SCOTLAND.
A portion of the Glasgow, Dumfries, and Carlisle Railway, extending be- tween Dumfries and Gretna, was publicly opened on Tuesday. This sec- tion is twenty-four miles long: the engineering difficulties were few. The opening was festively celebrated, though the weather was very unfavourable.
The Northern coasts of Scotland have been visited by a fierce hurricane, attended with a very lamentable loss of life and great devastation of property. A letter from Aberdeen, of the 19th instant, describes the cala- mity on that part of the coast— last night, about 1,000 boats, each manned by five fishermen, left the various ports of the East coast of Scotland, betwixt Stonehaven and Fraserburgb, for the herring fishery. When at the offing, at about an average distance of ten miles, and the nets down, the wind, which had continued during the day at South and South-west, suddenly chopped out to the South-east with rain. About twelve o'clock it blew a gale, the rain falling in torrents; and the night was so dark that none of the land lights could be seen. As soon as the gale came, some of the fishermen began to haul their nets; but the sea ran so high that most of the fleet had to ran for the shore to save life. At Fraserburgh, the boats being to leeward of Rattray Head, were leas exposed than the boats to the Southward, and managed to get a landkig without loss of life; but at Peterhead, which is the Easternmost point of the coast, and alto- gether exposed to an Easterly gale, seventy out of the four hundred boats that were fishing there are missing, and there is too much reason to fear that most if not all of them are wrecked or sunk. At daybreak this morning, the scene that presented itself along the shore between the Buchanness lighthouse and the en- trance to the South harbour was of the most appalling description. The whole coast for a mile and a haltwas strewed with wrecks and the dead bodies of fisher- men. Twenty-three corpses were carried into Peterhead before nine o'clock; and at the time the latest accounts left, others were being constantly thrown ashore among the wreck on the sands or the rocks. Forty boats were wrecked within the circuit of half a mile; and so sudden and awful was the catastrophe, that no means of succouring or saving the distressed and perishing fishermen could be devised. The lowest estimate of the loss of life and property by this gale exceeds that produced by any other hurricane hitherto recorded in the annals of the East coast of Scotland. It is calculated that along the coast not fewer than a hundred lives are lost: and when it is considered that for the most part the deceased fisher- men have left wives and families, it will be felt that the widowhood and orphanage of our seaport towns have received in one short night an unparalleled augmenta- tion."
Similar scenes were witnessed on the coasts of Sutherland and Caith- ness, from Helmsdale to Wick. Eight boats of the latter port were lost simultaneously as they tried to enter the harbour, and the whole of their crews perished. A number more were wrecked, but the crews escaped. An incident in contrast to the general misfortune at Wick occurred. "One boat that hung on at sea by her nets till this afternoon, has come in now Lon the 19th] in safety, with forty crane of herrings."
Previous page
