This month’s featured document is the Wick Harbourmaster’s Log Book for 1857, and the entry we’ve chosen recounts the tragic deaths of six men on Sunday 31 January. The men formed the crews of the boats owned by a Mr Crawford that would put out from the harbour to collect the luggage from visiting steamers.
The steamer “Duke of Richmond” had arrived in Wick Bay from Granton earlier in the day, but the heavy seas rose rapidly and those boats that had put out from the harbour could not get back in again. The Harbourmaster recorded the terrible story of what happened next:
“The sea rose very rapidly. Mr Crawford’s Boats could not get in. The steamer left them to their fate.
Sea breaking over the Quay head. At 8.10 P.M. a tremendous wave broke over the two luggage Boats, swamping them both in a moment, and carrying them away and their moorings. The cry of the eight men on board could be distinctly heard on the shore, but being low water no assistance could be rendered. The Boats drifted to the northward, and as they neared the bar, each wave carried away some one of the poor fellows along with the luggage to which they were clinging.”
Over the next few days some of the goods were washed ashore as far north as Freswick Bay – the bodies, however, do not seem to have been ever been recovered.
