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Children of the Sea

The Story of the Eyemouth Disaster

Peter Aitchison

Published by
Birlinn Press, West Newington House, 10 Newington Road, Edinburgh EH9 1QS
ISBN: 1-86232-240-6
http://www.birlinn.co.uk/cgi-bin/user/birlinn/store/BRNstore.cgi

A review (©, 2002) by the author Peter Aitchison
Original Copyright by Peter Aitchison peteaitchison@aol.com. Used by permission of the author. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission of the author.

On 14 October 1881 the fishing fleet of the small Scottish coastal village of Eyemouth set out for the North Sea haddock grounds on a flat calm day. The conditions were deceptive, as a plummeting barometer would have shown. In the street an old man, drunken and senile, muttered about an earthquake coming. In the late morning a wind of hurricane force hit the boats: those survivors who didn't manage to ride it out headed for harbour, only to hit rocks exposed by the ebb-tide and be pulverised within sight of the folk on shore. Nineteen boats were sunk and nearly 190 fishermen out of a total crew of 300 were drowned. The prosperity of the village ended. Its climb back to would be a slow one and although successful by the late twentieth century it's still threatened, like all Scots fishing communities, by the exhaustion of fish stocks.

But why did the men of Eyemouth sail on that fatal October morning? A day still recalled in the community as Black Friday. The Berwickshire fleet was the only one to ignore the clear warnings of a massive storm in the offing. The story, uncovered in this widely acclaimed and critically welcomed book, is even more remarkable than the sad litany of the lost etched on a granite block in the old graveyard.

The fishermen of Eyemouth were perceived as dangerous rebels by the authorities. From the 1840's to the late 1870's they were involved in a bitter and at times violent row with both the Church and the State over demands that they alone of any fishing town should pay a tenth of their earnings - a tithe - to the local minister. Legal battles, street riots and pamphlet wars ensued. For a time the authorities fretted that the revolt might get out of hand, and troops of cavalry and naval gunships were despatched to the Scottish border. The fishermen, led by a charismatic man called William Spears (the "Kingfisher") bonded together in a "covenant" and used increasingly sophisticated arguments to justify their defiance. They held marches and demonstrations under banners that proclaimed dangerous democratic credentials:

In Liberty's Ennobling Cause
Our Fisher Lads Stand Weal
And Gloriously have won the Right
Of Freedom to the Creel!

The minister, Rev Stephen Bell and the local laird, David Milne-Home were equally determined in their purpose and the harmony of one small corner of Scotland was shattered for many long years. The trouble also fed into other areas, including naked intimidation in general election campaigns and the impact of a religious revival in the early 1860's.

200 pages.
Price: £12.99 or US $19.99.

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