Footnotes to my earlier note, and Malcolm's note: My mother recollects that it was a sailing ship, rather than steamship, and that my g grandfather would row the children out to the boat when it arrived. (Someone has suggested it could have been the SS Clansman, but ...?) At the end of the trip when the trading had finished and they were leaving, my grandmother said the 'captain' called her and her sisters back, and asked them to hold their 'pinnies' out. He then dropped a handful of sweeties in to their laps. My mother added that after the 'laird' had taken the men to vote, this would be at the beginning of the 20thC as my grandmother was born in 1901, the men would be given a dram in thanks for them voting Tory. My grandmother voted Tory all her life, until she died about 15 years ago. I'm not sure why, but my grandmother never really talked too much about her childhood, we believe it was probably because it was such a hard life, and there were few 'innocent childhood memories'. She only brought up the story about the sailing ship, as in the late '70's I spent some time on Flotta in the Orkneys working on an oil terminal, and this sparked her into telling this brief story. It's almost as if she'd put a lot of the memories out of her mind. edward Limpsfield, Surrey