A Herring Mosaic Wick Harbour, Caithness, Scotland,UK. Stock Image

A Herring mosaic,Wick Harbour, Caithness, Scotland,UK. In times gone by this use to be a large fishing Harbour for Herring and also other sorts of fish. Wick has an interest passed. Wick lies at the end or elbow of an open triangular bay, hemmed on either side by shores, either cliff or steep earth-bank, of no great height. The grey houses of Pulteney extend along the southerly shore almost to the cape, and it is about half-way down this shore – no, six-sevenths way down – that the new breakwater extends athwart the bay. Certainly, Wick in itself possesses no beauty: bare, grey shores, grim grey houses, grim grey sea; not even the gleam of red tiles; not even the greenness of a tree. The southerly heights, when I came here, were black with people, fishers waiting on wind and night. Now all the S.Y.S. (Stornoway boats) have beaten out of the bay, and the Wick men stay indoors or wrangle on the quays with dissatisfied fish-curers, knee-high in brine, mud, and herring refuse. The day when the boats put out to go home to the Hebrides, the girl here told me there was 'a black wind'; and on going out, I found the epithet as justifiable as it was picturesque. A cold, BLACK southerly wind, with occasional rising showers of rain; it was a fine sight to see the boats beat out a-teeth of it. In Wick, I have never heard anyone greet his neighbour with the usual 'Fine day' or 'Good morning.' Both come shaking their heads, and both say,