Pyjama Day

A day relaxing and recovering, Paddy didn’t get walked, I paid the bills at the computer, Mrs S made a start on a mountain of laundry and Sam went out.
Surprisingly not much mail and I’d remembered to cancel the newspapers so not much to catch up on.

Todays Blip is made up of two photo’s taken at Burghead, lot of history in such a small place. When Sam and I drove into the car park on the day we parked around three metres from the back of what I took to be a boat abandoned on the foreshore, it turned out to be the ‘Harvest Reaper’, the story is below.

"At 11.20 on 29th April 1946 a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Firefly aircraft (MB734), flying out of Naval Air Station Rattray got into difficulties 6 miles NNE off the coast of Fraserburgh, lost power and ditched near the Harvest Reaper, breaking off her after mast.

Sadly, despite the best efforts of the ship's crew, the pilot of the Firefly perished.

The pilot was Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Kenneth David Williams, aged 20, born in Liverpool.

The Harvest Reaper was a 45 foot long, Fyfie design fishing boat built of larch on oak at Wilson (Cockie) Noble's yard in Fraserburgh in 1931. She was powered by a Kelvin Recardo diesel engine. She fished from Fraserburgh using small-line, great-line and drift net.

Her Skipper and owner was John Downie Mey until 1965, when his son Jim Mey took the helm. Later she was sold to new owners in Macduff.

She arrived at her final berth shown here in 2015."