Jean Newell is Cromarty's oldest resident. She will be 99 in 2007. "My first memory was the Coronation of 1911 (George V and Queen Mary). All the bairns marched to the Reeds Park. That was where the boys from HMS Natal were playing football when she blew up in 1915......

Betty Hourston was born 85 years ago in the same house in Cromarty’s Gordon’s Lane that she still lives in today. In 1973 she and Nurse Ruthven were awarded the bronze medal of The Royal Humane Society and received a parchment certificate from the Queen, for saving three men from drowning....

Wanda Mackay was born and brought up in Cromarty. "I learnt to swim when I was three or four and Betty Hourston taught me. My mum said as a child I loved water from the very start - whenever there was a blink of sun, I would be down to the sea......

Clem is the son of the legendary Albert Watson and grandson of John Watson. "My father took over from his father as coxswain of the Cromarty lifeboat and my uncle John was also the lifeboat's first mechanic. They were both involved in one of the lifeboat's most dramatic rescues on the evening of 7th December 1959. ...

Born in Cromarty, Catriona Gillies was the town's sub postmistress for 44 years and in 1992 was the last person in Britain to receive the British Empire Medal. "I have one memory during the war...this plane coming in the Sutors...it came to bomb the oil tanks at the Royal Navy base at Invergordon....

Born in Edinburgh in 1943, marine engineer George Selvester moved to Cromarty in 1993. He was the driving force behind the formation of the Cromarty Boat Club and served as its Commodore from 1996 to 2004. This is his account of the Boat Club's phoenix-like rising from the ashes......

Babs Mackay (87) lived in Church Street in Cromarty for much of her life. Almost exactly 70 years ago her late husband Jack was involved in a dramatic rescue in the Moray Firth, for which he was honoured - just one episode from her life spent beside the sea....

68-year old retired motor engineer Billy Watson was born in Shore St, Cromarty, with seafarers among his forebears. "I became the Cromarty lifeboat's engineer, the only full-time member of the crew in 1963. This was the last Cromarty lifeboat, the Lilla Marras, Douglas & Will....

Paul is Professor in the University of Aberdeen's School of Biological Sciences and Director of the Lighthouse Field Station, Cromarty, which he set up in 1989. "It's difficult to divorce my strong passion for the sea from an equally strong passion for living in Scotland. The Moray Firth coast is a very special place but my favourite places are small islands...Scottish coastlines take some beating, not just for their wildlife interest but as places to reflect, enjoy and relax....

Locally-born Sarah Pern is the owner of EcoVentures which offers boat trips from Cromarty out into the Firth. "I've always had a passion for the sea, or more specifically boats...My interest in cetaceans and wildlife tourism began when I worked for Dolphin Ecosse whilst at home from University......

An artist working in various media, Rosie moved to Cromarty in the early 90s. "I used to watch the knot birds and one day I thought, 'Wow, they're amazing' - the way they appear and disappear...When they turn all together you see their white under-belly. I love the patterns they make. There's something magical about them......

Skipper of the Cromarty Rose ferry boat for more than a decade, Ronald, 34, was born to go to sea, starting work the day he left school. "I used days off school to get out to sea. 'Study leave', I called it! I left school at 15 on 30th May 1988 and started night-shift on one of the oil boats at 6.30pm the same day at Invergordon......

90-year old Bill Wren moved to Cromarty in 1978 but had first arrived in the Cromarty Firth on board the submarine HMS Swordfish in 1937. He was one of four Engine Room Artificers, the engineers that kept the Navy going. "I moved around a bit in the war, always in subs. I didn't get claustrophobic. Anyone who did was out......

53-year old Susan was born in Cromarty and spent much of her childhood fishing on or by the sea, though she remains to this day a non-swimmer. She was one of 20 female welders among the 5,000 workforce at Highlands Fabricators Yard at Nigg, helping to build oil rigs in the 70s and 80s....

Gladys was born in 1939 and moved to Cromarty from Hull in 1952 when her father became Coastguard..."The first year we came, at the Regatta, there were all the races: swimming across the harbour basin, relay swimming race, the greasy pole and things, and my sister and I entered for the races with swimming caps and we were the only ones there – nobody else went in!......

Bobby and Helen Hogg's house is the first port of call for many seeking to know more about Cromarty, its history and traditions. "When I was young we talked quite differently in the fishertown.We had this sort of patois, which had a good smattering of both Doric and Gaelic in it. We would say ‘thee’ and ‘thine’. The older ones were very biblical in their speech. But there is hardly anyone else left who can speak the patois......

Asked what it was like to farm beside the sea in Cromarty, Bill Campbell of Newton Farm talked more about the soil and underlying geology than the maritime conditions..."We’re up from the raised beach, so we’re really sitting on red clay. Probably the red stone of this house would have been clay many thousands of years ago...some of the stone for the building of Fort George in the 1760s came from just below this farm. ...

Born in Shetland, Hamish Gunn was five when his family moved to Cromarty in 1982. "In Cromarty the sea was all you did – it's all there was...It's not like now with PlayStations...We were down on the beach or down at the harbour...but we weren't allowed there unattended until we could prove that we could swim......

Douglas Matheson belongs to Cromarty and remembers his childhood in the 1920s."There were lots of children in the fishertown then and to me, as a young boy, it was dangerous country. There used to be fights, the east end versus the west end. It had nothing to do with parental status, just geography ...

Robbie and Janet moved to Cromarty in 1970 and ran a successful fish farming business in the Firth. "The good thing in my life I’ve discovered is that when conditions are really tough, that’s when you get most fun. When it’s howling gales and people are being blown off their feet and the boat’s almost sinking, that’s when it’s fun – that’s the times you remember ...