A Zulu for the Scottish Fisheries Museum by David P.H. Watson, Esq.
ast summer a third link was forge d between my family and the small Scottish fishing town of Anstruther on the east coas t ofFifeshire. The first link dates back to when my father was born in that town, son of Captain David Warson and grandson of Captain John Watson, who between them commanded square riggers of George Duncan's Empire Line from 1863 to 1904. Duncan himself came from Crail just six miles up the coast from Anstruther. T he second link dates from the early 1970s wh en my wife and I started breeding and showing Scottish Terriers and selected "Anstruther" as our registered kennel name. The most recent link occurred when I donated my model of a Z ulu-type Scottish fishing boat to the Scottish Fisheries Museum at the harbor in Anstruther. This museum was established in 1969 to tell the story of Sco ttish deep sea commercial fishing from earliest times to the present. Just this year the museum opened a new wing dedicated exclusively to the Z ulu-type fishing boat and featuring the hull of Research, a Z ulu rescued from the west coast of Scotland a number of years ago . This made the donation of the model timely indeed. My Z ulu model was made from drawings and plans of Muirneag of Stornaway prepared by Harold A.Underhill, that font
L
of knowledge about sailing ships and their rigging. The last of a number of scratch models I had built dating back to 1942, I completed this model in 1980. Muirneag was built in 1907 and meas ured so me 70 feet on deck with an overall length of about 11 4 feet- a result of the very long retractable jibboom and the fixed, though also retractable boom for the mizzen lugsail. T he Z ulus were luggers with a canted yard set p arallel to the keel on each mast together wi th a jib, a dipping lug foresail on an unstayed m as t, and a standing lugsail on the mizzen mast. In this respect the Z ulus were similar to their predecessors, known as "fifi es" (named after Fifeshire), which had verti cal sternposts instead of the 45 degree raked sternposts of the Z ulus. The term "Z ulu" derived from the preoccupation of the British with the South African Wars at the turn of the century. This
unusual approach to ass igni ng names to fishing boat types in Sco tland is further eviden ced by the name "baldies" given to the type ofboats prevailing in Britain in the mid-18 00s when Giuseppe Garibaldi and his revolutionary followers were revising the political map ofiraly. The model 's presentation ceremony, if it could be so termed, was extremely low key, even by Scottish standards. The model's wooden traveling case was opened in the presence of the museum's curator and its resident modelmaker, and then silence reigned for about five minutes as the modelmaker inspected the boat's every detail. Finally, he looked up, smiled, and said: "T hat's a cracker!" 1Mr. Watson is a retired maritime trial lawyer. He built his first ship model in his dorm room at Yale in the early 1940s.
The completed Zulu model. Sketch at top is from Working Boats of Britain: T heir Shape and Purpose, by Eric McKee (London, 1983).
The Zulus fine bow (below left) with its plumb stem combines with the raked sternpost (below right) and very easy run to make a fast and weatherly hull. (Photos from the author)
-~
------~~--~
SEA HISTORY 95, WINTER 2000-01
33