J D Davies - Historian and Author

The website and blog of naval historian and bestselling author J D Davies

Lerwick

The Hollanders’ Graves

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Last week, we had a terrific holiday in the sun-drenched beach resorts of…

Shetland.

OK, it’s a fair cop, the temperatures never reached double figures in the week we were there, and were driven down further by the constant northerly wind (reaching gale force at times, e.g. on our return ferry voyage to Aberdeen). But if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to spend all day baking on a lounger, then an archipelago which offers stunning scenery, fascinating heritage sites, varied wildlife (orcas were off the coast while we were there, although we didn’t see them), and some of the best roads in Britain – straight, wide, largely empty, and sans potholes – should be high on your bucket list. Shetland is a different world, and that’s emphasised by the blue and white flag that you’ll see flying everywhere. No, not the diagonal saltire (and you certainly won’t see a Union Jack for love nor money) – this is the horizontal/vertical Nordic cross of the Shetland flag. This is a resolutely independent place, where some, like one of the candidates in the forthcoming general election, still believe that the transfer of both these islands and Orkney to the Scottish Crown in 1468-9 was illegal, and that the northern isles should actually be independent; so woe betide you if you suggest to a Shetlander that s/he’s merely a Scot who lives in Scotland, and, come to that, if you suggest that their home is called ‘the Shetlands’.

As far as I was concerned, of course, it was an opportunity to check out the islands’ naval heritage after making several previous visits to Orkney, as described in earlier posts on this site. So this is the first of a series of short posts I intend to publish in quick succession, and it’s the one that deals with my main period of study.

Shetland was an important anchorage during the Anglo-Dutch wars; important, that is, for the Dutch, who used its many sheltered inlets, or voes – fjords by any other name – as harbours of refuge for their merchantmen. Bressay Sound, which lies between Lerwick and the island of Bressay, was a particularly favoured anchorage for the Dutch herring busses, so to deny its use to them, John Mylne, Charles II’s master builder, erected a fort at Lerwick during the second war. This wasn’t completed before the end of the conflict, although the very sight of it, and exaggerated rumours of its strength, were enough to deter a potential attacking squadron in 1667. (A detailed account of this episode can be found at p.178 of this old source.) However, it wasn’t garrisoned during the next war, leading to it being burned by the Dutch in 1673, and was only completed and brought into service in 1781, when it was named Fort Charlotte.

The ramparts of Fort Charlotte, still defending Lerwick’s parked cars after 350 years

Ronas Voe, on the west side of Northmavine, the north-western peninsula of Shetland’s mainland, was another favourite harbour of refuge, and this was where the outgoing Dutch East Indiaman Wapen van Rotterdam overwintered in 1673-4, having sailed from Texel on 6 December 1673. But word of her presence was sent to Whitehall, and on 11 February three frigates, the Cambridge, Crown and Newcastle were sent north to attack her, which they did a few days later. Unfortunately, no logbooks which would provide a precise date, or description of the action, survive from any of the frigates, but the Wapen van Rotterdam was taken, briefly becoming a hulk named Arms of Rotterdam for her new masters. There are no firm figures for casualties in the engagement, but an indeterminate number of dead were buried in a mass grave on the south shore of the voe by the local people, who were rather more sympathetic to the Dutch, whose vessels they had hosted and traded with for many decades, than King Charles II and his ministers might have wished them to be. The grave site was marked by a simple memorial, and this has been renewed over the years; you can see more pictures of the area here.

Ronas Voe, looking north west, with the ‘Hollanders’ Graves’ memorials on the left

Visiting the ‘Hollanders’ Grave’ is something of an adventure, as getting to so many places in Shetland can be. Although marked on Ordnance Survey maps, there are no signposts and no obvious or easy access, other than by skirting the premises of a fish factory to get down to the foreshore. But visiting this quiet, poignant place is definitely worth the effort, and it was good to be able to pay my respects to those who perished in an action that was, with hindsight, utterly pointless – for the Treaty of Westminster, by which Charles II’s kingdoms withdrew from the war, was signed on 19 February 1674, just days, perhaps even hours, after the battle in Ronas Voe.

Orkney and Shetland Road Trip, Part 4

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Shetland has less naval heritage than Orkney, but it still has a substantial amount. During the 17th century, the islands were of vital economic importance – but to the Dutch, not the British. Vast Dutch herring fleets regularly sheltered at Bressay Sound, trading with the local people and contributing to the rise of Lerwick at the expense of the old capital, Scalloway. This caused some tension; in 1625 the authorities attempted to stamp out ‘the manifold adultrie and furnicatioun with women venteris of beir and utheris women evill inclined’. In 1703 the French attacked the Dutch herring fleet, destroying the escorting warship Wolfswinkel and pursuing the herring busses into Bressay Sound, where over 150 of them were burned. The islands were also a port of call for Dutch ships outward bound for, or returning from, the East Indies, especially at times of tension or war with Spain, France or England, when the Channel route became problematic. In 1640 three returning East Indiamen and an escorting warship were attacked in Bressay Sound by ten Spanish warships. Another such ship, the Kennemerland, was wrecked on the Skerries in 1664, and a number of artefacts from her are displayed at Lerwick Museum.???????????????????????????????

In the summer of 1652, General-at-Sea Robert Blake was ordered to Shetland with a fleet of over eighty ships to intercept the Dutch East India fleet, bound for home ‘north about’ (achteroom) around Scotland. Admiral Tromp went after him, but both fleets were caught in a storm on 25–27 July. Blake and his fleet managed to shelter in Bressay Sound, but the Dutch were battered on a hostile lee shore. After three days of continuous gales Tromp he had only thirty-four ships in company out of a fleet of over 100. Most of the others found some sort of shelter away from the main settlements but six foundered at sea and ten were wrecked. Even so, seven of the nine East Indiamen successfully made it home. To deny Bressay to the Dutch, a fort was ordered to be built at Lerwick during the first Dutch War (1652-4), but it is not known if this was ever completed. In 1665 work began on a more permanent fortification, built by Charles II’s master builder Robert Mylne. Finished in 1667, this was destroyed by the Dutch in 1673. The depredations of French and American privateers led to its rebuilding in 1781, when it was renamed Fort Charlotte, and it is in this form that it still survives, albeit now hemmed on almost all sides by the buildings of the town. It was used as a Royal Naval Reserve headquarters from 1861 to 1910.???????????????????????????????

Other relics of naval heritage can be found throughout Shetland, although we didn’t have time to investigate any of these in person. During World War I, the navy used the Swarbacks Minn anchorage on the Isle of Vementry as a base for patrols by the 10th Cruiser Squadron; the 6-inch guns of the coastal defence battery erected to protect it are still in situ. Bressay Sound was an important convoy anchorage, and guns were placed at both ends of it. A Royal Naval Air Station was established at Catfirth, operating seaplanes which hunted U-boats in the Atlantic. During World War II, a RN radar station was built on Sumburgh Head to detect U-boats passing between the Atlantic and North Sea via the Fair Isle channel; in 1940, the station provided early warning of a Luftwaffe attempt to bomb the British fleet in Scapa Flow on Orkney. To defend Lerwick, a large new gun battery was erected at Ness of Sound.

???????????????????????????????We did go to Lerwick Museum, which contains very little of naval relevance (other than a propellor blade from HMS Oceanic, the liner turned auxiliary cruiser wrecked on Foula on 8 September 1914), but that certainly isn’t true of the brand new museum at Scalloway, opened only last summer (it doesn’t usually open in winter, but did so for the holiday following Up Helly Aa in Lerwick). Standing in the shadow of brooding Scalloway Castle, another testament to the ambition and extravagance of Patrick, Earl of Orkney – see previous posts in this series – the museum has an interesting display about the sinking of Oceanic. Above all, though, it devotes a substantial amount of its space to the story of the ‘Shetland bus’, the extraordinary covert operation of World War II which saw fishing craft and, later, submarine chasers of the Royal Norwegian Navy smuggling men, equipment and information into or out of their occupied country. It’s an interesting sign of Shetland’s abiding and powerful connection to Norway, which ruled the islands until 1469, that Lerwick Museum was opened by the Queen of Norway and Scalloway’s by its Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg; indeed, the latter apparently generated some controversy in his homeland by choosing to spend its national day last year in Scalloway rather than Norway, but by doing so, he emphasised the debt his country owes to the heroes who operated the ‘Shetland Bus’.???????????????????????????????