Margaret VanAuker wrote: > I have been checking the 1841 census for Walls and Flotta. I have come > across an occupation called: seabong. Can some one tell me what this means? Margaret, I'm a bit worried about this "seabong" thing. It sounds more like something out of Lewis Carroll rather than the occupation of a long-dead Orcadian. I've never heard of it at all. Google does produce some hits, but they mostly seem to be from Korea rather than the island of Hoy. I checked the Scottish dictionaries at http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/ but they came up with nothing either. Are you trying to read a copy of the original handwritten census? If so, are you sure that it says "seabong" rather than, say, "seaman"? Not all of the handwriting in such documents is easy to make out. If it's a transcription you're reading, maybe the transcriber just got it wrong? Is the person with such an occupation male or female? Could the mystery word possibly be read as something else? "Seabong" has me stumped but a bit intrigued! Regards, Norman Tulloch