After two days travelling ...
via Edinburgh, the Forth Bridge and Aberdeen...
..under blue skies
and overnight ferry crossing..
..we finally arrived in Shetland on Saturday. A very grey and misty Lerwick, 12 degrees cooler than the previous day!
Although I have been to Shetland twice before, and met new relations and made friends, my brother had never made the trip. As a 70th birthday treat this is being put right! With much excitement we have planned this adventure for the last 9 months. The idea started in August last year when Ian showed me a picture of a plaque he had made, entirely from wood, as a tribute to men of the Merchant Navy lost during WW1, our 2 great uncles among them. He decided that Shetland, their birthplace, was the most suitable repository but whereabouts and how?
We both agreed that we needed to make the journey together and spend a week visiting sites on the islands where our ancestors were born, lived and died.
We have built a tragic story from the meagre facts that our mother knew and subsequent research, that our grandparents met in South Shields, he a Shetland sailor and she working in the lodging house he used during spells on land. Originally we thought that after George left Shetland he had no further contact with his family and, after speaking to relations here, they thought the same. The first clue to dispute this assumption was noticing one of the witnesses to the wedding was James Harrison, probably George's brother. This seemed even more likely when we found that his ship was berthed in Tyne Dock and sailed the same day. Sadly there was no further contact from the Beeswing and it was presumed torpedoed and lost. George's other half brother Arthur was also lost at sea later in the war and we feel lucky to exist as my grandfather survived until 1939.
