When Dookes H.Q. was in Cornwall, I often used to visit some of the small fishing harbours dotted around the coast. I loved their quaint buildings and interesting histories.

It was often hard to grasp that these little ports were once bustling centres in a much larger industry as most are today either abandoned or mostly frequented by leisure boats. The “raison d’être” for the boom times in many of these ports was the humble sardine, but today fish stocks have dwindled and tastes changed.

Only Newlyn in the far South West now supports a sizeable deep sea fishing fleet, though even that is tiny in comparison to the mid 20th Century. Other harbours, such as Looe, Padstow and St Ives have healthy numbers of “Day Boats” whilst smaller places such as Port Issac, Cadgwith and Boscastle see some local activity, mainly working pots for crab and lobster.

Now, with our move to Caithness, I have been starting to investigate what the coasts around us offer and I have not been disappointed!

Splendid maritime scenery aside, we be visiting more of that in future posts, there is both a rich legacy and an active fishing industry here in the far North East of Scotland. Like Cornwall, geology has had an important role to play, with many inlets, bays and estuaries, affording natural harbours for those brave enough to take to the sea in the hunt for fish. The bigger historical picture is more complicated than that though.

Historical records show that Northern Scotland had a pretty vibrant yet local fishing industry well before the 18th Century, but it was in the late 1700’s that things started to get really serious. The story is quite complex with various factors coming together at the same time. The industrial revolution was getting into full swing. Britain seemed to be at war in all directions. Agriculture was rapidly evolving beyond subsistence farming, as the nation rose to feed the growing population needed by industry.

In the Highlands, still smarting from the echoes of the Jacobite Rebellion, changes were coming with the infamous “Clearances” where tenants and squatters were displaced by the new agricultural practices. There’s plenty about those times to fill another couple of posts, so I’ll leave that there just now, suffice to say, it had a direct and positive role in the fortunes of a number of the fishing ports.

So let’s go first to Wick, which is a small town and Royal Burgh on the North Sea coast of Caithness. It sits on both sides of the Wick River estuary. Although it was a small local fishing port, it was of no great consequence until 1768, when Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster decided to build a quay at Wick in order to promote the town as a herring fishing centre. Sinclair was by all accounts a somewhat larger than life character; a local landowner of considerable wealth, an accomplished lawyer, soldier, politician, writer and progressive farmer. He often divides opinion through his role in the clearances and being a slave owner in the West Indies. Sinclair is credited with inventing the words “Statistics” and “Statistical Analysis” which I find fascinating!

Progress was steadily made at Wick and herring fishing began to take off in the late 1780’s. It soon became obvious that more development and expansion was possible. The British Fisheries Society, led by another lawyer landowner, Sir William Poulteney, grasped the opportunity and entrusted harbour improvements to Scottish engineer Thomas Telford. The genius of both Poulteney and Telford was to look at the project in an holistic way; providing not only harbour developments, but fish processing facilities and accommodation for fishing crews and other support workers. The industry reached its peak between 1860 and 1890, when as many as 1000 boats were based at the harbour. Fishing then employed around 6000 fishermen and provided work for an additional 6000, often women, who gutted, salted and preserved the herrings. Over-fishing contributed to the herring all but disappearing by the early 1900s, in 1930 there were less than 30 fishing boats working out of Wick.

Today Wick is often a quiet place. There is seasonal leisure traffic and a few local fishing vessels call the harbour home. From time to time the harbour supports wind turbine transport, construction and maintenance vessels

I’ll write more about Wick in future, but now let’s pop over to the other side of Caithness and drop in on Thurso and Scrabster.

Thurso delights in being the most Northerly town on mainland Great Britain, it is just over 700 miles from London and about 300 miles from Edinburgh.

The town straddles the Thurso River at its estuary into the Pentland Firth and has a small tidal harbour.

About a mile to the East of Thurso, across the bay lies Scrabster Harbour. This was constructed in 1841 to provide deep water all tide port. Scrabster initially was a fishing and ferry port, quickly becoming a vital terminus for voyages to the Northern Isles such as Orkney, Shetland and the Faroe Islands. By 1856 a ferry link was firmly established between Scrabster and Stromness on Orkney.

As Wick’s fortunes faded, Scrabster grew. Roll on, Roll off ferry operations were enabled during the 1970’s and I can vividly recall my first trip to Orkney on the MV St Ola, sailing from the terminal that shares the same name.

Through to the present day, Scrabster has experienced significant growth. The fishing industry is well supported with a modern dock, fish market, landing facilities and a large business park to cater for the various support and processing businesses.

Scrabster has become one of my favourite places to drop into, especially to grab a bargain piece of super fresh fish!

I’ll write more about some other smaller harbours around the Caithness coast in future, but for now, I’ll catch you soon, hopefully on two wheels!

Dookes