The Scottish Islanders

 

Following my post about the Scottish Yachting Archives, I’m writing to let people know that my book, The Scottish Islanders, is now in print.

The Scottish Islanders were a fleet of identical sailing yachts launched from 1929. Designed, built and organised to ensure absolutely level competition, winning was entirely down to boat handling skills and cunning. In the years before the war they were sailed by some of Glasgow’s best known business families, who abandoned their home comforts each weekend to race against each other, regardless of the weather, sometimes the only fleet seen out on the Firth of Clyde. Their antics excited interest far beyond the yachting fraternity and were eagerly covered in the national press.

I acquired Stroma, number Four in the Scottish Islands Class in September 1976, and over the next four decades kept her mainly on the west coast, before finally passing her on to new owners just a few years ago. Over that period I gathered a huge amount of information and over the last twenty years or so I’ve been putting together a book on them, based on research into the interesting group of families who first owned them, reports from their descendants and my own experiences of sailing in one. For nearly a hundred years the Islanders have been a feature on the west coast. They still regularly turn out for West Highland Week.

The first part of the book has a lot of social history and stories about some remarkable people, such as Udy Russell, a pioneer of women on water. There are occasional excursions abroad, when the Scots did battle with America’s best in Oyster Bay, outside New York. This section ends with a look at the return of the survivors postwar.

The book then moves on to tell a story of decline, when the yacht racing fraternity moved away from wooden boats, but the Scottish Islanders survived in the hands of people who just wanted to sail and who appreciated craftsmanship, style and seaworthiness. They had become cheap enough for young people to buy and use for coastal cruises. The survival of most of the fleet has provided colourful tales of exploits and excursions, as new generations of sailors, very different from the original group, continue to discover the fun of exploring the west coast of Scotland, with the boats still winning races and always turning heads.

I had nearly given up hope of finding a publisher until my old friends Dr William Collier and Antony Harrison told me that they had set up the Scottish Yachting Archives, an operation dedicated to ensuring that the history of sailing on the west coast is preserved. To date they've acquired the records of the William Fife dynasty and the G L Watson design business, a total of several thousand drawings and artefacts, all now preserved in their unit in central Glasgow. Part of their operation will involve publishing, and I’m delighted to report that my book is their first venture.

I'm also delighted that the Rockfield Centre in Oban has agreed to host the book launch in the cafe in the afternoon of Saturday 28th October.

In the meantime, copies of the book can be got via shop.yachtarchive.scot.