By Ian Cooper. Part of his excellent series Records of a Bygone Age, First published in The Stronsay Limpet, and re-published here with kind permission.
I would like to begin this article by expressing my thanks to the terrific RNLI Lifeboat Heritage Team, to the ever-helpful Orkney Library and Archives staff and to the locals who have provided information, anecdotes and photos about the Stronsay lifeboats and crew. Their help and support has been invaluable.
Stronsay has twice had the privilege of being selected as a Lifeboat Station for the North Isles of Orkney and played host to lifeboats of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
An article in the Limpet away back in 2022 told the story of that first lifeboat, the John Ryburn, which was put on station in 1909. By 1915, with the 1st World War in progress and many of Stronsay’s finest called away to help in the war effort, it was found increasingly difficult to guarantee a crew to man the lifeboat. Sadly, this meant the station was no longer sustainable and, on 12th June 1915, the Stronsay Station was closed – supposedly a temporary measure – and the John Ryburn moved to station at Peterhead.
This temporary measure dragged on until 1922, when the closure was reviewed by the authorities and, to local frustration and disappointment, they concluded that there were still insufficient volunteers available to guarantee a crew.
After a gap of about 36 years and with the lack of lifeboat cover around the
North Isles of Orkney increasingly a cause for concern, matters were brought to a head by the tragic loss of an Icelandic ship on 11th February 1952.
This was the converted trawler Eyfirdingur, heading from Reykjavik to Antwerp with a cargo of scrap metal when she ran aground on Lashy Skerry, near the Calf of Eday. The Stromness lifeboat had been called to the scene but, after a four hour journey, was too late to help the stricken vessel and all seven of her crew were lost. The body of one of the crewmen, 25 year old Gudmundur Gestsson, was later washed up on Stronsay and is buried in the Lady Cemetery here.
It was felt that a lifeboat based in Stronsay, less than 10 miles from the scene of the tragedy, could possibly have saved the crew and this led to the RNLI again evaluating the situation and reviewing the possibility of basing a lifeboat in the North Isles. With strong local support, spearheaded by the persistent efforts of local Harbour Master Capt. E. H. Clements of Harbour House (later Helmsley), it was found that there were sufficient volunteers to form a crew and the RNLI agreed to re-open the Station at Stronsay.
Captain Clements D.S.C. was a seafarer who learned the ways of the sea apprenticed ‘afore the mast’ in sailing ships, A seaman for most of his life, he was very proud of the fact that he had rounded the Horn 5 times under sail and a further 11 times under steam! He had then commanded minesweepers during the first World War, was Kings Harbourmaster at Kirkwall in the second World War and, excluding those war years, was harbour master in Stronsay from 1934 until his retiral in 1958. This experience and enthusiasm saw him appointed as Honorary Secretary of the Stronsay Station, a post he was to hold for the next 19 years.
Very soon after the decision had been made to re-open the Stronsay Station a
lifeboat that was operating in the relief fleet, the Edward Z Dresden, was assigned to take up station at Stronsay.
The Edward Z Dresden had been built in 1929 with a legacy left by Edmond
Dresden of London, with the new lifeboat bearing his late father’s name. On completion, this 45½ feet Watson class lifeboat was immediately placed on station at Clacton-on-Sea in Essex, where she gave sterling service until being added to the RNLI relief fleet in 1952. With twin 40hp engines capable of propelling her at in excess of eight knots and fitted with radio telephone, loud hailer, searchlight and a line throwing pistol, she was still a first class lifeboat despite the 23 years under her belt.
Before taking up her new post at Stronsay, she was refitted at a boatyard at Oulton Broad in Norfolk and it was to there that the lifeboat’s new coxswain Tom Carter, together with some of the other Stronsay men who were to be crewing her, went to bring her home.
Under the overall command of the Lifeboat Inspector for Scotland, Lieutenant E D Stogdon, she made a number of stops to refuel on her way north, including Montrose, Fraserburgh and Wick, arriving in Stronsay on 30th October 1952.
With the lifeboat slip having reverted to the landowner in 1938 and the lifeboat shed on top of it demolished and sold a few years later, a new home had to be found for the lifeboat and it was agreed that she should be anchored offshore in Whitehall Village. This new mooring consisted of 3 anchors, each with a chain attached to a single ring, then a heavy chain from that ring to the lifeboat. On arrival, the Edward Z Dresden made fast to her new moorings which lay between the two piers and this was to be the lifeboat’s permanent anchorage for the next twenty years.
The Edward Z Dresden, as you may recall, was Clacton-on-Sea’s lifeboat from
1929 until 1952. At the end of May 1940 she and her crew answered the call to help with the evacuation of our troops from Dunkirk and spent several days ferrying soldiers from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk out to the larger vessels lying offshore in deep water. As well as the usual scuffs and scrapes that would be expected in this type of operation, there were also a number of bullet holes in her hull where she had been strafed by an enemy plane on her way back across the channel! 19 lifeboats had answered the call to help with the evacuation but a number of these were never to return to station.
Around the time of the Lifeboat Station being reopened in 1952, what had been WP Drever’s house and shop was leased by the RNLI as a muster room and store, with the first floor being earmarked as accommodation for the lifeboat mechanic.
It was in an ideal location, being just across the road from the West Pier and with adequate room on the ground floor for the crew to assemble and to store oilskins, boots, lifejackets and all the gear needed for maintaining and operating the lifeboat. This became known as the ‘Lifeboat Hoose’, with Sydney Swanney, the newly appointed lifeboat mechanic, living in the accommodation on the first floor along with his wife and daughter.
When the Lifeboat Station was eventually closed, the house was sold, with the new owners renaming it Cardinham House.
Around the same time the RNLI commissioned the building of a new ‘landing
boat’ for conveying the crew from the pier out to the lifeboat. This new 19’ (5.7m) boat had a beam of 6ft while only drawing about 1ft of water and was of the traditional Shetland skiff design, built of mahogany on oak beams in just 6 weeks by Stromness boatbuilder James Anderson. The boat was painted in the RNLI colours and designed to take the crew of eight from the shore to the lifeboat where she lay at her moorings.
The landing boat, although of a good traditional design, was apparently not a particularly good sea boat and John Fiddler recalls one instance when wind and tide took the boat and, for safety, caused the crew to come ashore below the Fish Mart on the east pier instead of below the lifeboat house at the west pier. This boat was always hauled up over the shore and across the road to lie at the side of the Lifeboat Hoose when not needed but, despite the use of purpose made wood and metal rollers, she was also very heavy and difficult to launch and recover, particularly when the tide was out and the sea some considerable distance from the top of the beach.
Bill Peace recalls that, because she was such a heavy brute of a boat, two or three of the crew would often take one of the smaller dinghies berthed at the pier or hauled up on the foreshore out to the lifeboat moorings, then take the lifeboat back into the pier to pick up the rest of the crew. The original landing boat was eventually disposed of and a smaller square sterned boat used in its stead.
Part 2 next month.