FLYING WITH FRESSON in ORKNEY

Wednesday, 25 February 2009
FLYING WITH FRESSON in ORKNEY.
Fresson in Orkney.
A long time ago, but yesterday too. Rain On My Window (Tears in My Eyes) will be an ongoing tale of my early memories of life shared by my younger brother David on Whitehall Farm in Stronsay, Orkney, of our childhood on a working farm in the 1930s before we lost our innocence.

No 33. Flying with Fresson.


The name of Capt. E. E. Fresson lingers on with but few people in the North, of Scotland, yet in Caithness and in Orkney and in Shetland he should not be forgotten. Nor in the Western Isles. He first discovered Wick on 19th April,1931, flying Gypsy Moth G-AAWO, landing on a field on the farm of Barnyards after circling the town. He and Miss Pauer, who owned the aeroplane, flew on to Kirkwall the next day, Sunday 20th, and again, after circling the town looking for a field, landed on one next the Balfour Hospital. There they were greeted by Ian McClure, Orkney’s surgeon, a World War 1 flyer himself, as was Fresson. McClure, who lost a leg in the First World War, took Fresson in hand and drove him around Kirkwall looking for a more permanent field. It is quite fascinating that Gypsy Moth G-AAWO is still flying. Nigel Reid, its present owner, made the two-day trip from Christchurch in the south of England to Orkney on the 8th May for a 75th year celebration of Fresson’s pioneering air service, which was well featured in the Orcadian of 15th May. From that initial jaunt to the North, followed by some exhibition barnstorming and joy-flying for the adventurous, Fresson saw the possibilities for air transport in the Northern Isles, and his Highland Airways came into being.
Air services between Inverness Longman Airfield and Kirkwall in Orkney began officially on 9th May, 1933 with his De Haviland being christened with a bottle of whisky by Mrs Macdonald, wife of the Inverness Provost, and appropriately named, what else, “Highland Dew”. Caithness was then added, mostly using various fields on the outskirts of Wick and Thurso. Later he had competition on the routes he had pioneered from Gander Dower’s Allied Airways, which really did neither of them very much good.

I do not remember Stronsay before Fresson when our only service out was by slow steamer. For me he seemed to have always been there. His aeroplanes in 1934 brought to a people who had previously traveled at the fastest by horse and gig, the thrills of hurtling through the air at a hundred miles an hour or more. Fresson’s air service to Stronsay beat my father’s first motor car by a year. And Fresson wrote in his memoirs, “Air Road To The Isles”, pub. 1997, that ”the natives of the outlying islands (ourselves) took to this new form of transport as ducks take to water”.

Our place in this new air service venture was father accommodating the airfield for Stronsay on Grice Ness, the lowest part of Whitehall Farm lying behind the Village. “The Ness”, as we called it, was reasonably flat, grazed by sheep only, no cattle allowed. Kept the passengers shoes the cleaner! The sheep had to be off the Ness well before flight time though father cut it a bit fine on occasion. Had at least one row with Fresson on that score, I know because I was there!!
As boys - and girls - we would listen for the first faint distant thrum of the approaching plane G-ACIT, a De Haviland Rapid seven seater twin engined fabric covered biplane, wings held together with wire stays. It might be coming from the South from Fresson’s Orkney base on a field at Wideford Farm where he had a hanger overlooking the present Airfield at Grimsetter. Prescient. Or it might be coming from the North from Sanday or North Ronaldsay, in any case always flying in over the surrounding sea. We would vie as to who would see it first, initially an imaginary far-away speck in the sky, then a tiny bird that grew rapidly into an aeroplane. Slow circuit over the Ness to see how the wind sock was flying, then turn away and a banking turn to approach into the wind for landing on the grass field. No runway. Looking at the size of the field today I wonder how anyone could have landed there at all. Charlie Chalmers from the Village was in charge, attending to mail and news papers and passengers. No boarding passes or security!! Charlie’s brother was father of T.V.s Judith Chalmers. Many years post-war, about 1965, when air services to the Isles were resumed by Logan Air, the Stronsay Airfield was relocated to Huip Farm, owned then by my brother David, with a stone dyke between two fields being removed by him to make one large field.
Stronsay indeed took to flying as ducks take to water. Not every islander was a good sailor, indeed frequently otherwise. So a straight short flight of 20 minutes into Kirkwall was an attractive consideration rather than all day on stormy seas, sometimes calling on other islands en route. Plus the convenience of flying into Kirkwall in the morning and home again on the afternoon flight.
We many times were taken by father to the Ness, sometimes to help chase off the sheep, sometimes just a run. The sheep were actually pretty well trained and as flight time approached were often waiting at the gate. Don’t say sheep are stupid, it is just that, like humans, they can sometimes do daft things.
Fresson’s services were regular, and by the time I took notice flying was just a part of normal Stronsay life. One of my mother’s sisters, our Aunt Tibby (Isobel) Tait from Inkstack, Barrock, visited us once by air for a few days, accompanied by George Black whom she later married. Just a “good friend” she said then, and of course we bairns believed her!!! Their eldest son Ian, our cousin, swam in the Rome Olympics among other events.
It was Fresson himself who landed early one summer morning in July 1935 on Grice Ness, took our uncle John the surgeon from New Zealand, and his wife, our uncle Steven the doctor from Willenhall, Staffordshire, and his wife, our father the farmer in Stronsay, and his wife, and conveyed the three brothers and their spouses to land on a field on Cleat Farm, the airfield for Westray, the farm of yet another brother – our Uncle Bill - and his wife. Fresson returned to Cleat in the evening to take them all back to Stronsay, well wined and dined. It was a memorable day for a family of five brothers so wide spread but all were together for a brief time save David, the remaining brother, who was in Invercargill in New Zealand keeping their medical practice going.

It was Fresson himself who flew our family, with the exception of brother David and myself who were then at school in Inverness, from Whitehall Farm to Greenland Mains in Caithness in May 1944, and I still have the memorable account for it somewhere. The Ness had been mothballed during the War with stone pillars erected over it by our father to keep the Germans from landing, but by May 1944 the crisis was over and the pillars had been removed.






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They took off from the Ness, flew west over Eday and Rousay to avoid Scapa Flow and trigger-happy AA gunners around Stromness - the War was still on - flew west of the Old Man of Hoy over the old St Ola, came in over Dunnet Bay to land at Thurdistoft Airfield. There they were met by a car driven by Joe Mathieson who ran a taxi service in Castletown, and he took mother and the five younger siblings to Greenland Mains, just a mile along the road, where a meal was ready and waiting for them, according to my sister Anne’s good memory this morning on the phone from New Zealand. Father returned with Fresson to Kirkwall. I myself never flew from Stronsay, just my school journeys to Inverness.
In addition to his regular inter island flying services Fresson did air ambulance work on many occasions, saving more than one life. The one that sticks hardest in my memory was Fresson himself who, during the War when Grice Ness was unusable, came with G-ACIT, his favourite Dragon Rapide and modified to accommodate a stretcher, to Whitehall Farm to land on a small field just below the steading to ambulance Peter Irvine into Kirkwall. Peter, a year or two younger than myself, had a leg taken off between ankle and knee by a hay mower at Midgarth Farm, owned by George (Dod) and Alec.Tait, brothers of my father's mother and brothers of James, founder of J. and W. Tait, Kirkwall.
We were there, and watched Fresson come in low over the Bay of Franks, lift over the shore dyke of the Garth, a field of 15 acres and only 120 metres [133 yards] top to bottom, skim the grass and lift over the stone dyke into Peedie Cattaquoy, a field just below the farm steading, 5 acres and but 200 yards long, two football pitches. Islander aircraft nowadays have impressively short landings but it was some flying, even if Fresson was a barnstormer in China in his early days after flying in Word War 1 in the R.F.C., now the R.A.F. Landing was at least up the slope, turn at the top, stop the near side (left) engine, got Peter in with Nurse Slorach after Dr Pyle had attended to him at Midgarth, and off down the field to lift over the bottom dyke, keeping low to gain speed, skim the sea and climb the sky. We held our breath, but I can still vividly see in my mind’s eye the plane slowly gain height, bank to the left over neighbouring Huip Farm, turn towards Kirkwall, watched by us all till it faded from sight. And the news was good, Peter survived. He was unimaginatively but predictably called “Pegleg Pete” at School, eventually left Stronsay as did so many young people, and went into Kirkwall where I believe he had a garage business, dying but a few years ago. Nice lad. In 1946 Fresson ambulanced Barbara Smith of Blinkbonny, aged four and with a broken leg, into Kirkwall. She still lives married in Stronsay.
But by 1948 things were different. Scottish Airways had been Nationalised in 1946 and swallowed up into B.E.A. Fresson was retained in an uneasy flying capacity. On 11th Feb 1948 Fresson ambulanced another Stronsay boy who had been crushed by a tractor, saving his life, but was severely reprimanded by the Renfrew manager of the newly Nationalised B.E.A. for doing so without proper authorization, and ordered never to do the same again. The incidental saving of a life was not high on their list of things to do. Later that year an emergency appendicitis, seven year old Inga Brown from Westray, had to endure a three hour passage to Kirkwall by stormy seas because officials of BEA in Renfrew would not allow a pilot to fly on an errand of mercy as the fields Fresson and his other pilots had landed on so many times before were not “Licensed”. Indeed she had more than a six hours delay as the Earl Sigurd had to be sent out from Kirkwall on its errand of mercy, which took time to organize, three hours sailing each way, plus getting the crew together, raising steam, and getting everything organized. In spite of the dangerous delay in getting to the surgeon, a journey which Fresson could have done in minutes. Inga survived.
Survive too did our sister Anne who had a similar situation with appendicitis during the War in April 1943 when she was just five. A drifter had to be sent out by Capt. Clemens, King’s Harbour-master in Kirkwall, to take her in, just in time and no more. She was very ill indeed with peritonitis and had measles at the same time. I visited her in Eastbank Isolation Hospital on my solitary way back to school in Inverness. She was on the mend, still very ill, but I will never forget her glorious smile when I came in. While we were still in Stronsay during the War two schoolmates died with appendicitis with too long a delay in getting into Kirkwall, Fresson being unable to land. Davie Smith from Scoulters died on the pier waiting for the steamer. Anne was lucky. There were many others on these isolated islands who owed their lives to a supreme pilot who had no time for red tape but got on with the job. Some were not so fortunate. I think it entered deep into Fresson’s soul that an ambulance service he and his pilots could do and had provided in the Islands for so many years was negated by Post-War Labour Nationalisation and “The New Order of Rules and Regulations”.
Almost as an epitaph to Fresson, in 1933 he pioneered air services to Caithness and the Northern Isles, added Stornoway in Lewis in 1944 though he had done charters there previously, built it all up from scratch, flew his services with great regularity right through the War. His De Haviland planes flew without modern aids to navigation or foreknowledge of the weather. There was the particular Caithness summer hazard north of Helmsdale of dense cloud which sometimes lay only a couple of hundred feet above the sea, or lower, and it was necessary to fly between the wrinkled water and that low white ceiling. Hairy flying at times knowing the cliffs were just beside them, seen and then not seen. It is bad enough today going South over the Ord by car with a pea soup North Sea haar boiling around us, imagine if you can flying in that.
Though Fresson was retained for a short time after his Scottish Airways was Nationalised, it was not long after his 11th January 1948 mercy trip to Stronsay, that on 31st March 1948 Fresson was summarily dismissed by “The Board” of B.E.A. from the services he had pioneered in 1933 and built up from nothing, getting an imposed “Take it or leave it” settlement of a paltry £2,000 for the greater part of a life’s work. His hard won experience counted for nothing in the New Age. Inter Island flights would not resume till many years later. His face just did not fit with the New Order, or with the men in charge anyway. Air Services in the Highlands took many very long years to recover, and are still losing money.
So it is today that when I tell of air travel in the remote Islands so long before the War, to which Orcadians “took as ducks take to water”, for someone to be able to go in to Kirkwall from Stronsay in the morning and back out in the evening, I myself still marvel, and watch my listeners go quiet in thoughtful comtemplation.
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