Mull and the Clearances, page 4
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*This chapter was written in 2002, so much of the information in it regarding the current state of crofting reflects the situation at that time.
Part 2
THE CLEARANCES IN MULL
The people are the great sanctuary of
sanity, the country the last stronghold of
happiness. when they disappear there is no
hope for the race.
(Virginia Woolf)
1
The Structure of the Island
The island of Mull is the third largest of the Hebrides. With its mid-position and the railhead at mainland Oban just thirty miles distant, it has the advantages of easy contacts with the bustling Lowlands. It is an island of 225,000 acres in extent, measuring 24 miles from north to south and 26 from east to west, but these figures give no indication of its irregular coastline, which, with its deeply penetrating sea lochs on the west coast, measures about 300 miles. Inland the mountainous terrain means that the distance by road from Tobermory in the extreme north to Fionnphort and Iona ferry in the extreme south-west is 50 miles.
Over most of the island, the older geology is concealed by a cover of much younger rocks, especially basaltic lavas which erupted around 60 million years ago. Originally these lavas were much thicker than now and the height of Ben More, 3169 feet, was once approximately twice that. Now, at least 1km has since been eroded away from central Mull, exposing the inner workings of the old volcano and leaving Ben More close to the western edge of this centre of volcanic activity. The land surface we now see is the result of recent glaciation. The ice left the western coasts of Mull about 17 thousand years ago, but the last valley glaciers only left central Mull around 11,500 years ago. The removal of this ice load caused the Earth’s crust under Mull to rebound, raising the island and leaving ancient raised beaches and uplifted sea cliffs inland from today’s coastline.
The breakdown of the basaltic rocks left behind a rich volcanic soil which gathered especially on the flat areas along the shores. Less than half the island lies below the 500ft contour, where there is such rich grazing for cattle that F. Fraser Darling wrote: ‘Mull is some of the most fertile land in the Kingdom, but ruined by sheep farming . . . Mull and Ulva are cattle country without equal in the Highlands. In fact, about 1800, before the invasion of sheep, Mull was exporting 2,000 head of cattle per annum, along with transit herds from the islands and nearby mainland. The grazing is so good that cattle could graze up to the 1,000ft contour in many places. In 1970 the island was still exporting 5,000 head of cattle, which unfortunately have to compete now with afforestation and sheep, which offer quicker returns to stock raisers.’
Although Mull could never compete with the extensive machair lands and crofting potential of other islands, crofting did get firmly established mainly in the flatter land of the Ross of Mull and neighbouring Iona, and the island of Ulva, and to a lesser extent on the rougher ground at Tobermory, Dervaig, Quinish, Torloisk, Salen, around the heads of Loch na Keal and between Torosay and Loch Buie, including the ‘Garden of Mull’. As mentioned earlier, I remember during my schooldays at Tobermory just before World War I used to pass five or six crofts along the mile of road between our house and the school, each with a few cows that grazed in summer on the hill grazings round about, that catered for the modest requirements of the crofters. Today I believe there is not one; they were either abandoned, taken over by the few farms, or carry a stock of sheep.
2
Social History
Under the more settled conditions that followed the end of the Jacobite uprising and large families becoming common, the population of Mull rose from 5,500 in 1760 to a peak of nearly 11,000 in 1821. Many of the soldiers who returned from the Napoleonic wars found their homes and livelihood gone or under threat. The names of 116 officers alone are recorded as coming from Mull to serve in those wars, and we can only guess at the large number of men who served in the ranks who followed their remaining chiefs as of old. Later, during the Crimean war, at least one Mull laird threatened crofters with eviction unless they sent a son to serve in the army. You remember the bold old Ross-shire man who addressed the Duke of Sutherland when he was expressing his surprise that so few of his tenants were volunteering to fight: ‘The men are all gone; you can send your sheep!’
From the peak in 1821 the population of Mull had fallen steeply to 5,000 as a result of evictions, migration and emigration. At the same time the population of Tobermory had risen from a much earlier figure of 200 to 850 in 1821, and 2,000 in 1871. So many crofting settlements had been cleared that homeless and jobless people crowded into the town seeking any form of work or shelter, even in outhouses and byres, reluctant to leave their island, or simply lacking enough cash to emigrate. Many had to sell their few possessions to provide food for survival, helped by the Relief Committee and the Kirk Sessions. Shellfish must have figured largely in the diet of people living near the sea. I remember when clearing a corner beside our little house in the wood above Dervaig, I came across a great dump of limpet and whelk shells which must have taken years to accumulate. Of course they may have been used to bait for line fishing, but this was a purely crofting little area a mile or more from the sea.
The more accessible industrial Lowlands were now offering work not to be found in Mull, and a drift to the south began, until 100 years later, the population of Tobermory had fallen to 600, while that of Mull remained at 2,000. There was nothing left in Mull for young folk anxious to improve their prospects. I might quote as an aside that the chief exports from the islands were doctors and ministers – Mull had its full quota of them!
As the twentieth century went on, much was done to revitalise the island of Mull. People began to return, many now finding it an ideal place for retiral. Private houses are going up, small and diversified local industries established, thanks to local initiative, progressive administration and vastly improved communications. However, the tourist trade plays a large part now in the economy, which can be precarious in an off season. Sheep and agricultural subsidies play a large part in farming returns, and nearly all crofters are dependent on part-time jobs.
3
Emigrant Ships and Their
Destinations
I have traced a few details about the emigrant ships. Tobermory was a convenient centre not only for the departure of people from Mull, but from districts as far apart as Lewis and Kintyre. The voluntary emigration that had existed up to 1840 became a vital outlet for dispossessed people when the potato disease brought chaos to the whole crofting communities, and the landlords sought to get rid of those unwanted people, even by subsidising their passage fares for a few years that worked out at about £4 to £10 for an individual and £35 for a large family. Repeatedly the accusation of laziness and apathy was applied to the peasantry of the Highlands and Islands, another excuse for clearing them off the land. Their resourcefulness after emigrating into a free environment, their success as colonists, were all conveniently ignored. When settlements were being set up in the Canadian Middle West towards the end of the nineteenth century, contrary to public beliefs the name ‘Calgary’ was not bestowed by nostalgic emigrants from Mull. The true story is that Col. J. F. Macleod, Commander of the North-West Mounted Police (the ‘Mounties’) had spent some time in Calgary, in the north-west of Mull, as guest of the owner of the estate, John H. Munro Mackenzie. To perpetuate his happy memories there he asked the permission of the laird to name the new post he was setting up in Alberta as ‘Calgary’. The laird was delighted to agree.
Here are a few details from the years of emigration:
1770 Some of the earliest emigrants from Mull left on the Polly.
1827 170 people left Tobermory on the Stephen Wright.
1832 1,090 emigrants from Lewis and Mull left Tobermory for Nova Scotia.
1835 More than 3,500 people from Oban, Kintyre and Mull sailed from Tobermory in four ships for Nova Scotia and Quebec.
1837 315 selected and government-assisted emigrants sailed from Tobermory on the Brilliant to establish official settlements abroad.
1838 British Queen sailed from Tobermory.
1839 Hercules sailed from Tobermory for Australia.
1840 550 people from Skye and Mull left for Prince Edward Island.
1846 Emergency food supply, barley, oatmeal, peas, was landed at Tobermory by the frigate Belvidere.
1847 Assisted passages were paid for Mull and Iona people on Jamaica and Harley.
1853 Famine victims from Ulva and elsewhere left by British Queen, Panama and Hercules for Australia.
1859 Emigrants to Australia and New Zealand left Tobermory by the Marmion, Barlow and Charlotte.
1870s Several assisted passages to Australia and New Zealand.
Special mention should be made of the Mary Jane, a large private yacht belonging to Sir James Matheson, proprietor of the island of Lewis, whose activities were mentioned earlier. His most beneficial act during the critical years of the 1840s was to make his yacht available free of charge to enable seasonal migrants from the Hebrides – such as at harvest time – to travel to the labour markets of the south. In 1847 alone the yacht was estimated to have carried 2,256 persons from the Hebrides to the Clyde ports.
4
The Mull Clearances, Estate
by Estate
As usual, regrets come too late to be remedied. Before the ’14-’18 War, when I was a boy, I listened with boredom to the stories related by visitors at our fireside. Brought up as the son of the governor of the Mull Combination Poorhouse, what a store of information I could have gathered as well from the inmates, some of whom were themselves aged victims of the Clearances. Although my father was a Mull man born and bred, and his father, my grandfather, a farm manager on the island, he was probably in his youth as little interested as I was. In his early twenties – about 1880 – he left futureless Mull and joined the Glasgow Police Force, from which he shortly volunteered for service in the Hong Kong Police Force. He retired as superintendent in 1904 and returned to Mull. I was born at my mother’s home at Portmahomack in Easter Ross, just a month or two after she returned from the colony in 1903. I, too, moved from Mull to mainland bank service in the south, so both my father and I lost our contacts with Mull.
My knowledge of the Clearances comes from relatives and friends in Mull, and from some researches. It was a few years after my retiral that my wife and I returned to the little cottage in the woods near Dervaig that I really began to learn something about the social history of the island. I have grateful memories of my long talks with my cousins Calum and Peter Maclean, Alick (Ban) MacDougall and his sister Maggie, quiet Nellie Stewart, and of course that fountain of information, Donald Mackechnie in Dervaig. To my regret, I never talked long enough with Mary Morrison, of the Penmore Mill, to tap her lifelong memories. There was Neil Patterson of Dervaig. John Sinclair, in Tobermory, who belonged to Glengorm, was a schoolmate of mine. I even remember old Donald Colquhoun there, who was a victim of the Aros estate persecution.
Then there was Chrissie MacGillivray, who latterly lived all alone at the remote sheep farm at Burg, on the National Trust property of cliffs, rocky shores, caves and the famous McCulloch’s Fossil Tree I used to visit on that wild headland known as The Wilderness. Finally, I must mention that great man Seton Gordon, of Skye, who never received the public recognition he deserved for his wonderful knowledge and writings about the Highlands and Islands. With great kindness he gave me many useful snippets of little-known Mull folklore and history, with the freedom to use the information as I wished. I still have his letters, ill-typed, as he admitted, on a battered antique typewriter!
There now follows what I have been able to find about the then Mull estates and the actions of their owners during the days of the Clearances. The general locations are indicated on the accompanying sketch map. Since then most estates have been so fragmented that their boundaries today can differ considerably. I have been able to identify only one laird who showed consideration for the crofting community, apart from the earlier Ronald Maclean of Coll (who owned the north of Mull) and General MacQuarie of Jarvisfield that centred on Gruline. That was MacDonald of Gribun, who not only respected the people as ‘respectable and industrious’, but made available such land as he could spare for the dispossessed.
What I have written is factual, either verbatim from descendants, or extracted from the thirty books of Court that record, in 46,000 questions and answers, the evidence given before the Napier Commission of 1883 by victims of the Clearances, of undoubted integrity, from every exploited Parish in the Highlands and Islands.
Tobermory Estate*
The name ‘Tobermory’ is translated as ‘Well of Mary’ – Saint Mary. The place has an ecclesiastical connection going far back into the centuries, with the foundations of a small pre-Reformation chapel† to be seen in the old cemetery, beside which lie grave slabs of the MacKinnons of Mishnish before they relinquished the north of Mull to the Macleans. Historically, too, the bay holds all that is left of the hull of the Armada ship San Juan de Sicilia, destroyed by an internal explosion in 1588 along with the great treasure she was reputed to have carried. Later, in 1686, the Duke of Argyll, with his followers, made their first landing here in their futile support of the unhappy Duke of Monmouth. During World War II the bay was the chief centre in Britain for the training of anti-submarine forces under that formidable leader, Vice-Admiral Sir Gilbert Stephenson. I am surprised that nothing has been done in Tobermory to commemorate this war effort.* So Tobermory is a place with a long history.
In 1789 the village was selected, along with other centres, by the ‘Society for Extending the Fisheries and Improvements round the United Kingdom’, hereafter simply ‘The Society’. The land was bought from Maclean of Coll, extending southwards towards Baliscate in the present Aros estate, with Erray to the north. High hopes for a prosperous herring industry were dashed when the shoals of unpredictable fish moved away from the area. I remember back in the 1920s seeing the rare appearance of a shoal so dense that people were scooping them on to the shore with landing nets! In any case Oban, a convenient mainland port, was only thirty miles distant along the sheltered Sound of Mull. However, Tobermory developed as a busy and convenient centre not only for Mull, but for the adjacent islands and isolated mainland, with what is probably the finest bay and anchorage in the Hebrides. A crofting community was established, and quite successful for a time.
By 1791 a Customs House and Post Office had been opened, and by 1800 there was a population of 300, with 20 stone-built houses and 30 thatched cottages. The first streets to be laid out were Argyll Terrace and Breadalbane Street, sites being allocated to the first applicants. Houses were to be built within eighteen months with a rental of one penny per foot frontage in Breadalbane Street, twopence in Argyll Terrace with its greater amenity, all with a garden of one-sixth of an acre, with grazing rights on the hill by arrangement with the agent of the Society, and also the right to ‘win’ (extract) stone for building and peats as fuel. Business premises lay along the narrow waterfront, where the charge was sixpence per foot frontage and houses to be of two or more storeys. Thomas Telford was an advisor to the Society. One of his projects was the substantial inn that stood opposite the pier, now called the Old Pier. Legal titles were granted for the building lots and crofts on a 99 years’ lease.
Tobermory developed rapidly, until by 1811 there were 11 registered vessels, a cooper, boatbuilder, and 28 open boats. In 1808, 136 large vessels had used the port. By 1840 there were no less than 120 crofts around the estate, and in 1845 the port of Tobermory exported 15,420 barrels of potatoes worth four shillings and sixpence (22p) per barrel. The whole of Mull was producing an estimated 30,000 barrels – and at that point the devastating potato disease swept the country and destroyed the whole crop.
The Society created over 50 individual crofts; but certain of the conditions or concessions were to lead to trouble in the future. While legal leases were held on a 99 years basis, the vital hill grazings were granted to the whole body of crofters by the verbal consent of the agent; further, those same hill grazings could be conveyed to any new owner to whom the Society’s lands could be sold in the future, if the new proprietor carried out ‘improvements’, even fencing, and thus alienate grazing rights held by use and wont by the crofters.
By 1871 the population of Tobermory had risen to nearly 2,000. It being impossible to find any form of accommodation or work where they were living, victims of the Clearances had been coming into the town almost daily during the days of famine and persecution – even whole families packing into single rooms – in the desperate hope of finding some work there.
A typical case described by Robert Somers (quoted in The Great Highland Famine) was that of four cottars and their families who had been evicted in the Kilfinichen estate. One highly respectable family of ten was living in a single room in Tobermory, their only food thin porridge, with no furnishings other than what they had been able to save and carry across the hills for forty miles. The husband, who had been ill in Glasgow, was faced with eviction when he was able to return to his home in Kilfinichen, and the house was pulled down. All he was left with was some precarious fishing in Loch Scridain.
Many of those unfortunate people had to sell their livestock, even household possessions, at whatever price they were offered, to meet the harsh living conditions.
In 1847, 96 people evicted from neighbouring estates, and in 1850, 78 from Ulva, settled in Tobermory. These are only a few examples out of the many. This settled state of affairs – at least for the local crofters – came to an end in 1842 when the Society sold the southern, Aros, portion of the estate to David Nairne for £33,000.
