More Tales of Shipwreck and Mystery

The Scottish One started composing a comment for yesterdays post and carried on until the point where I thought it was worthy of a guest slot so here it is in all it's glory.

Towering like jagged and broken saw-teeth on the western extremity of Shetland are the Rusna Stacks, eight or more forbidding towers of Middle Red Sandstone, guarding the northern shore of the western entrance to Vaila Sound. They are separated from the mainland by 150 yards of turbulent, icy grey sea and a 180 ft cliff face with a precipitous edge that every fiber in your body screams you should retreat from and keep going. It was while out for a morning’s constitutional on this coastline with Desperate Reader’s father and his faithful hounds that we were shown a curious carving scratched on a flattish, un-prepossessing rock at the top of a hill close by. It’s of a compass rose about 12 inches across, of the 32-point cardinal type, made of concentric circles and radiating lines and surrounding it were incised names, and initials, some legible, others eroded with age and all overlaid with a patina of lichen. The carving has given the small hill top the local dialect name of ‘Compass wart’ a wart being the local term for a lookout point. Like all good rock art this has a story attached to it, in this case that a vessel had been wrecked on the Rusna Stacks and at least some of the crew had survived by climbing the mast of the sinking ship to crawl up over the cliff edge and gain the safety of land. It is said that the survivors then made their way to the hill-top where they carved the compass. It is also said that a small cove or ‘bight’ a little way further into the sound called ‘Neus’ was where the news of the wreck was first heard - so it’s called locally ‘the bight of the neus’. These scant details are at that is known although there is good evidence that the compass was there in the 1850’s.

Among the names there appears only one date, the year 1611 carved close to the north point, the numeral six of this date has that scribed look rather than copperplate which makes me think it is authentic and the north point itself is not an arrow but a cross, carved within two opposing curves, called a Vesica Piscis making an almond shape, again a very old form of compass point. It’s obvious some of the other graffito is later from the lettering styles, and many have been scratched over older, fainter ones.

If this compass was carved in the year 1611, it is remarkable at a literary level in that it was in this year on 1st November (All Saints Day) in which Shakspeare’s ‘The Tempest’ was performed for the first time at Whitehall palace in London. ‘The Tempest’ of course is a story of storm, shipwreck, natural magic, revenge and love on an enchanted island. Now I’m not for a moment suggesting that West Shetland is, or ever was Prospero’s Isle (no matter how enchanting in reality it without doubt is) but the play does give an insight into the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean mindset in which belief in magic worlds parallel to our own, superstition, witchcraft and sorcery was universal.

 Imagine then a small group of exhausted and frightened, shipwrecked sailors, perhaps from another country, unable to speak the local Norn dialect, arriving on this desolate coastline fearful of making their way to habitation in case they are taken for spirits or simply pirates. Caution born of superstition may well have caused them to huddle on a small hill-top far from habitation, close to where the wreck of their vessel was gradually being eaten by the pounding waves, and wait out the storm with the few possessions they had managed to salvage from the wreck, one of which we know for sure was an accurate compass because the carving on the rock points unerringly to magnetic north. In Shakespeare’s day not all "magic" was considered evil, indeed Prospero’s magic in ‘The Tempest’ was benign and was more akin to science, rationality, and divinity, than to the occult. The reliability of the magnetic compass to truthfully point the way may have seemed a powerful talisman of this kind of life saving magic in a storm filled world of darkness and unspoken fears. While waiting, perhaps for days in this condition what would have been more natural to one of these sailors than to idly scratch with a knife blade an image of the talisman to which they trusted their salvation? All we know for sure is that this enigmatic petroglyph still weathers the storms year upon year in its rocky isolation and that happily it still prompts stories to be woven in front of a glowing peat fire with wet dogs and a malt whisky of an ancient shipwreck and another world.

He doesn't often give way to these flights so it's very much a testament to place 

A tale of mystery and shipwreck

Which might have started on a dark and stormy night, but which equally might never have happened at all. When we were staying in Shetland earlier in the summer my father told as about a spot romantically called the compass wart. It’s basically a compass carved into a stone on a hilltop near his house, and something which I had a vague memory of hearing about before but was pretty sure I’d never seen. It came up during the course of a forced march (pleasant family walk) when we paused to admire the view, and in my case get some sort of breath back, on a particularly wild cliff top.

Local legend (according to dad) has it that a ship carrying china went down off of this spot, but the sailors managed to climb up the mast to safety then made their way to the top of a hill and carved the compass into the rock along with their initials. However despite enquires he has never been able to find the name of the ship or the date she went down. It seems there are, or should be, pretty thorough records of shipwrecks so the Scottish one thought that once he had the coordinates it shouldn’t be too hard to find a likely boat.

Plenty of research has followed with very little in the way of concrete evidence which is where the mystery comes in. The Scottish one has come to doubt that there was a shipwreck, or more specifically as we’ve found dozens of recorded wrecks  in the immediate area, has come to doubt in the existence of this one wreck and its sailors activities. I’m still inclined to believe the story, mostly because it seems to be widely accepted as fact and I’m assuming there’s something behind that.

What we do know is that there is a compass – accurate according to some experimenting with the Scottish ones phone – surrounded by initials, we also know that generations of local youths have gone up there and carved their names in the rock too. The Shetland museum puts a tentative date of around 1850 on the carving (suggested by people now in their 80’s confirming that it was a known landmark throughout their grandparent’s lives) but is prepared to believe it may be much older.

The only other piece of corroborating evidence I’ve come across so far, and it’s fairly circumstantial, is in place names. Shetland still has a full complement of names for just about every inlet, crevice, rock, lump, bump, nook, or other general cranny that you can spot. I could tell you about three but my general ignorance isn’t typical. It seems that news of our wreck first came ashore at a place that has since been known as the bite of the ‘news’ (a spot about a mile or two down the coast from the potential wreck site, but equally, at least in my opinion, a potential wreck site itself) which is almost directly below the compass wart. I can at least confirm that on an early OS map (1882) that this spot is marked as Neus.

Further furtling about on the internet revealed that a Wart (which I assumed would be a descriptive reference to a lump on a hill) is a beacon on the top of a hill, or a watchtower, or any hill that had a watchtower on it. Ideally we would have found a heap of stones indicative of a watchtower, or even a spot on the OS map to suggest a building – but nothing doing, although there is a dry stone wall which might have cannibalised any remaining rubble long ago because apart from a complete lack of shelter this spot would make an ideal lookout point, and if it was an established lookout point it would answer a few questions.

We’ve spent a lot of time speculating as to what the compass was for (education, a marker, directions, a memorial, a rendezvous point, the list goes on) mostly because neither of us could really understand why shipwrecked you would spend your time wading through bog to climb a hill (actually I’m of the build and inclination to always wonder why you would climb a hill, especially if it involves wading through a bog in unpractical footwear, but for some reason it keeps happening to me) and then spend a whole lot of time carving a compass without adding the ships name. If however there was a light or any other signs of humanity then it would be an obvious thing to do.

This is turning into something of a quest for me; the compass wart itself is an oddly haunting place. It’s hard to imagine a bleaker or more blasted spot despite the prospect. Strategically it has a lot to recommend it – excellent views up and down the coastline which back in the fish station days would have been invaluable for keeping an eye on your boats to make sure they didn’t make any unscheduled stops. It’s the kind of place that you can almost smell a story – smuggling and wrecking both came to mind, as did desperate attempts to escape the press gangs. Look where you will, especially if you look out to sea, and it’s easy to ignore the few signs of modern life around you. I’ve had a good search through the Shetland archives image collection and can confirm that if anything it’s a much quieter place than 150 years ago.

The compass location isn’t a secret but neither is it marked or advertised in any way. I must have walked past it a few times without knowing about it, but it’s more than that easy to miss – which adds to the sense of mystery surrounding it. A definite feeling that something has been suppressed and is now more than half lost in history – I really need to find out something about that wreck...

Finally a big thank you to the Shetland Museums and Archive  who very kindly gave me permission to use their images, it's an excellent resource well worth browsing through - I know I've looked at literally thousands of images and still have a mass of material left to explore