Hard down! Hard down!. Captain Jack Isbester

       3 EARLY YEARS AT THE FISHING

Family tradition has it that my grandfather started his seafaring career at the Shetland herring fishing in 1866, when he was aged 14. Herring fishing was a summer activity, with the shoals being found to the west of Shetland in May and June before moving east of Shetland in July and August. In Whiteness, as elsewhere in Shetland in the 1860s, fishing was a major activity – there were 363 boats and about 1,500 men and boys employed in the Shetland herring fisheries in 1859, and 17 ship or sloop masters lived in the parishes of Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale.1

It is not difficult to guess John Isbester’s motives for turning to a life at sea. Captain Thomson of Sandness in Shetland was writing about my grandfather, but was drawing on his own experience of growing up in the same vicinity a few years later, when he wrote2

      Haggersta was his early lookout station and the mouth of Weisdale Voe with its islands and the great ocean beyond, was the panorama before him. Every croft around the voe had its noost [place where a boat could be drawn out of the water] with one or more boats according to the family requirements, for fishing, travelling and inter island transit. In addition there were schooners, smacks and herring boats making their way to and from distant waters in search of those denizens of the deep, the cod and herring.

In the 1860s much of the Shetland fishing was done from open boats, sixareens, fourareens or quilleys. The sixareens, used in most parts of Shetland were double-ended boats about 10 metres in length overall with a crew of six. They were alternatively known as sixearns, the spelling and pronunciation varying from one part of Shetland to another. The fourareens, about 7 metres long, were used on the southern part of the west coast of Shetland, including Whiteness, where they were better suited to the local harbours and beaches. The sixareens were used for what was known as the ‘Haaf’ fishing, for cod and ling, up to 40 miles offshore in boats that might be at sea for up to three days. The fourareens were fished up to about 15 miles from land, while the quilleys, about 5 metres in overall length, were used by the old men and boys for inshore fishing for herring, whiting, haddock and shellfish.3 In 1869, when registration of open fishing boats was first required, there were 15 fourareens spread amongst the various Whiteness crofts, each with a crew of three or four men.4 The Whiteness boats were owned by the crofters themselves, unlike in some other parts of Shetland where the landlords owned them.5 However no fourareen was registered for John Isbester’s home at Haggersta. This supports the suggestion that his uncle, Laurence Anderson, used to go each summer with the Faroe smacks.

There would be plenty of opportunities for a local boy to find employment fishing in Shetland. In the 1860s herring fishing, like cod fishing, was often done from sixareens. John Isbester probably sailed with a sixareen from Lerwick. The sixareens were more suitable for cod fishing than for herring. For the former about six miles of line were used. This took up less space in the boat than did the six or eight nets6 required for herring. Consequently the cod-fishing gear left more room for the catch,7 a very important consideration. In the 1860s the herring fishermen fished up to about 15 miles from the coast8 and landed the catch for curing. The relevance of John Isbester’s experience of sailing in sixareens will come to mind when reading the account of the loss of the barque Centaur, 30 years later and the subsequent eight-day voyage by boat to the Hawaiian Islands.9