1697 he and a new minister for the island set sail from Ensay in the Sound of Harris for St Kilda – forty miles away in the Atlantic. This was Martin’s third attempt to reach the island. A favourable breeze turned against them when it was judged too late to return to Ensay so the crew rowed on a compass course for sixteen hours in atrocious weather. They made no landfall and as they saw some sea birds flying southwards they decided that they must have been blown too far north. Sure enough, after a time they spotted Boreray twelve miles to the south of them. This was ‘a joyful sight, and begot new vigor in our men’ who were plied ‘with plenty of aqua vitae to support them’. They eventually reached Boreray and sheltered behind Stac an Armin as the men were utterly exhausted. But this disturbed the nesting gannets whose ‘excrements were in such quantity, that they sullied our boat and cloaths’. Then a violent storm blew up which drove them out to sea again and tossed them around all night so that they ‘laid aside all hopes of life’. Fortunately as the morning of 1st June dawned, ‘it pleased God to command a calm day’ and so they managed eventually to reach Hirta (St Kilda).
Martin spent three weeks among the islanders and contributed a paper on the subject to the Royal Society later that year which was so well received that it obviously encouraged him to continue with his research.
It is very clear from his book that he had a particular interest in medical matters and in 1710, some years after his ‘best-seller’ had been published in London, he chose to enter Leiden University where he studied the subject and later graduated as a doctor of medicine. However, he was already in his mid-fifties and it was obviously the academic side which had appealed to him for he never practised as a doctor. He settled in London and died, unmarried, in 1719.
There is a copy of Martin Martin’s book in the National Library of Edinburgh which has been inscribed by Boswell: ‘This very book accompanied Mr Samuel Johnson and me in our tour to the Hebrides in April, 1773. . . as it is the only book upon the subject, it is very well known.’
This odyssey makes no pretence to be as comprehensive as Martin Martin and certainly not as heroic as Ulysses. And although no islands produced Jason’s golden fleece they all provided a wealth of golden moments in a setting every bit as colourful as Ancient Greece.
The journey starts at that famous milestone in the Firth of Clyde, Ailsa Craig, meanders among our many wonderful island archipelagoes, and finishes at that other famous milestone in the Firth of Forth – the Bass Rock.
Hamish Haswell-Smith
November 1998
Ailsa Craig
*The 1703 edition was recently reprinted by Birlinn Ltd of Edinburgh.
AILSA CRAIG
. . . This rock in the summer-time abounds with variety of sea-fowl, that build and hatch in it. The solan geese and coulterneb are most numerous here; the latter are by the fishers called albanich, which in the ancient Irish language signifies Scotsmen. . ..
When Ailsa Craig’s ethereal shape materialises out of the mist, soaring to a height of nearly 340 metres (over 1100 feet) above the sea, one can under-stand why it was named fairy rock (aillse creag) by some ancient Celtic mariner. But it has also, more prosaically, been called Elizabeth’s rock or Alastair’s rock and its popular name nowadays is Paddy’s Milestone. It is more than twelve times the area and three times the height of the Bass Rock, which is a mere pimple by comparison, and it is so precipitous that even the sea birds find it impossible to nest on some of the cliffs.
A glacier flowing down the Clyde valley 25,000 years ago, when Scotland lay smothered under a thick sheet of ice, broke off pieces of Ailsa Craig and scattered them between Wales and the Pennines in the English Midlands. They still lie there today. The rock is mainly volcanic basalt but there is a seam of reddish fine-grained micro-granite which is the ideal material for curling stones. These were quarried and cut on the island then polished on the mainland and a few are still manufactured today for connoisseurs.
It’s more than a decade since I landed on Ailsa Craig. We sailed there in a trusty bilge-keeled ketch – Jeananne – which belonged to my present-day sailing partners. She drew only one metre which let us lie in shallow water alongside the small wooden jetty. Anchoring is not easy as the sea bottom is steep and boulder strewn.
A rusty narrow-gauge railway line runs from the jetty past the quarrymen’s cottages to the old quarry on the south side. A century ago almost thirty people – quarrymen, lighthouse keepers, and their families – lived here but the quarrymen left and the lighthouse is now automatic. There are heaps of miniature Henry Moore sculptures – waste granite pieces from which the spheroidal curling stones have been cut leaving voluptuous curved forms.
A zig-zag path starts near the lighthouse and climbs past the old square keep 100 metres up the slope. It was said to be a retreat for the monks of Crossraguel Abbey (near Maybole) and that the Catholics once held it on behalf of Philip 11 of Spain. Further up, the path passes over the shallow valley of Garraloo and beside the tiny Garra Loch before making its way to the top. Here the world falls away in a sudden vertiginous plunge to the sea far below and the view is enthralling. Beyond the white lace of the surf lie the wide stretches of the Firth of Clyde with Arran, the Ayrshire coast, and the long dark shape of Ulster on the south-western horizon. Experienced climbers may prefer to go directly up the slope from the landing place. This is not difficult but in places the route leads over steeply inclined slabs.
Ailsa Craig is noted for its immense gannet colony which accounts for about five per cent of the world’s total gannet population. There also used to be many puffins and an ornithologist reported in the 1860s that there were at least 250,000 pairs and that when he disturbed them ‘their numbers seemed so great as to cause a bewildering darkness’. But in 1889 brown rats arrived off ships ferrying supplies to the newly built lighthouse and by 1984 they had wiped out the entire puffin population. (Rabbits, incidentally, were introduced about the same time by the quarrymen to supplement their diet – and were later claimed to be interbreeding with the rats!) In 1991 a massive rat eradication programme was instituted and, to date, it seems to have been successful. Puffins are, at last, visiting the island again.
Instead of climbing it is possible to complete a relatively easy two-mile circumnavigation of the island. The exposed corner at Stranny Point in the south-west is the only minor obstruction. It has to be negotiated to reach the dramatic Water Cave when coming from the east past Little Ailsa so try and time it near low water.
The names of features on Ailsa Craig are pure poetry – for example, Spot of Grass, Bare Stack, Doras Yett, Ashydoo, Rotten Nick and Kennedy’s Nags. Ailsa Craig itself is mentioned in the poetry of both Wordsworth and Keats but, strangely, not by Burns who grew up within sight of it.
SANDA
. . . the isle Avon, above a mile in circumference, lies to the south of Kintyre Mull; it hath a harbour for barques on the north. . .
. . . If any man be disposed to live a solitary, retired life, and to withdraw from the noise
