Eyemouth disaster
The Eyemouth disaster was a storm that occurred on October 14, 1881 off the east coast of Scotland and particularly affected the port city of Eyemouth . It is considered the most momentous catastrophe in the history of Scottish fishing and as " Black Friday " (English Eyemouth's Black Friday ) in the history of the city of Eyemouth.
On this day, which began on the Scottish east coast with sunshine, cloudless skies and calm seas, an exceptionally strong hurricane began shortly before noon with no apparent sign, killing 189 fishermen living in this region . The victims included 129 fishermen from Eyemouth, around a third of the town's male population. 73 Eyemouth women lost their husbands and 263 children lost their father. 19 boats, around half of the local fishing fleet, sank or were destroyed due to the tidal low water level during the storm on their return on the stony coast in front of the city, in many cases within sight of the waiting relatives of the fishermen and the residents of the city. The bodies of only 30 victims were found later . A boat crew managed to hold out at sea for two days and reached the port after the storm subsided.
A nationwide donation campaign subsequently brought in the then high sum of around 54,000 British pounds , from which all affected families could be granted pension payments. An expansion of the urban port to a deep-water port , which had been planned before the accident and which might have resulted in significantly lower casualties, was no longer implemented due to the loss to the urban fisheries. A memorial stone made of granite in the form of a broken sailing mast and in the six affected fishing villages of Coldingham , Eyemouth, Burnmouth , St Abbs , Cove and Musselburgh each have bronze monuments showing women and children looking out to sea. The local museum in Eyemouth has a tapestry with the names of the deceased fishermen and the crashed boats.
literature
- Peter Aitchison: Children of the Sea. The Story of the Eyemouth Disaster. Tuckwell Press, East Linton 2001, ISBN 1-86232-240-6 .
- Eyemouth Fishing Disaster. In: John Keay, Julia Keay (Eds.): Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland. Revised edition. HarperCollins, London 2000, ISBN 0-00-710353-0 , p. 376.
- October 14-15, 1881. In: Hubert Lamb , Knud Frydendahl: Historic Storms of the North Sea, British Isles and Northwest Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1991, ISBN 0-521-37522-3 , pp. 142-143.
Coordinates: 55 ° 54 '0 " N , 2 ° 1' 48" W.