The Eshaness lighthouse is built right on the edge of the world. The Eshaness cliffs are famous for their height, crumbling ruggedness and a variety of bizarre geological and oceanographic features, including waterspouts and tidal, inland pools. The only great Shetland novel, Robert Jamieson's Thin Wealth, is set around Eshaness. It is a disturbing place, littered with Pictish and neolithic remains. But its lighthouse, perched on a cliff edge, is a potent symbol of hope: the hope that, if you're in a boat, you'll be able to keep well clear.
In February this year, the Banff- registered fishing boat Annandale was doing just that, staying a safe 11.6 nautical miles offshore, in high seas and winds of up to force eight. It was very cold. A blizzard made visibility low and the decks even more slippery than usual. Still, there was nothing unusual about relief skipper Alistair Matthew's decision to begin fishing. It had been an unproductive day, and there was nothing in the conditions to suggest that shooting the trawl might be unsafe.
But one of the heavy steel trawl doors that keep the mouth of the huge net open had come adrift from the chain attaching it to the netting itself. A shackle pin was missing, and the 31-year-old crewman Gordon Wilson, standing at the stern of the vessel with two teenagers, Ross Flett and Keith Strachan, decided to replace it. This was not easy. The trawl doors were mounted outboard, beyond the guard rail the three were able to grip to keep their footing. But Wilson was an experienced crewman, and thought he could manage a job he had done many times before. So he climbed outside the guard rail, inching along a tiny ledge and reaching for the elusive shackle as the Annandale pitched and rolled. He was wearing bright yellow oilskins and seaboots, but no life jacket and no safety line. It may have been a matter of pride, in front of the two younger men, to show how casually he could accomplish what now seems a task of insane danger. At a fatal accident inquiry in Lerwick, Sheriff Colin Scott Mackenzie agreed with the procurator fiscal Roderick Urquhart's assessment that the "hard-man culture" of the fishing industry had probably cost Wilson his life. "A lump of water" had plucked Wilson from his tenuous hold on the salt-encrusted metal of the Annandale. Despite a seven-hour search, no trace of Wilson was found.
The owners of the Annandale acted after the tragedy, installing safety harnesses and buying lightweight life jackets for the crew. But according to the evidence Matthew gave the inquiry, he never used either, nor would he ask a crew to do so. Fishermen, he said, never wore life jackets. Strachan, who had watched his fellow crewman being swept away, did try out his new life jacket, but he didn't have it on long.
In the fiscal's words: "It is a crying shame that he abandoned wearing a life jacket because the culture on the vessel was such that he was made to feel a sissy for taking seriously his own safety." It was clear that being careless of safety was perceived as a sign of virility among fishermen. "It is not brave, manly or virile," the fiscal said. "It is merely contemptible."
It was hardly coincidental that the Scottish executive recently announced that it was "opening discussions with the fishing industry" to introduce a new safety scheme for fishermen. The call by Sheriff Mackenzie for regulation to govern not just catches but also working conditions will doubtless be taken on board.
There is more to it, though, than simply macho posing. Fishing is a very dangerous industry, especially the kind carried out by north-east Scotties, as they're known in Shetland, in relatively small, sometimes old vessels. Fatalism rooted in fundamentalist Calvinism is part of the equation. There was a time when fishermen would refuse to learn to swim, in case the agony of drowning in icy seas was prolonged. Shetlanders, much more pagan, have a different attitude. They also have more money, better boats and the example of the oil industry on their watery doorstep. Thus expensive flotation suits are used extensively on Lerwick-registered vessels.
But in the end, the sea can make such precautions irrelevant. The Eshaness lighthouse, now a holiday home for an American gardening author, has a reinforced concrete roof. Storms so severe batter the place that it once took five men to lift a boulder, which had been tossed there by the sea, off that roof. If you're at sea in such conditions, maybe fatalism becomes the only option.
