line was successfully fired across and secured aboard the trawler, so that a lifebuoy could be sent to her. The lifeboat was veered in through the surf, nearer and nearer as the tide rose. She herself was being thrown high by every sea and then disappearing in the following trough. Watching for the right moments, however, five trawlermen were brought off. Then a tremendous wave caught the lifeboat nearly broadside on; her anchor cable snapped and she was driven to leeward.

Coxswain Johnston took the boat quickly ahead among the reefs and breakers until she was under the lee of the wreck, to which he still had lines. He shouted to the men on board to get into the trawler's own small boat, swept overboard and floating under her lee, so that he could haul them to the lifeboat. Five more men were thus rescued. Then the painter parted and the small boat was swept away with two men still in her, but the lifeboat, passing again between the rocks and the shore, was able to rescue them. For this service Coxswain Johnston was awarded a bar to his bronze medal. Writing in his Story of the Stromness Lifeboats 1867 to 1967, Ernest W.

Marwick records that after this service the coxswain said: 'We have a grand boat, and we are afraid of nothing above water if we have plenty o' water below us. I like no' when we see the redware churning up alongside of us.' It was in 1930, however, that Stromness lifeboat, the 51ft Barnett, J.J.K.S. W., undertook her most extended passages.

In March and April, within nine days of each other, two vessels were wrecked off Shetland where, at that time, no lifeboat was stationed. A trawler, Ben Doran, was wrecked on the Vee Skerries, an area of about a square mile of reefs and blind rocks lying to the west of Shetland. Ben Doran had reached about the centre of the skerries before she was held fast and despite most courageous efforts by a number of people to rescue her crew, all were drowned. On that occasion Acting Coxswain William Linklater (coxswain from later that year until 1938) took Stromness lifeboat 134 miles through south to south-easterly gales and very rough seas to Scalloway in Shetland. A very brief stop was made at Scalloway to take on board food, fuel and a pilot before passage was resumed for Vee Skerries. Only the gallows of Ben Doran were visible when J. J. K. S. W. arrived and despite an extensive search no one could be found. Eventually the lifeboat returned to Scalloway and then, next morning, to Stromness. She had been away from station 55 hours and sailed altogether more than 260 miles in the worst of weather.

Nine days later ss St Sunniva, a mail steamer, went ashore in fog on Mousa, on the east side of Shetland. Once again Stromness lifeboat made the round trip; this time 240 miles, the outward passage being made in very thick weather. On arrival at Mousa, she learnt that, happily, everyone on board St Sunniva had got safely ashore.

Before these two incidents it had already been decided by the Institution to establish a station in Shetland and a lifeboat went on duty at Lerwick soon afterwards.

The last shore signalman to communicate with Stromness lifeboat as she set out for the Vee Skerries was John Rae, standing on Marwick Head. Together with Mr Thomson and Mr J. G. Sinclair, who later was to follow Mr Thomson as honorary secretary, John Rae had been acting as a signalman since the end of the First World War, travelling round the coast to guide the lifeboats and to keep them informed as far as possible. It was the start of a lifetime of service for Mr Rae.

He became a member of the branch committee in 1924 and served as chairman from 1944 to 1982. From that time until his death early this year, he continued to serve as president of the branch. John Rae was awarded the silver badge in 1957, the gold badge in 1968 and honorary life governorship of the Institution in 1982. During the 58 years of his active service on Stromness station branch committee, he had worked with 13 of the Institution's divisional inspectors of lifeboats.

Mr G. L. Thomson, who continued as honorary secretary until the year of his death, 1944, had also given exceptional service to the RNLI; he, too, was made an honorary life governer, in 1924, the RNLI's centenary year, and he was awarded the MBE in 1941.

By the early 1950s, J.J.K.S. W. was approaching the end of her station life at Stromness, but two services during her last years illustrate well the variety of weather conditions in which lifeboat help may be needed.

Both Stromness and Thurso lifeboats were launched very early on the morning of March 22, 1953, when the Grimsby trawler Leicester City, with a complement of 18, went aground on the island of Hoy in a heavy swell and thick fog.

The report speaks of Coxswain William Sinclair 'groping his way' out of Hoy Sound—no radar then. For a few minutes the fog lifted so that a light from the casualty could be seen, but it closed down again immediately and the lifeboat's engines had to be stopped so that the crew could listen: 'A few minutes later the coxswain heard faint shouting, and at 0330 the lifeboat picked up four men from a raft. The mechanic, John MacLeod, and the assistant motor mechanic, Edward Wilson, both stood on the bottom of the scrambling net in the sea to rescue the men, but it needed the help of the whole crew to get the exhausted survivors into the boat.' Searching through the day in treacherous tidal waters and, for most of the time, in dense fog, 14 men were picked up alive, although three of them died later. For this service the thanks of the Institution inscribed on vellum were accorded to Coxswain William Sinclair of Stromness and Coxswain Angus Macintosh of Thurso.

In January 1955 the hazard was on land, with roads blocked by heavy snow. Over a period of four days, J.J.K.S. W. was called upon to take food and mail to an area cut off by snow, take a sick woman on her way to hospital and take a doctor and nurse to a very old lady too ill to be moved.

Archibald and Alexander M. Paterson Stromness's present lifeboat, a 52ft Barnett, went on station a few months later, in May 1955; like her predecessor Archibald and Alexander M. Paterson is modified so that she can be a housed slipway boat.

Stromness has a regular and a reserve crew. Last year, William G. Sinclair, the son of the former Coxswain William Sinclair, took over as coxswain from Alfred Sinclair, while Eoin Sinclair took over as second coxswain from Bob Scott. Both the former boat's officers were retiring after 20 years service.

The present Coxswain William Sinclair first joined the crew in 1952 (thus serving for a year with his father) and he had been assistant mechanic for 20 years. His sister, Mrs Elizabeth Johnston, is vice-president, and former honorary secretary, of Stromness ladies' guild; her husband was related to Coxswain Dan Kirkpatrick and other members of the Longhope lifeboat lost in the disaster of 1969. Stromness lifeboat was one of the lifeboats which had been out on that tragic day, searching for their missing colleagues.

It can be seen that in Stromness, as in the rest of Orkney, the lifeboat community is very close knit, both between the different generations and between the different spheres of activity: operational, administrative and fund raising. Former Provost William Knight, the present chairman of the branch, had been a committee member since 1961, a deputy launching authority since 1972 and he had served as assistant honorary secretary from 1977 to 1982. Both his grandfather and his father were crew members and his son Jim is in the present reserve crew.. The present assistant honorary secretary, William Craigie, is the grandson of former Coxswain William Linklater. Those are just two more examples.

Long service, as has already been seen, is another of the station's traditions. One former crew member, John W.

Folster, served for no less than 51 years. The present honorary secretary, Captain John Allan, has served since 1962; he was awarded a barometer in 1973 and a gold badge in 1983. William Halcrow has been honorary treasurer since 1958, and he was awarded the silver badge in 1975.

Mrs Johnston's fellow officers on the ladies' guild committee are Mrs F. Kershaw, who is president, Mrs S. M. Walker, honorary secretary, and Mrs J. Tulloch, the honorary treasurer. With a membership of about 20, they put enormous energy into raising funds for the station. Every year a house-to-house collection is made at the end of August, and, before Christmas, a sale is held when most welcome home bakes are sold as well as RNLI cards and souvenirs. In addition to that, every single afternoon each July home-made teas are served and souvenirs sold at the Mission to Seamen down by the harbour: a very hospitable gesture to holidaymakers.

Social occasions are part of the programme, too.

There is an annual lifeboat dinner dance and two very successful musical evenings have been held on board St Ola, the Stromness/Scrabster ferry.

But back to sea. The two services which stand out in the memory of William Sinclair, the present coxswain, both took place in the 1960s. On the evening of January 25, 1965, a MAYDAY call was received from the Hull trawler Kingston Turquoise, in distress 14 miles north north west of Hoy Head, a Shackleton aircraft, by the light of flares, sighted two rafts with survivors on board and she dropped marker flares for the guidance of the lifeboat. By the time the Barnett reached the rafts a strong north-easterly breeze had whipped up a choppy sea. Nineteen men were picked up, but one was reported missing. As the survivors were very wet and cold, the lifeboat took them back to Stromness while a fishing cruiser searched for the missing man.

On May 28, 1966, the Norwegian motor vessel Kings Star of Allesund went ashore on the North Shoal, a dangerous rock eight miles off Orkney. When the lifeboat reached Kings Star she found that the motor vessel was badly holed but that most of her crew were in their ship's boats and in no danger.

At Coxswain Alfred Sinclair's request, pumps from the fire service were brought out by local fishing boats. When, with the rising tide, Kings Star slid off the rocks, the lifeboat, having picked up the seamen and taken the ship's boats in tow, escorted the damaged motor vessel to Stromness.

In 117 years, Stromness lifeboats have launched 269 times, rescuing 312 people from the sea. A proud record for a station where long years of service, broad vision and distant calls are part of the way of life..