Deerness

The Covenanter's Memorial at Deerness, commemorating the loss in a shipwreck of 200 Covenanters en route to the New World of America (as a punishment), was largely paid for by Robert Halliday Gunning.[6] Blackadder records a prisoner related the following: "The prisoners were all shipped in Leith Roads (15 November) in an English captain’s vessel to be carried to America. He was a profane cruel wretch, and used them barbarously, stowing them up between decks, where they could not get up their heads except to sit or lean, and robbing them of many things their friends sent them for their relief. They never were in such strait and pinch, particularly through scorching drought, as they were allowed little or no drink, and pent up together, till many of them fainted, and were almost suffocated. This was in Leith Roads [i.e., before they sailed] besides what straits they would readily endure in the custody of such a cruel wretch. In this grievous plight, these captives were carried away in much anguish of spirit, pinched bodies, and disquieted conscience, (at least those who had taken the bond.) They were tossed at sea with great tempest of weather for three weeks, till at last their ship cast anchor, to ride awhile among the Orkney isles, till the storm might calm. But after casting anchor, the ship did drive with great violence upon a rugged shore about the isles, and struck about ten at night on a rock. The cruel captain saw the hazard all were in, and that they might have escaped, as some did; yet, as I heard, he would not open the hatches to let the poor prisoners fend for themselves. He, with his seamen, made their escape by a mast laid over between the ship and the rock ashore. Some leapt on the rock. The ship being strong, endured several strokes ere she bilged. The captain, and all the rest of the seamen, with about fifty prisoners, some of whom had been above deck before, others had broke out some other way, down to the den, and so up again, so that they wan to land with their life in; one or two died ashore. While these were thus escaping, the rest, who had all been closed up between decks, crying most pitifully, and working, as they could, to break forth of their prison, but to little purpose; and all these, near two hundred, with lamentable shrieks of dying men, (as was related to the writer by one who escaped,) did perish. The most part were cast out on the shore dead, and after buried by the country people.

It was found, by some who examined those that escaped, that many of them had refused to take the bond. Yet a few of those who had not taken it were drowned; albeit this is soberly marked because these outward things fall much alike to all. It was, however, a puzzling dispensation like many others."[7]

Edwin Muir was born in Deerness in 1887.

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