90 years since St Kilda was evacuated

On one side rose the imposing peak of Conachair with its rugged sea cliffs, where generations of his fellow St Kildans fearlessly descended hundreds of feet on ropes strengthened with cowhide and made supple with fulmar oil, seeking out the seabirds and their eggs; vital food supplies for the winter ahead.

Below, in a tightly packed row stood the island of Hirta’s tin-roofed cottages with their small crops of potatoes and barley, drowsy villagers were waking. They did not know for sure at the time, but this day would mark the beginning of the end of their lives as islanders.

The man and his dog had been keeping watch since dawn, the third day an islander had been sent to the site to scan the horizon for the first glimpse of the steamer, the Dunara Castle.

As its shape slowly emerged from the shroud of mist that had covered the Sound of Harris, the man tapped his dog with his stick and lumbered towards the village.

“His lookout was ended,” continued the report that appeared in the Glasgow Herald on August 30, 1930. “The last landing ship to call before the islanders deserted their wild volcanic rock in the Atlantic had been sighted.”

The Dunara Castle would eventually be loaded with 573 sheep and 13 cattle – the Highland cows made to swim through the water, then hoisted aboard with ropes around their horns and bellies.

Over the following two days, they would be joined by the belongings of the remote island’s 36 residents. Dressers, tables, chairs, canvas bags packed with personal items, even the village schoolmaster’s desk, would be carried from shore to ship.

Alongside, her arrival in the peaceful bay marked by the sound of bugles and naval officers on board, was Admiralty sloop, Harebell, waiting to carry the islanders to new and very different lives.

This weekend marks 90 years since the island archipelago of St Kilda, the remotest part of the British Isles, parted ways with its hardy residents.

Lying 41 miles west of Benbecula, St Kilda had been inhabited since the Bronze Age, had seen Vikings come and go, and was where islanders lived in a self-sufficient time capsule with little contact with the mainland until the mid-19th century.

Crippling poverty, an ageing population and an awakening of opportunities and a better life far beyond its rocky cliffs, had made life on St Kilda – made up of the islands of Hirta, where the villagers lived, and Dùn, Soay and Boreray, impossible.

Although events designed to mark the 90th anniversary of the evacuation have been curbed as a result of Covid-19, the St Kilda Club – set up 50 years ago to preserve, promote and protect the islands – plan to gather online tomorrow to mark the occasion with a series of talks, music and interviews.

The last St Kildan, Rachael Johnson died four years ago, aged 93. However, the club’s chairwoman Julie Hunt, says it is important for descendants and people with close affection for St Kilda, now a World Heritage Site, to remember and celebrate the islanders and their way of life.

“Conditions on St Kilda had gotten worse and worse,” she says. “The younger generation of islanders had started to see there was a life outside the island.

“A lot of people had already started to move away, and at harvest-time there was not enough people to carry out the harvest.

“As a result, there was not enough seabirds collected for food to get them through the winter.

“Since Victorian times the islanders had become used to having supplies brought from the mainland.

“Tourists were coming to the islands, and the islanders were becoming more reliant on the mainland. If the weather got worse, ships couldn’t get there and it made it more difficult for people to survive.”

Freshwater springs on Hirta and an abundance of seabirds and fish had made life possible for centuries. Along with crops of barley, oats and potatoes, the bird meat and salted mutton was stored in stone and turf huts called cleits over winter, oil from fulmars and other birds provided fuel for lamps on black winter nights.

The population fluctuated, battered by the harsh conditions, illness – often introduced to the island by visitors – and the lack of food.

While in the late 17th century there were about 180 inhabitants, by 1764 the first census of the island counted 90 islanders living on Hirta, eating the meat and eggs of seabirds, fish and growing crops on the land.

Bitter winters in the mid-1920s left islanders tottering on the brink of starvation, prompting some families to take up government-promoted emigration schemes.

With the population in 1927 down to just 43 people – among them six widows – doubts grew over how the community could continue the traditional work of raising sheep, spinning and weaving, fishing and harvesting of seabird eggs and oil.

“One islander, Williamina Barclay, was a nurse” says Ms Hunt. “She raised the idea with the people of St Kilda that they might think about moving off.”

Despite not speaking Gaelic, Barclay persuaded them over cups of tea that staying would put their lives in danger.

“There was a mixture of responses,” adds Ms Hunt. “Neil Ferguson ran the post office and was against the move because he had a reasonable income.

“But the MacKinnons at number 1 had eight children, and they realised this way of life was not sustainable.

“In May 1930, the islanders wrote to the government asking for them to arrange evacuation.”

Marion Petschi’s father, Callum MacDonald was 16 when his parents William and Betsy-Anne packed up the family home and left St Kilda, six years before the evacuation took place.

“Life was too difficult,” she says. “My grandfather’s health was bad, he had bad asthma and in the end he didn’t live past 52.

“They had 11 children – one died at birth, one died aged nine on the island, and by the time they left they had four children living with them.

“There was nothing else they could do.”

Her father went on to work as a valet to the Marquess of Bute, and eventually moved to London. But he returned to St Kilda in 1964 and later told of his visit in a TV interview.

“I was happy there,” he said. “Even when I visited, I didn’t feel I wanted to leave it again. I was feeling so contented in myself.

I didn’t feel I wanted to come back to London, I just felt content, peaceful.”

For the families who left on August 29, 1930, there would be a final gathering of belongings before the solemn trek to the water’s edge.

Doors were locked, cats and hens put in baskets. All but two dogs made the journey, the rest were destroyed. And one by one, the islanders boarded the Harebell or a journey to a very different and unfamiliar modern world.