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Much has been written in other school magazines, and in certain scientific
publications, of the Westminster Shiant Isles Expedition, its aims and its achievements. However, there are several
aspects which have not yet been fully described and no doubt there are many Old Westminsters who know little about
it.
We first thought of the idea of taking an expedition to St Kilda, an isolated island off the Scottish Coast, but
plans to reach it proved impractical and we decided upon our alternative, the Shiant Isles in the Hebrides.
The planning of the expedition took much time, work, and money. We had decided to take eight members from the
School for four weeks, and the food and equipment would obviously be expensive. In addition, the scientific work
which the expedition undertook, meteorology, ornithology, marine biology, botany and surveying, required further
expenditure on specialized equipment.
Continued in next column |
In our financial difficulties we were generously
helped by the Head Master, the Goldsmiths' Company, the School Society, and an anonymous source. Without their
generosity and that of the many food firms and firms who had provided us with free equipment, it would have proved
impossible to organize the expedition.
We left the Kyle of Lochalsh on August 13th, and after six hours in a hired local trawler, the misty shapes of the
islands appeared. The group lies in the Minch, roughly between the Isle of Skye and that of Lewis. There are three
largish islands, each about a mile in length, and several smaller ones. Two of the bigger ones are joined by a narrow
stony isthmus, and we set up camp on the southernmost of these on the one bit of low-lying land on the islands. The
most remarkable feature of the islands is the impressive cliffs which surround all the islands except on their
south-west side. In places these rise to 400 and even 500 feet. A black rock, known as Basalt, makes up most of the
islands and it is this rock's hardmess which gives rise to the magnificent cliffs which formed in great hexagonal
columns, similar to those found on Staffa and at The Giant's Causeway. |
| The islands are now uninhabited, though a house was built by their previous
owner, Sir Compton Mackenzie. However, what they lack in the way of human interest they fully make up by their
diverse population of birds, seals, basking-sharks, and rats. Several hundred birds were ringed in all, of which the
Fulmar and the Shag provided the bulk. The former bird nests on cliff ledges, frequently on perfectly sheer rock, so
that it was necessary to use a rope to catch the young to ring them. Our task was not made any easier by the Fulmar's
unpleasant habit of squirting intruders with a strongly-smelling oil, which very soon managed to penetrate into
everything we ate, wore or slept in.
The ornithology was but a minor part of the scientific programme which we carried out. Apart from an attempt to
make a complete list of the islands' flora, examinations of fresh water algae and brown seaweeds and attempts to
collect as many parasites from sheep and rats as possible, every member of the expedition had to help in the
meteorological work. We read instruments twice daily at three stations besides making a complete list of visual
observations. One meteorological station was set up by the house and two others were erected both a mile distant from
the first one. To read these meant a mile walk before breakfast, and in one case a 500-foot climb up an almost sheer
cliff. In addition we studied raindrop sizes, the development of some clouds, and the amount of dust remains of
meteors in the atmosphere. Finally, we carried out a programme of collecting representative samples of the number of
salt particles in the atmosphere. In addition to meteorological work, a survey was made of the island, contours put
in and the main heights obtained on all the islands
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Naturally, our scientific work took up most of our time,
but we still had some spare time which we spent in various ways. Of course, we explored the whole of the islands, on
foot and in the little rowing-boat which we had, and we used it especially for entering caves and natural tunnels, of
which there were several on the islands. Where there were no cliffs there were steep slopes instead, and one of our
favourite pastimes was to release huge boulders and set them on a quarter-mile run to the sea, having first made sure
there were no sheep in the way.
Although we were never at any time bored, we always looked forward to our twice daily radio call from Stornoway.
We received a radio and transmitter before we left and arranged to communicate with the airport. In return for us
telling them that we were in good health, they gave us a weather forecast and provided us with any sort of
information we needed to know. We had one other means of communication with the mainland; one of the members of the
expedition was able to persuade his father to arrange a drop of mail by RAF plane. So three times while we were on
the islands we had the exciting spectacle of a Shackleton bomber dropping us mail from the skies by parachute. But
apart from three brief visits from fishermen who were as surprised to see us as we were to see them, we never saw
another human face until Mr Cameron brought the "Isa" to collect us a month after our arrival.
The expedition was most certainly a great success, not just because we produced many very valuable scientific
results, but because every one of us felt we had enjoyed ourselves immensely. We all spent four of the most exciting
and, in many ways, instructive weeks of our lives. |
Mischa Scorer's
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