Duncan Harley

Todays news that officers from Fraserburgh Coastguard Rescue Team were called out to investigate reports of a sinking ship off Cairnbulg comes as no great surprise. Called into action by the HM Coastguard Operations Centre in Aberdeen following a report by a concerned walker the investigators quickly realised that the wreck was none other than the fishing vessel Sovereign, which had foundered off Cairnbulg in 2005. This is not the first time that the rusting wreck has made headlines. July 2014 saw the crew of the Fraserburgh lifeboat summoned to rescue the crew of the Sovereign only to discover that it had foundered some nine years before A member of the lifeboat crew told reporters that a tourist had been standing on Tiger Hill when she spotted the ship lying on its side on a reef. Scottish Television News reported that "She must have thought that it had just freshly sunk and made the call to the RNLI. It is a familiar landmark to locals but you can see how easy i...

July 2014 saw the crew of the Fraserburgh lifeboat summoned to rescue the crew of the fishing trawler ‘Sovereign’ which had run aground at Cairnbulg some nine years before. A member of the lifeboat crew told reporters that a tourist had been standing on Tiger Hill when she spotted the ship lying on its side on a reef.  "She must have thought that it had just freshly sunk and made the call to the RNLI."   "It is a familiar landmark to locals but you can see how easy it would be for a visitor to mistake it for a vessel in distress" he continued "It was a mistake made with the best of intentions." The Banff-registered trawler had in fact run aground during a storm in December 2005 with the five fishermen on board being airlifted to safety. The rusting wreck later made international headlines when it made a surprise appearance on a promotional cinema poster for the Hollywood movie Life of Pi. The blockbuster, an adaptation of a Yann Martel novel, featu...

Well that’s Dennis Nilson dead and about time perhaps. A serial killer trapped by a plumbing problem as I recall. I penned an article on the town of Fraserburgh a good few years ago for Leopard’s Our Town series as I recall; but conspicuously failed to mention the man described in the Press & Journal as a ‘ Fraserburgh born serial killer’. Not a headline I personally would use about the place, but each to his own I suppose. In fact, if I were trying to flog a few newspapers in those far-flung fisher-towns at the very tip of Aberdeenshire’s circulation wars I might have chosen to ignore the association just in case of invasion by The Northern Scot or some similarly robust publication intent on taking full advantage of the slur that Fraserburgh is guilty of murder by association. My column that month focused much more on the positives of the town. Bill Gibb, Thomas Blake Glover, the local heritage centre and Marconi – yes Marconi – featured but certainly not Nilsen. Dennis of...

One of the pieces in my new book concerns the history of the early days of The Beatles. Not that I knew them or anything – although I did once meet an Elgin man who claimed that Paul played at his brother-in-law’s wedding -  but I have been privileged to both listen to the songs and I have of course visited a few of those local venues which – in those heady 1960’s – played host to the Fab Four. Now there’s a mouthful of words! There are of course many historical venues associated with the band and one of my favourites is Fraserburgh’s Dalrymple Hall. Billed nowadays as the Beatles ‘Lost Tour’ the 1960 tour included performances at Elgin, Bridge of Allan and Dingwall before climaxing at Fraserburgh. The stage at Dalrymple is on an upper floor of the building and leans towards the audience at some crazy angle or other. In the big scheme of things its surprising that performers, including bands and theatre groups, can remain completely calm whilst treading those illustrious boar...