The following is an incomplete list of the fishing boats of Calbost. It is incomplete because some fo the earlier records were lost and some of the existing records were classified as confidential on account of details of money borrowed by the crew etc. However most the boats of the period from 1869 onwards are accounted for.

Most if not all of these boats were share-owned by the crew but they were registered in the name of the skipper and his village of residence. All the boats in Marvig and Calbost were based in the excellent anchorage at Marvig and sometimes some of the share-owning crew or the skipper might come from one or other of the two villages.

The list divides into two categories. The smaller inshore boats, under 20 feet long, participated mainly in line fishing for white fish and seasonal winter herring fishing in the sea lochs. These smaller boats were usually family owned and were hauled up on the beach at "Mol-a-gho",. Calbost. The larger off shore boats of between 25 and 80 feet long which fished mainly for herring with drift nets, were moored at the sheltered anchorage off loch Marvig.

However careful fishermen might be, the sea will inevitably claim the lives of some of them from time to time. Fortunately, however, there were no major drowning accidents in Calbost or Marvig in which most or all of a boat's crew were lost, as there were in most of the neighbouring villages. There were however several single drownings which happened in various ways.

Roderick Finlayson, born 1877, son of Donald Finlayson 10 Calbost, was hired as a deck hand at the east coast herring fishing when he was lost overboard at Banff.

Hector Macleod, Born 1887, son of Kenneth Macleod 6 Calbost, was drowned at Lerwick where he was a hired deck hand on the Steam Drifter "Trident" in 1909 at the age of 22 years. He was swept overboard by the sail.

Iain Morrison (Donald), born 1902, son of Donald Morrison 9 Calbost and Iain Morrison (Neill), born 1902, son of Neil Morrison 9 Calbost. Both drowned on 1 November 1922 at the early age of 22 years at the mouth of Loch Shell near Lemreway on their way to resettle Steimreway with their parents and other families from Calbost. That was a very sad day in the history of Calbost when the struggle for the land cost the lives of two young men as they were transporting buiding material to Steimreway in order to escape from the gross overcrowded living conditions in Calbost, with well over 30 families living on the 14 crofts there.

As Calbost was not suitable for an anchorage in the village boats were normally moored in the sheltered anchorage of Marvig. Marvig and Calbost were the school catchment areas for Planasker School at Marvig and very often men from each village might be numbered among the crews of some of the boats that were normally based in Marvig harbour.

In the 1930s there were nine large off-shore herring fishing boats based in Marvig harbour as follows:

Marvig

Calbost

Total 42 Men 9 boys

In all, these nine fishing boats provided work for 51 people in two small villages as well as the deck-hands that were employed in other herring fishing boats.

Angus Macleod Archive