ST KILDA’S floating mail deliveries… not quite sunk

hroughout recorded history the inhabitants of St Kilda, a tiny archipelago on the western fringe of the Outer Hebrides, relied entirely on bonfires set alight on high cliff tops as their means of communication with passing sailing ships. In relatively placid weather during brief St Kildan summers, ships would occasionally lower boats to row ashore between shallowly submerged rocks, bringing barter goods (tobacco invariably included) and taking off ship letters, hand-woven tartans and knitted woollen goods in exchange. For brief periods in the 19th century British Army contractors arrived to load boats with bales of fulmar feathers (prized as fillings for army mattresses); and Atlantic trawlermen also rowed ashore to barter for medicinal ointments the islanders concocted from seabird dripping as a cure for chesty