Shipwrecked On Auskerry

I find it ironic that during the last century, nearly all the incidents that I know of involving boats becoming grounded on Auskerry, have happened right below the lighthouse, which was built to prevent shipwrecks in the mid 1860’s. The most notable of these, (and the only one that did not eventually make it back to sea) was the 116-meter cargo ship SS Hastings County, which ran ashore in fog on the 13th of June 1926. The 4,178 ton cargo ship was travelling past Orkney, en route from Hamburg to Montreal when she struck the Hunters Riffs, a shallow rocky area about 300 yards from Auskerry’s Southern shore. She was carrying a mixed cargo including children’s toys and a large quantity of coal. A great deal of her cargo was salvaged, including two luxury yachts that were stowed on her deck. However, on September 26th a fire broke out in the aft hold and an easterly gale on October 25th finally broke up the ship.

Large parts are still visible to this day, including the piston shafts, which stand defiant against the destructive power of the sea. One of the boilers, some jagged sheets of riveted steel and even the propeller shaft still remain on the rocky shore below the lighthouse. Each winter, during the worst of the storms many of these vast lumps of rusty metal move slightly – a reminder of what the sea is capable of. The Hastings County wreck played its own part in almost claiming another vessel. In the 1970’s a small trawler from Mainland Scotland ran aground on the South Coast of Auskerry. A fishery cruiser and the Customs and Excise launch both heard the mayday calls, and made their way to the scene along with the Kirkwall Lifeboat, Grace Paterson Ritchie. One of the lifeboat crew was having dinner with the skipper of a Scapa Flow tug boat when his pager went off. Both men rushed to join their boats, the tug skipper scenting the possibility of salvage money.

It was a calm night with no sea running and as the boats approached the stricken trawler the team aboard the lifeboat made the decision that there was no immediate danger to the trawler. They would therefore hold off making a move until daylight when the tide would be flooding again. However, a larger trawler had also heard the mayday call, and when it arrived on the scene, her skipper got on the radio to the Lifeboat; “I’ve got lots of horsepower, I’ll easily pull her off,” he said. The Coxswain responded, telling the large trawler’s skipper not to go any closer because there were lots of boats in the area and that they were waiting until daylight. The large trawler responded by saying that he could see all the vessels on radar. He then steamed through all the boats, past the lifeboat, and ran aground on the rocks just south of the original casualty. It turned out that the skipper had mis- identified the specks on his radar, believing the Lifeboat to be the casualty vessel and the Fishery Cruiser to be the Lifeboat. As daylight dawned, there were now 5 vessels at Auskerry, with a Scapa Flow tug on its way. The lifeboat went under the stern of the larger trawler and passed a towline to the crew. The coxswain then instructed the skipper via radio that if they managed to pull the vessel away from the rocks, he was not to start her engines until they were well clear because there was a danger of hitting the submerged wreck of the Hastings County.

As the lifeboat pulled the trawler away from the rocks, the skipper panicked, started the engines and pulled the lifeboat backwards over the wreck. Luckily the lifeboat was undamaged, but the trawler struck its rudder and lost the ability to steer. Like the stricken WW2 battleship ‘Bismark’, the trawler was now only able to steam around in circles. The fishery cruiser towed the damaged trawler back to Kirkwall leaving the lifeboat crew on scene to continue the rescue of the original smaller trawler. Now at the scene, the tugboat skipper asked the lifeboat to pass a line to the small trawler, which had ebbed completely dry on the rocks. The tug then pulled her down the rocks, causing some damage to her steel deck as the tow fixings were pulled from their mounts. After towing the trawler back the Kirkwall, it was discovered that the trawler was about to go bankrupt and under writ, so the tug company could not get any salvage money. It is said that the tug’s skipper got into trouble for taking the tug out of the flow without permission. A separate incident occurred when a boat got lost in fog and the same Kirkwall Lifeboat went out looking for them. This time the Grace Paterson Richie ran ashore on Auskerry, tearing a hole in her hull where the fuel tanks were. Initially the crew thought she was a write off but she managed to stay afloat. However, without power, due to the damage to the fuel tanks, the lifeboat had to be towed back to Kirkwall by a fishing trawler, which had come to her aid. The most recent incident on Auskerry involved a Norwegian yacht which ran aground on the southern tip of the island in the early hours of the morning. The current Kirkwall lifeboat, ‘Margaret Foster’ came out and managed to tow her off the rocks. Ironically the first that we knew about this incident was when Dad heard about it on Radio Orkney! By the time he got to the Lighthouse to see the stricken Yacht the tide was already on the turn and the crew were not close enough to talk to. However, Dad had seen the yacht approaching the island the night before and had thought that the vessel looked “very close to the lighthouse”. He reported that it was a clear night and the lighthouse was definitely working, doing its job to alert passing mariners to those same treacherous rocks…