In days long gone by, if all tales
are true, the people of these coasts had no good reputation among
sailors, and their habits and customs were wont to give rise to much
friction and ill-will betwixt England and Scotland. It is certain that
in 1472 they plundered the great foreign-going barge built by Bishop
Kennedy of St. Andrews--the greatest ship ever seen in those days--when
she drove ashore one stormy night off Bamborough. And of her passengers,
one, the Abbot of St. Colomb, was long held to ransom by James Carr, a
deed the consequences of which, in those days of an all-powerful Church,
might be dreadful to contemplate. Pitscottie says the "Bishop's Barge"
cost her owner something like L10,000 sterling. Perhaps the harvest
reaped by Bamborough when she came ashore may have encouraged
Northumbrians to adopt this line of business in earnest, for by 1559 we
read that "wreckers" were common down all that coast; and their prayer:
"Let us pray for a good harvest this winter," contained no allusion to
the fruits of the field.
In 1643 there was a Scottish priest, Gilbert Blakhal, confessor in Paris
to the Lady Isabelle Hay, Lord Errol's daughter, who in the course of a
journey to his native land visited Holy Island, and in the account of
his travels he makes mention of the ways of the island's inhabitants,
and of their prayer when a vessel was seen to be in danger.
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