466 Return To St Kilda

First  viewed :  3  October  1980

This  was  a  memorable  one-off  documentary  on  BBC  Two  on  a  Friday  night. It  marked  the  50th  anniversary  of  the  evacuation  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  remote  archipelago  of  St  Kilda, the  westernmost  land  in  the  UK, over  a  hundred  miles  from  the  Scottish  mainlands. I  watched  it  down  at  my  gran's. She  remembered  the  evacuation  as  a  news  story.

The  islands  ( or  rather  the  main  one,  Hirta )  had  been  inhabited  for  thousands  of  years. The  tiny  community  was  by  necessity  egalitarian  and  had  become  strictly  Sabbatarian.  They  survived  on  a  few  meagre  crops, sheep  farming  and  harvesting  the  seabird  colonies  ( mainly  fulmar  and  gannet )  that  nested  on  the  highest  sea-cliffs  in  Britain. The  Atlantic  storms  meant  they  were  effectively  marooned  for  nine  months  of  the  year.

The  First  World  War  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  for  the  community. Hirta  was  used  for  a  naval  post  and  attracted  some  shelling  from  a  submarine  but  it  was  the  contact  with  the  outside  world  that  did  for  it. When  the  soldiers  left  in  1918  some  of  the  islanders  went  with  them. Although  tourism  in  the  next  decade  brought  some  extra  income, the  numbers  were  not  viable. Health  visitors  expressed  concerns  about  inbreeding.

The  islanders  took  the  decision  to  evacuate  themselves  and  left  on  29  August  1930. The  sheep  were  left  to  become  feral  and  their  descendants  remain  on  the  islands  today.  Needless  to  say  the  scattered  remnants  of  the  community  regarded  the  event  with  a  great  deal  of  sorrow  and  viewing  it  you  shared  their  pain.

The  programme  interviewed  survivors  of  the  evacuation. One  bloke  explained   the  highly  hazardous  operation on  the  cliffs. The  men  were  lowered  on  ropes  from  the  cliff  tops  then  had  to  move  along  the  slippery  ledges  and  break  the  birds'  necks  before  they  spat  out  the  valuable  stomach  oil  which  fuelled  their  lamps. Both  birds  and  their  eggs  were  collected.  He  said  St  Kildans  had  developed  particularly  long  toes  for  this  purpose  and  took  his  shoe  and  sock  off  to  illustrate  this. I  remember  some  years  later  to  this  in  an  argument  with  my  bio-chemist  housemate  who  said  such  localised  genetic  adaptation  was  impossible. God  knows  how it  came  up.

The  last  survivor, an  eight  year  old  girl  at  the  time, died  earlier  this  year.