Anstruther Easter. View of Harbour and Shore Street

Description Anstruther Easter. View of Harbour and Shore Street

Date c. 1885

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 747685

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of F 1885

Scope and Content Fishing Boats, Anstruther Easter, Fife Anstruther, a fishing town on the east coast of Fife, was once the main herring port in Scotland, with an extensive harbour and a large fleet of vessels. The town prospered in the late 18th century, and developed further after the opening of the railway in 1863 and the building of a harbour at Cellardyke in 1867. This photograph of fishing boats in the harbour at Anstruther Easter was taken c.1885 by Erskine Beveridge. The East Pier, constructed of large stone blocks, was begun in 1866 by the engineer, Thomas Stevenson, and completed in 1877. It provided moorings for the town's fishing boats, and a broad area to land their catch. The large, open vessels or 'Fifies', were a local design of two-masted boat which had a characteristic vertical stem and stern. The boats were registered in Kirkcaldy, and each carried a registration number and the letters 'KY' (for Kirkcaldy), as well as the individual name of the boat, on the side. The 'Fifies' were sailing drifters that fished for herring using nets that 'drifted' behind the boat. They had two masts, a tall main mast and a mizzen mast which could be used when required to keep the boat on a parallel course when drifting. Each had a dark brown, four-sided cotton canvas sail called a lug (or lugsail) which was hoisted from a yard, a cylindrical spar slung across the mast. The dark brown colour was a result of the sail having been soaked in a solution of oak bark in order to help preserve it. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap