70TH ANNIVERSARY OF EVACUATION OF EILEAN NAN RON - Part 3
By Iain Fraser © December 2008

The crofts were tended by the women, elderly men and older schoolboys. A Side- School teacher had been appointed around 1870 and at the turn of the century the school role rose to eighteen, whilst the island population reached its peak of over 70. In 1904 a designated school and teacher’s house was built. Inspections and assessment of educational attainment were conducted at the main Skerray School by members of the School Board and necessarily involved the school pupils in sea journeys. Island life brought many visitors during the summer months.

A visitors book presented to the islanders in 1883 by Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland, records over two thousand five hundred visitors to the island until its final evacuation in 1938. The older women worked the crofts and had to launch and haul small sailing boats to collect provisions from the mainland. On Sundays they would cross to a church service on the mainland, and if weather did not permit, a service was held morning and evening in the little school.

Island life brought the need for communication with the mainland. It was accomplished by lighting a fire and making smoke signals. People on the mainland also signalled the islanders by the same means. One smoke for transport, two fires for a telegram and other signals for funerals and health emergencies.

The highest point of the island offers splendid views of the north coast-the high islands of the Orkneys, Strathy Point and westward to the Rabbit Islands and Talmine Bay. To the far north lies the ocean and little between the island and the polar ice. Fishing was not without danger especially when venturing into the Roost, the treacherous exposed waters between Fair Isle and Sumburgh.

On one occasion, Donald Mackay, skipper of the island boat - “The Morning Star”, fishing in these waters, was caught unawares when a strong south westerly gale sprang up.

He barely had time to haul the gear aboard and the gale blowing too hard to hoist a sail, he ordered the crew, in great danger of being washed overboard, to take shelter below, while he lashed himself to the wheel and the boat ran before the gale, Soaked and nearly half-drowned he steered the little boat and brought it safely to Lerwick Harbour.