THE CREST, LK 120
I grew up knowing of our family connection with the Crest, but never actually saw her, being too young to remember her being sold out of our area. We have several family photos taken of her and aboard her, as my mother happened to develop an interest in photography around 1936 when she was 15, and bought a camera. Most of the photos of the Crest here are by her, Annie Wishart (nee Thomson). I will write here what I know about the Crest or learned from others over the years, and in doing so I realise that there are other periods of her time which could be researched and documented further, especially by someone with access to fishing history from the earlier period, including Pennan and Lerwick.
The Crest was one of the type of small double-ended, plumb-stemmed, clinker built fishing craft which were very common on the mainland of Scotland, especially in the North-East, and found their way even as far away as to Shetland in significant numbers where their increased beam compared to the Shetland boats of a similar size gave them more capacity and a bigger and often more stable working area.
From the Customs and Excise Register of Fishing Boasts copied below, we see the Crest was built in Pennan and registered first in 1899. She was owned first according to the register by a Watt family in Lerwick so perhaps she was brought with them when they moved to Shetland, most likely from the Moray coast, or ordered by them if they were already established in Shetland. Possibly the latter, since there are a number of Watts named in connection with the boat, and they may therefore not be first generation arrivals in Lerwick. Having very recently learned of this earlier period in her existence I have not yet been able to find out anything further about her time from Pennan to Lerwick.
She was described as half-decked, and with a lug rig. She was 22.5 feet of keel and 24.6 feet overall, 9.3 feet of beam, 3.1 feet of depth, and tonnage 3.19. By 1906 she was owned by John West, Grantfield, Lerwick, and the rig is described now as Lug rigged, with the addition of mizzen, foresail and jib – rather unusually complicated for so small a boat, and I wonder possibly even a clerical error having been copied as a description from a bigger boat. The second entry from 1906 mentions a motor installed later, but not dated. The final entry is stated as 1933.
Somewhere around that time she was bought by two men in Walls, on the west side of the Shetland mainland, Jerome Jamieson and Robert Thomson, (my grandfather), both crofter-fishermen, neighbours, and part-time boatbuilders who fished with her, did general carrying of goods around the extensive sheltered waters of Walls and Gruting, as well possibly as tending to the crofting needs of outlying sites such as Littlure west of Walls. They also used her to tow a flit boat (ex- 30 foot sixern) to take home peats annually. These flit – boats had been sailed and rowed up to that time, even laden with peats, and were communally owned and operated by a group of households, in this case six neighbouring crofts, working together. On a different task, I was told that she was also used by her co-owners to ship all the shingle from an outlying beach to Walls for the building of Anderville, the Doctor’s new residence. This would be in the mid-1930s.
She filled this varied role until the death of Robert Thomson in 1939 and the outbreak of war. There is some record of her being used in the same way during the war, but after Jerome Jamieson’s death in the early 1950s she was sold to mid-Yell where she ended her days, I believe in the ownership of the Brown family there, being used for various tasks involving trips among the North Isles including Fetlar with people and goods. She is certainly remembered with affection by our family and the people of Walls associated with the work of that part of the village in particular.
Brian Wishart
27 May 2019