Coming to Canna

From the lonely sheiling on the misty isle Mountains divide us and the waste of seas—   Yet still the blood is strong,     The heart is Highland, And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

—David Macbeth Moir (1798–1851)

Islands anywhere can evoke atavistic feelings, but “the stormy Hebrides,” toward which the bones of the hapless Lycidas were hurled, have the special pull of what the Scots call a “gae remote area.” The Hebrides—Inner and Outer—lie in clusters and strings off the west coast of Scotland, where they are known commonly as the Western Isles. The Minch, separating the Hebrides from the mainland and the Inner from the Outer, is a treacherous body of water challenging to yachtsmen and commercial vessels alike. In earlier times, coming ashore, especially after a rough passage, you felt you had reached the edge of the world and, indeed, Thule was located in adjacent waters by ancient cartographers.

The Western Isles were served by a fleet of steamers until 1950 when these ships were sold to Greece. Of the many routes maintained by David MacBrayne (later “Caledonian MacBrayne”), one went from Mallaig up through the Kyle of Lochalsh to Uig on Skye and thence to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. I remember one trip when MacBrayne’s agent was being transferred from Stornoway to Kyle. Again and again he rapidly circled those seated on deck, offering a flask of whisky to one and all for a nip, while a piper standing on the pier bade him farewell with “Dark Island.” My visits to the Isle of Canna for more than half a century yield comparable memories of joyous and comradely voyages, though other crossings are equally memorable, as when passengers, unable to stand on deck, were stretched out on benches below, looking, as one of them put it, like Turkish refugees. Between the time of the steamers and the new ferries, the ships were not always well designed, but there were always comfortable places to sit on deck. It was fun to listen to seasoned visitors, and gradually, year by year, we joined the ranks of those who could tell tales or dispense a bit of geological information. I remember no horseplay, no radios—plenty of bores, but I never saw a drunk. For those passengers who were not islanders, the trip—neither voyage nor cruise—was simply an adventure.

Canna—six miles long and a mile wide—is in the Inner Hebrides, one of the Small Isles, along with Eigg, Rum, and Muck, their shapes as beguiling as their names—well, not Muck, which is featureless and low and whose name at least one owner has tried to change. From the mainland, Rum and Eigg can be seen in eternal dialogue—Eigg with a gnarled tower of rock at one end called the sgurr, and Rum with volcanic peaks, all with Norse names. Askival was the site of the northernmost bonfire in the sequence lit to celebrate the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth ii’s reign. The Small Isles are five or six miles south of Skye and only eight miles from the mainland, but the trip to Canna can take five or six hours because of the circuitous route. The first stop is usually Eigg, then over to Muck, on to Rum, and finally to Canna, hidden until it emerges from behind Rum like a green whale. Only Canna has a deep-water harbor, so until recently the others were served by lighters that would motor out to the ferry a quarter of a mile or so. These small craft are large enough to hold twenty or thirty people, mostly visitors in summer with huge backpacks and boxes of supplies. Going down a ladder and stepping over the rail of a boat tossing and bucking is not a simple maneuver. Even at Canna, with a pier to tie up to, landing could be tricky. We’ve many times watched our suitcases being handed up, over, down, across, hoping the receiving hands were strong.

Rum was taken over in 1957 by the Nature Conservancy, so those disembarking now...