Extract from Island on the Edge of the World

Chapter 11: Evacuation

'In the Hebrides, the loss of an inhabitant leaves a lasting vacuity, for nobody born in other parts of the world will choose this country for his residence; and an island once depopulated will remain a desert, as long as the present facility of travel gives everyone who is discontented and unsettled the choice of his abode.'
Dr Johnson

The need for St Kilda to establish better communications with the mainland and other islands of the Hebrides did not arise until the community was already set on a downward course. As the islanders grew less able to support themselves and become habituated to outside assistance, as their health deteriorated and famine threatened, contact with the world came to be essential. In the past the remoteness of the island had been an important factor in the survival of the community, but when communications with the mainland improved enough to destroy its independence, though not sufficiently to bring St Kilda into the swim of things, isolation became the chief obstacle to its continued existence. An adequate link between Hirta and mainland Britain was never established and up until the evacuation the only way the islanders could send a message in times of distress was either by lighting a bonfire on top of Conachair, in the hope that a passing ship might see the smoke and come and investigate, or by St Kilda mailboat.

The idea of the mailboat was given to the islanders in 1877 by John Sands, who himself had been inspired by Lady Grange's albeit unsuccessful attempts to get word to her friends by throwing messages tied to pieces of wood into the sea. While Sands was staying in St Kilda nine men from the crew of an Austrian ship, the Peti Dubrovacki, were shipwrecked on the island and for more than five weeks lived off the hospitality of the islanders. By the beginning of February food supplies were running dangerously low. Sands sent a message attached to a life-buoy from the stranded ship, addressed to the Austrian Consul in Glasgow, asking for help. It was picked up nine days later in Birsay, Orkney and relayed via Lloyd's agent at Stromness to Glasgow. Not long afterwards HMS Jackal arrived in St Kilda to take off the Austrian sailors and deliver the much needed food supplies.

The islanders later developed Sands' prototype and produced the standard St Kilda mailboat. It consisted of a piece of wood shaped like a toy boat and hollowed out in the middle to hold a small bottle or tin, which contained the letter, instructions for the finder to post it and a penny for the stamp. The bottle was waterproofed with grease and battened down under a little wooden hatch, which bore the inscription 'Please Open' burnt in with a hot wire. A float made of an inflated sheep's bladder with a small red flag tied to its mast was attached to the hull of the mailboat, which was then ready to sail. It was launched when the wind was in the north-west and more often than not - as many as two-thirds of the letters posted in this way reached their destination - it eventually turned up on the west coast of Scotland or sometimes Norway.

The St Kilda mailboats were not before their time. In early September of 1885 a terrible storm swept over the island causing considerable damage to crops and property. On 24 September a mailboat was washed up on a beach near Aird Uig in Lewis. It contained a message written on a sheet of paper town from a school exercise-book. The letter was from Alexander Ferguson (who later became a tweed merchant in Glasgow) and was addressed to Kenneth Campbell, a trader at Uig, Lewis: 'My dear Sir, I am now going to write you a letter and sending her in one of the little ships in which we were sailing on the shore as you know to let you know all the knews, the man were building a house just a little house for the cows a great storm came on and all the corn and barley were swept away by the storm and one of the boats was swept away by the sea the men of St Kilda is nearly dead with the hunger. They send two boats from St Kilda to go to Haries not the fishing bats but little piece of the wood like the little one which I send. I send my best loves unto you, - I am yours truly, Alexander Ferguson.'

The other mailboat had been sent on the same day by the Rev John Mackay and was addressed to Dr Raing, a leader of the Free Church. It arrived in Lewis a week before Alexander Ferguson's letter and contained certain instructions to Dr Raing to apply to the British Government for food supplies to be sent to St Kilda. In due course the letters took effect and relief came in the form of seed corn, barley, meal and potatoes, delivered by the Hebridean.

The St Kilda mailboats inevitably became something of a tourist attraction but they continued to be used in emergencies up until 1930. Attempts were made, however, to set up a more reliable postal service. In 1877 a postal link was established between Fair Isle and the mainland, which immediately raised the possibility of a similar arrangement being made for St Kilda. But unlike the Fair Isle, where steamers from Aberdeen called on their way to Shetland, St Kilda was not on any shipping route. The GPO could do no more than arrange for the tourist steamers, which visited St Kilda during the summer season, to deliver and collect the mails of the inhabitants. By 1895 there were only six posts to the island in the year and all within the June-August period; for the remaining nine months St Kilda was still cut off from the mainland. Even the island's factor had given up making independent voyages to collect the rent and instead took the option of a comfier and cheaper berth on the Dunara Castle or the Hebridean. In winter in the islanders had to rely on trawlers sometimes putting into Village Bay and out of kindness taking letters and stamp money to post on their return to land. In 1898 the GPO even authorised mail for St Kilda to be sent to Aberdeen for the trawlerman to pick up and deliver, though no suggestion was made that they should receive payment for this service. At the best of times it was always a haphazard arrangement, entirely at the mercy of the weather and dependent on the trawlers wanting to fish in that area.

On 20 September 1899 to the great excitement of the islanders a sub post-office was opened in St Kilda. It was situated on the ground floor of the factor's house and the following year the Rev Angus Fiddes was appointed postmaster at a salary of £5 per annum plus bonuses. After Fiddes left, the job was taken over in 1905 by Neil Ferguson, the first and last islander to be postmaster, who held it until the evacuation. The post office was later moved to a wooden shack with a corrugated iron roof a little way along the Street between cottages numbers 5 and 6. But although the institution of a post office in St Kilda constituted a form of recognition by the GPO of the islanders' needs, it did not solve the problem of how to get letters to and from the island. The situation, which had not really changed, was never to improve. Until 1930 the islanders continued to depend on steamers in the summer and trawlers in the winter for their mails. In the mind of the government the expense of creating a regular service for a dwindling population in a distant place was not justifiable.

Although it was thought not to be a matter of great importance to the St Kildans whether their correspondence arrived sooner or later, it was beginning to be appreciated that it was now essential for them to have some means of communicating with the mainland in time of crisis. In 1912 a trawler brought news from St Kilda that the people were on the point of starving and needed assistance. The national press headlined the story and the Daily Mirror gave it special prominence, even going so far as to organize a relief expedition to quieten the public outcry which it had helped to raise. But the islanders were nonetheless grateful. 'Dear Editor,' they wrote, 'a thousand thanks for your great kindness to the lonely St Kildans in their distress for the want of provisions. Your help reached us unexpectedly, and left us more than thankful for it.' The outcome of the incident was that H. Gordon Selfridge, owner of the famous London store, presented the St Kildans with their own wireless transmitter; but before the station had been set up another trawler reached the mainland with the news that the entire community of Hirta had been laid low by an epidemic of influenza. The Admirality immediately sent a cruiser, HMS Active, with two nurses, medical supplies and food to the island. By the time it arrived most of the inhabitants, many of who had been dangerously ill, were past the worst, but still in a pitiful state. Since they had been two weak to prepare food, none had eaten for several days. The church was converted into a hospital and the schoolhouse into a kitchen and after the islanders had been given food and medical attention, they all recovered.

Work resumed on the Selfridge radio and on 22 July 1913 it was ready to transmit. The resident missionary, Mr MacArthur, was taught how to operate the machine, but unfortunately not how to mend it. It broke down almost immediately and stayed that way until the beginning of the War, when it was made operational again as part of the Navy's signal station. On 18 May 1918 the wireless transmitter was destroyed by a shell from a German submarine. The island was under constant bombardment for nearly an hour and though more than sixty shells were fired there was no loss of life and relatively little damage done to property. But the Selfridge radio had been put permanently out of commission. The St Kildans were neither surprised nor particularly upset since they believed it to have been jinxed from the very start. In a sense they were right, but the wireless was never under any spell, it had simply come too late.

The disastrous events of 1912-13 were not so much evidence of the need for improved communications with the mainland as a final testimony against the viability of the community. Evacuation was again put forward as a possible solution to the islanders' problems. The idea had been in circulation since the mass emigration to Australia in 1856, but it was not discussed seriously until 1875, when a plan was put forward to ship the remaining inhabitants out to Canada. A debate was carried for a while in the columns of the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald, but nothing came of it. At that time most of the people wanted to stay in St Kilda. Ten years later they seemed to be all for leaving the island and different ways of helping them to go were examined, but again without result.