Sandy's Blog
The Disperser Tragedy
by Casagrandeblog - 09:08 on 03 June 2013
On Thursday afternoon, we will have a ‘Memories’ session in the Victoria Hall on the theme of Cromarty at War. I have already shared some of the wartime tales preserved on the Courthouse Museum recordings - stories of concerts at the camps, of Italian POWs, and of a musical German spy. But one of the most dramatic, and tragic, wartime events to impact on Cromarty took place more than 100 miles to the North, in Kirkwall Bay. 
This was the sinking of the salvage vessel Disperser, with the loss of all crew, including six men from Cromarty. We have already given this a brief mention on our Facebook page, but the full story deserves to be told.
For those who don’t know the story, the Disperser belonged to the South Stockton Shipbreaking Company and came to Cromarty from Middlesborough in June 1937 to continue the job of salvaging scrap metal from the wreck of HMS Natal. The Natal, of course, had blown up and sunk in the Firth in December 1915 and salvage work had been going on intermittently ever since. The Captain of the Disperser, George Abson, was the Managing Director of the Shipbreaking Company and the Mate, James Anderson, was also from Middlesborough. I think the ship’s cook, Robert Spence, was too, but the rest of the twelve strong crew seem to have been recruited locally.
Salvage work continued for two years. A diver, Percy Frater, would go down and fix explosive charges to the wreck to break her into manageable pieces, and these would then be loaded onto the Disperser and brought back to Cromarty to be unloaded on the pier, before being shipped south to be melted down.
When war broke out in 1939, Disperser was requisitioned by the Admiralty and sent to Orkney to lay anti-submarine nets at Scapa Flow. On the night of 14th April 1940, a sudden gale flooded her hold at her moorings in Kirkwall Bay, and she went to the bottom with the loss of all hands. Two young women from Cromarty were in the WRNS and stationed at Scapa Flow - sisters Mary and Nancy Robertson from the Shore Inn on Shore Street - and they had the unpleasant task of identifying the bodies of the six Cromarty men.
The six were Alex Shepherd, his son Douglas Shepherd, John Wood MacDonald, John MacLean, Charlie Watson and Andrew Watson. According to Eric Malcolm’s The Cromarty We Knew, the bodies were brought home to Cromarty in plain black coffins and laid on the front two pews of the West Church. Around 700 people attended the funeral ceremony, after which the coffins were taken by lorry to the cemetery for burial. The photos show the funeral procession making its way up the Denny. The lorry belonged to Bob Ritchie, the local haulier whose garage was behind the Royal Hotel, where Ecoventures are now. The two wee boys are Cecil Shepherd - son of Alex and brother of Douglas - and Alastair Eastwood. 
While based in Cromarty, Captain Abson stayed in Burnside Place, in Lawrence and Jackie Alston's house. His death also meant the end of his shipbreaking company, so the loss was sorely felt in Middlesborough as well as Cromarty.
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