1872
Anstruther – ln the course of Wednesday morning several Cellardyke and other boats, while their crews were taking some needful timeat home between the toils of the night and the opening of the sales at daylight, were pillaged of part of their herrings—some crews having about a cran stolen—the loss, so far we hear, amounting in all to about £10. These heartless depredations being committed under the cloud of darkness, and with the shore quite solitary and deserted, their detection is consequently matter of great difficulty; but it does seem suspicious on the part of some stranger crews to visit the harbour during the night, ostensibly for the purpose of buying bait for the cod fishing, but to leave without either making a purchase, or the ordinary harbour dues.
THE PARISH CHURCH VACANCY AT CELLARDYKE. MEETING OF MEMBERS. A meeting of the members of the Parish Church of Kilrenny—convened by the Kirk Session, and intimated by tuck of drum—was held in the Infant School, Cellardyke on Saturday evening, to consider what steps ought to taken in reference to filling up the vacancy in the Church, caused the death of the Rev. George Dickson. There were about fifty present.
Mr Philip Oliphant, writer, Anstruther, one of the elders of the church, having been called to the chair, and the divine blessing having been asked by James Smith, another member of the Session, The Chairman rose, and after a passing allusion to the death of the late lamented incumbent, referred at some length to the great importance to the parish of having an approved successor, one, he said, who was not merely able and impressive preacher, but who, by his affectionate and familiar intercourse in their homes, would be the friend and counsellor of the people, whether in their day of gladness or sorrow………….
Cellardyke. Paving the Streets.—At a meeting of the Police Commission of the burgh of Kilrenny on Monday, it was resolved to pave the street from the Town Hall west to the point already causewayed, with greenstone rubble blocks; and the Clerk was instructed to intimate to Mr Young, of Cupar, that his estimate of 3s 10d per square yard had been accepted. This improvement will entail an outlay of £192—the balance in hand of the Commission being about £100. It was intended to have completed the paving of the main street from end to end, but the remaining section east of the Hall has been deferred in the state of the funds.
1873
“THE SORROWS OF THE SEA.” Mrs Reid, one of the most remarkable women ever connected with the Scottish shore, died in Cellardyke on Saturday in the sixty-ninth year of her age. There is many a mournful tale of the sea—”the cruel and remorseless .sea”—but few have had so much cause to lament over the weary waters as the aged pilgrim who has just entered on her rest. Mrs Reid, or Agnes Birrell to give her maiden name, belonged to one of the best reputed as well as one of the numerous families of Cellardyke of our day ; but her father, strong limbed, clear-headed, sea-faring native of Kinghorn, was the first of his race in the East Neuk, where he had taken to himself a wife from that fine old stock, the sailor Robertson’s of Anstruther. Agnes, as the strapping fisher lass, married her promising townsman, James Davidson, and a happier young couple never crossed the old Kirk style of Kilrenny, but the sun was to go down on the very morning of their joy. On the 24th of September 1828, her husband, as one of her father’s crew, as was the custom at that time with the fishermen, had gone round with the boat to the Eden for mussel bait, and -was lying ready to sail in the river, when the wind rose violently from the westward The older hands wished to remain at their moorings, but the young men were impatient to be again with their wives and sweethearts, and though one of the crew predicted the coming disaster he stepped on board “There’ll mussels skauppet the day whaur they never were before”- the sail was hoisted and the boat dashed out to sea. The little craft reeled gallantly through St Andrews Bay, and tacked to windward the Carr; but while crossing the stormy “Hurst” she was struck by a dreadful sea. It was the old sad, sad story: the boat rolled over on the weather side, and lay embosomed and helpless to the next stroke of the waves, which rushed like cataract everywhere over the gunwale. “She is sinking!” and a long, wild cry rose over the hoarse roar of the storm as the poor fishermen cast their farewell look on sea and shore; but James Davidson and his father, as lovingly and trustingly as in the old days of childhood, and as if death could never divide them, clasped each other round the neck, and so sunk together into watery grave. His old uncle was saved to tell the affecting story, which made deep impression at the time on the public mind, though it could fall on no ear with the same heart-crushing misery as on that the young widow who nursed her new born child in the silence of the night, with the saddest of all music, the wail for the loved and lost. But time softens every grief, and as years rolled the widow became once more a happy wife and joyful mother of five fine children. Her second husband, Thomas Reid, was enterprising fisherman; and his fine new boat, the “Nancy,” of Cellardyke, had only been a fortnight sea when she foundered during the memorable gale on the night the 23d April 1846, about fifteen miles, as it was supposed, from the Isle of May, when all on board perished, “with no ear to pity and arm to save.” There were seven of a crew, and six widows and fifteen fatherless children were left to mourn their untimely fate. But the widowed Mrs Reid had other and no less poignant affliction to endure. Her handsome brother, Thomas, was one day accidentally drowned at sea. But on the of 8th December 1859 she had a more bitter cup to drink to the dregs, by the loss of another Cellardyke boat, with her gallant brother William, and her own eldest son—the child of her first love, James Donaldson – who perished like the rest of the crew, with the exception of one survivor, who was spared on that fatal occasion to tell with what martyr-like constancy brave men could meet their fate. Three brothers of Mrs Reid’s second husband had years before met a similar death; but the afflicted widow again participated in no common measure in the last distressing calamity which befel Cellardyke, when her son Thomas—the Benjamin of her household—and her two sons-in-law, suffered with all hands by the foundering of their boat in the North Sea on the stormy night of the 10th of May 1865. By these accumulated disasters Mrs Reid has lost two husbands, two sons, two sons-in-law, two brothers, and three brothers-in-law, or to include nephews and other connections, more than twenty near relations have perished by the sea ; and was it then strange that after all these manifold afflictions the bereaved wife and mother should love to linger where she could gaze out on the far away German sea—”the weary sea,” as she would say—and listen so wistfully now the soft summer gloaming the voice of the waves in its low hymn-like murmurings; or, again, the night of gathering storm when the billows trampled the shore fierce and loud as the feet of the Destroyer—for both to her was full of meaning—sadder it could not be, yet falling on the quivering heart with all the kindred pathos of the dirge song to the mourner sitting the lonely grave. But while mourning long and truly for the dead, she never forgot her duty to the living. There is no situation in the ordinary life where woman is more truly the helpmate of man than the fisherman’s wife, for she is not only the companion of his home and the mother of his children, but in all the multifarious operations of the busy year, her industry as her thrift is the secret of his prosperity. Mrs Reid was one of these people you never find idle; but her nimble fingers were not confined to the common duties of his sphere, for in her earlier years she handled the tar and paint brush on her husband’s boat with all the skill of a tradesman, and this activity of disposition may be said to have remained with her to the last, as only this winter she was to be seen gathering limpets from the rocks as bait for the fishing line. The old heroine was also remarkable for her sterling Scottish independence, and ungrudgingly toiled from sunrise to sundown on a long summer day, in order, she said, “neither to be obleeged either to frien’ or frem;” and so her life past on with exemplary diligence and usefulness, till she was struck down a few months ago by paralysis ; but it is pleasing to know that as the evening shadows deepened around her—the heralds of the coming change—her spirit rejoiced in the hope of the better and brighter day.
Exciting Scene at Anst’er Harbour- About seven o clock on Friday Evening loud cries of distress were heard at intervals through the storm by the bystanders on the East shore. It was only too evident that some disaster had happened at the entrance of the harbour. Several boats were known to be at sea, as was to be anticipated, the most intense excitement spread like wildfire through Cellardyke where the alarm bell was at once rung to call out the fishermen. Nor was the appeal in vain, for men, women and children, heedless of everything but the stinging thought that near and dear ones might be perishing in the sea ran in all haste to the piers, when the worst fears were confirmed by seeing a large boat beating in the surf at the back of the western breakwater. The stranded boat proved to be the “Six Brothers” belonging to John Dickson of Cellardyke, and under the circumstances the crew were all together at the mercy of the cruel waves, but a band of heroes were immediately at work for the rescue of life and property, and a number of volunteers gallantly sprang from the pier into the boat, which was at once cleared of ballast; while others, no less undaunted in the case of humanity, secured a chain to the opposite pier, to which a pulley and ropes being attached, the hundreds of willing hands on the western breakwater completed the generous task by dragging the boat from the surf beaten skerries to the shelter of the pier, when, notwithstanding her immediate precarious berth, she was found to have sustained comparatively little damage. The incident, as will be seen elsewhere from our columns has caused an almost unprecedented degree of excitement in the seafaring community, but the facts of the case, so far as we can glean them are as follows – The Six Brothers, manned with a crew of young men, the skipper being on a visit to some friends in England, had gone to sea to draw their great or cod fishing lines, expecting to find an easy entrance in all states of the tide as they had reason to do. The young men started within an hour of low water for the shore. The boat was worked with a seamanship worthy of the oldest mariner, but in bearing away as to avoid the breakers on the east pier, the keel unfortunately stuck on the outlying “buss” or insular rock in the fairway, when being no longer under control of the helm she was swept down on the stormy lea, where but for the prompt assistance as we have said, she would have become a total wreck. The night was extremely dark and the pier being as yet unlighted, many hairbreadth escapes were made by the crowds who hastened to the scene, and one young fisherman William Brown, fell over the breakwater, but miraculously escaped with a few bruises. Skipper Dickson was on his way home from the train when he encountered the general alarm, and was thus one of the first to recognise his own boat, in which his two young sons were also on board. The boat was only launched from Mr Millar’s yard in the course of last summer, and her value, without reckoning the fishing gear was about £300.