Tuesday 8 August 2017. Tuesday almost brings us back to home soil! The Shetland Isles are Scottish, though much nearer to the Faroes than they are to mainland Scotland!
We are not booked on any trip today and we have breakfast and make our way down towards the gangway, meeting Martin Bell, the ex-war correspondent and journalist who was giving a couple of talks in the theatre during the holiday. "There's no Shetland distillery!" he said in a mock shocked tone. "Oh no!" I laughed. "It'll have to be a bottle of Bells then...".
But here we are after a short walk, in the heart of Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Isles, brimming with shops taking good old pounds sterling. Even if your change includes some unfamiliar dark blue plastic fivers... The oriel turrets on the buildings are pure Scotland. I breathe in deeply. Somewhere in my ancestry is a hint of Scotland - an ancestor went to France with Bonnie Prince Charlie. There's a hint of France in me too - he was a mucky little devil...
The vikings are back... Though there looks to be a very un-viking engine house towards the rear...!
And indeed, a propeller at the rear tends to confirm this. The rudder is on the right, rather than in the centre of the stern and from this we get the modern term for the right hand side of a ship as seen when facing forwards - "starboard". It's origins are from the Old English term "steorbord" or "steering side" which was placed traditionally on the right hand side as most men are right-handed.
The other side was originally the "larboard" side, possibly deriving from the words for "loading side" but this sounded too much like "starboard" and might be misheard, leading to disaster so from the 1600s informally and formalised by the Royal Navy in the 1800s the term "port" came to be used for the left hand side of the ship. This is the side of a ship that would be against the port when docking so as to reduce the risk of damaging the steering oar or rudder.
The roll-on roll-off ferry Leirna making ready to take on traffic to take across from Lerwick to Bressay, the island directly opposite Lerwick. She was built in 1992 specifically for this role.
The beautiful Diana Memorial Drinking Fountain. The Diana was a whaling ship, trapped over the winter in the Arctic in 1866-67. Out of a crew of 50, which included 30 Shetlanders, nine men died during the winter. The Diana's captain was one of them. Four other men were near to death when the ship made into Shetland. The drinking fountain has more recently been replaced with a sculpture of an overflowing chalice.
Chromate Lane, formerly Lochend's Closs. There was a bewildering number of streets with mention of a former name. Apparently in 1845 the Commissioners of Police changed the names of a whole swathe of them. In more recent times, in 2005 there was a call for Shetland to do away with mock-Viking street names.
The shopping area of the town was pleasant to walk through. I found a musical instruments shop and as often happens in such places I fell into a conversation about music and guitars with the shop keeper and another customer which passed an agreeable ten minutes until Miss Franny appeared at the door, having been waiting for me up the road. "I knew where you would be!" she said accusingly...
The Fisheries Protection Vessel Hirta caused a bit of controversy when being built in 2008 as the contract for building the two previous vessels of this Jura class were awarded to Ferguson shipbuilders in Glasgow. Hirta was built in Poland at the Remontowa Shipyard. The ships are responsible for the inspection of fishing vessels in British waters under the auspices of The Marine Sea Fisheries Inspectorate.
Fort Charlotte. The first fort on this site was built during the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1652-53. There is no trace of that fort still in existence. In 1655 King Charles II had another fort built on the same site when the Second Anglo-Dutch War started. Even though unfinished in 1667, the Dutch didn't know this and it held off their fleet. At the end of the war the Government decided it was no longer needed and it was deliberately slighted - partly demolished to render it useless as a fortress. Laughing hysterically, the Dutch decided to have a Third Anglo-Dutch War and finding it unmanned, they set fire to it in 1673.
The fort we see dates from 1781 and was built and garrisoned by King George III against the chance of Napoleon nipping up and taking over Shetland. At the time it was right on the coast line. Land reclamation and subsequent building work has left it much less imposing these days. It is named for George's Queen Charlotte and has never seen action.
We started to make our way slowly back towards the ship. Ferry traffic was now lined up ready to drive onto the Leirna. A large ferry is in with a Viking painted on the side. Strange how the horned helmet has become such an icon - one upward sweep of a sword would knock it off. They'd have had to be bloody mad to have worn anything so vulnerable...
The Nil Desperandum looked in a sorry state - somewhat at odds with its name really...
As the afternoon wears on we come onto the Promenade Deck to find the pilot boat standing by and two port workers ready to release the cables from the dock.
The sky is definitely changing though and the captain has admitted there may be some movement of the ship overnight as we head for our next port of Bergen, Norway.
I wander round to the other side of the boat and spot movement in the water - there's a number of seals in the strait between Lerwick and Bressay.
"They are sea lions not seals!" comes a loud voice near me, eager to impress his companions. Rot... For one thing there's no ball on its nose...
We cast off, ship the anchor, splice the mainbrace - "That's coming out of your wages, lad..." - haul on the sheets, hoover the rugs and all sorts of other nautical terms as the ship moves away from the port side (which is to starboard, making a mockery of everything I said a while ago). I said no good would come out of putting the rudder in the middle... The pilot boat comes alongside to take off the pilot.
A swimming seabird suddenly thinks "I'm off - he's bigger than me!"
The tip of Bressay comes into sight and then falls behind as we take a sighting from the sun, heave away me hearties, plot a course, roll into the swell, navigate the clashing rocks, close our ears to the song of the harpies and think fondly of an over-sextant... (huh?) By crikey, I think there's a novel in me yet...!
Farewell ye wee bit o' Scotland! We're heading for Vikingland again...
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