Babs Mackay (87) lived in Church Street in Cromarty for much of her life. As a child her house was 2 Church Street and she was later to run a draper’s shop across the road beside Struy House where she lived until recently, latterly with her daughter Moira and her family.
Almost exactly 70 years ago her late husband Jack was involved in a dramatic rescue in the waters of the Moray Firth, for which he was honoured – just one episode from her life spent beside the sea.

We used to love swimming at the Links and down at the harbour. There was a bathing hut down from the lighthouse on the Links, just a wee bit up from the shore. The sand was beautiful down there. There was also a bathing hut out on the shore road on the other side of the harbour but I can’t remember exactly where. We used to love swimming. We would just run straight in.

The summers seemed much warmer. We would run barefoot everywhere. We would fish at the harbour and go beachcombing, looking for shells and fossils.

That reminds me of the story about Mary Maclean, a Cromarty businesswoman who owned and ran the local laundry and was my mother’s first cousin. She employed local people and was known as Mary Hoochty. She also kept goats on the Links and would give their milk to mothers with delicate children.

She would go down to the Links to feed the goats and then would go beachcombing. One day she came across a box which she thought would make an ideal seat for beside the fire.  She carried it back to her home where Sutor Creek is now. However somebody had already seen the same box and knew it contained explosives and had gone to fetch the local policeman, Sergeant Hume. Luckily Mary had been spotted and Sergeant Hume went to her house and found her sitting on the box beside her fire. He very quickly removed the box and took it away to the Police Station. She was pretty lucky.

Of course we had a regatta every year with swimming and diving competitions. If you walk down the harbour there is a big V and that’s where we used to do the diving and we would swim out from there. There was a greasy pole. I didn’t do it but my husband did. We were all young. There was rowing. Eric Malcolm’s two sisters and Bobby Hogg’s two sisters used to do the rowing. There were boats for couples and for fours. I think they used to get the boats from the salmon fishers. There was also a pontoon in the harbour for the Highland dancers and that’s where the regatta queen would be crowned. The lifeboat would also give us trips. Of course we had the lifeboat station in Cromarty as well.

The Watson family had a boat called the Ailsa and used to take people over to the Nairn Games and sightseeing. She was a lovely ship. They also had the Endeavour and the Enterprise. They would go up and down to Invergordon, leaving here at 7.30 in the morning, 11.30a.m., and 3.30p.m. They never charged much for passengers because they had the mail contract. If it was a very stormy winter and the roads were blocked Cromarty was fortunate because we would get our mail from Invergordon along with our papers and goods for the shops. But the rest of the Black Isle would be stuck. We had a lot to do with Invergordon. We could go over and catch the train or the bus down south. But when the Watsons lost the Royal Mail contract they couldn’t carry on.

Of course there was also a ferry to Nigg. That was run by Gracie’s father, John Skinner. We would go across to the sands at Nigg for Sunday school picnics and the like. That was a great day out. There was also a golf course and there would be a few people would go across to play - Eric Malcolm’s father and the doctor and some others. We would also go for picnics to MacFarquhar’s Bed. Practically all we did was to walk about and I would pay somebody £100 a day to get me walking like that again.

But there was always a lot of activity in the firth. The coal would come in by boat and there was a shed at the top of the harbour for the excise men. Don’t remember much about that. But I do remember watching the salmon fishermen at work. They would have their nets out at weekends so they could mend them. When they took their fish in they would store them beside Bob Cherry’s house.

We also used to watch the women baiting the fishing lines for the fishermen and carrying the men out to their boats, but that has been well recorded.

Before the war my late husband Jack was involved in what a newspaper described as an amazing rescue in the Moray Firth. I have the cuttings here. He was just 17 and was working at the harvest at Navity Farm along with another two men, Donald Macfarlane and George Finlayson, when they noticed a plane in difficulties. Both the occupants jumped out. One parachute opened and the other fixed on the tail of the plane.

The paper said the men rushed to the seashore, down over the steep cliffs. Mackay and Finlayson swam out to the plane and got the airman extracted from his parachute. Mackay then turned the officer over and, using the life-saving method, swam with him until Finlayson got a rope from MacFarlane on the shore. Mackay tied the rope round the airman and got him ashore and over the rocks. Mackay was slightly bruised by the rocks when landing.

They carried the airman to the salmon fishers’ bothy. Captain Morison and others arrived from Navity Farm and rendered first aid. Local doctors and nurses came soon afterwards and helped revive the pilot. The rescued officer was Pilot Flying Officer Duncan Whiteley Balden, attached to HMS Courageous. He was taken on board a destroyer which had sped to the scene.

Press clippings from 1938 describing Jack Mackay's rescue of a pilot off Navity Courtesy of Babs Mackay

The paper finished by saying that the gallant men who swam out to the rescue fully clothed were fortunately none the worse for their thrilling experience.

The men were later guests of Admiral Royle RN and the officers of HMS Courageous and spent a day at sea on the aircraft carrier.

Miss Molly Morison of Navity later married Flight Lieut. Balden on 3rd Sept 1938 in the East Church in Cromarty. The three men were invited to the wedding and later received Royal Humane Society Award Certificates.

At the start of the war I remember seeing a plane with a swastika that flew between the Sutors right up to Invergordon and bombed one of the oil tanks and we were mesmerised. That was in the early days of the war and we didn’t realise what was happening. I think Betty Hogg saw it as well.

It is funny to remember that during the war all the mail from Cromarty was checked, because of all the military activity round here. But if you gave mail to one of the soldiers going into Inverness to post, it wouldn’t be. If you went by the bus to Muir of Ord you would get searched but if you went across the ferry and got the train, you weren’t searched. It really was pretty stupid.

The Queen was here twice and it was by Nigg she came and all the children were lined up at the harbour. She walked right from the harbour to Hugh Miller’s Cottage. Then the next time she came here to review the fleet in the firth. The fleet would come in May and September each year for about six weeks. There would be the Hood, the Renown, the Repulse, Courageous, Ark Royal – all the different boats. What a sight it was to see their lights at night. The whole firth would be lit up. They would be out at sea during the week doing their exercises but came back in at weekends when most of the ships were open to the public so you could go out and get on board. The sailors would come ashore to play football. So would their bands and they were wonderful, very entertaining. They would start at the harbour and march round the town.

My late husband Jack served with the 4th Battalion of the Seaforth Highlands, 51st Highland Division and was captured at St Valery in 1940, aged 20. He was a prisoner of war for five years. After he was liberated by the Americans he came home, reaching Cromarty on 16th May 1945 on Albert Watson’s ferry boat. Johnnie Aird was waiting on the pier to welcome Jack home (Johnnie did this for all the POW lads returning home). He played the pipes, leading Jack all the way to his home at Nicol Terrace.

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