The story of the ‘rocket man’ and the abandoned Hebridean island

A few of the homes on Scarp are still used for holiday residences, but the evacuation of the island on December 2, 1971, was as complete as that of St Kilda in 1930, except that Bridget Gordon-Watson, model girlfriend of Old Etonian owner Andrew Miller-Mundy, stayed until Christmas when he had to send a helicopter to rescue her as supplies ceased – a romantic thing to do and they were later married.

When they left Scarp, the last permanently resident family, Angus MacInnes and his wife Margaret and two sons Donald John and Murdo, brought to an end a way of life that had lasted for centuries on the island which lies a half-mile off the coast of Harris opposite Huishnish on its west coast..

Like St Kilda, Scarp was once inhabited, possibly for millennia, and its population peaked at 231 in 1881. Though always known as agriculturally poor, the 1054 hectare (2582 acres) island which has a peak over 308m (1010ft) provided a living for eight crofting families until 1823 when a clearance on neighbouring Harris saw 13 families move to Scarp, and soon the island had grown to a population of more than 100.

READ MORE: Who will be the 'stalking horse' for Boris Johnson's leadership?

Decline began in the 20th century, but that was happening on many of Scotland’s islands – at least 12 were evacuated in the four decades before Scarp, one of them being nearby Taransay which was abandoned in 1942. The population fell steadily as islanders left behind a primitive lifestyle based on crofting and fishing, latterly for lobsters.

The Hydro-Electric Board would not provide a cable linking Scarp to the national grid, and in the mid-1960s came a triple blow when the Church of Scotland refused to replace the island’s lay preacher – visiting clergy were still able to use the island’s Christian mission – and the small island school closed in 1967 with the Post Office ending mail deliveries two years later.

The final straw came when the only telephone cable to the island was severed in a storm and the GPO refused to repair it in a tale typical of Scottish island life at the time.

Eventually the MacInnes family decided to leave and they did so on a clear day with the waters glass-like around the island. They made the short journey to Huishnish in an open rowing boat with their belongings stuffed into five suitcases.

That should have been the end for Scarp which would have faded into obscurity were it not for two extraordinary happenings in the 1930s, one of which was made into two feature films.

The first event was on January 14, 1934, when Christina Maclennan gave birth to a child while being attended by a local midwife. The following day Maclennan was still in great pain and an islander rowed over to Huishnish to telephone a doctor – the phone there was out of order so the local postman’s son was sent to Tarbert for help.

The doctor soon decided that Maclennan needed to be hospitalised and, strapped to a stretcher on an open boat, she was taken over to Harris and quickly rushed by car to the hospital in Stornoway. There the cause of her pain was quickly found – a second healthy child was still in her womb and was not for coming out soon.

Thus Maclennan became the only woman in the world to give birth to healthy twins in different counties on different islands in different weeks. The births were reported internationally and a young German businessman and engineer had the idea of what might have happened had a letter been sent by rocket between Scarp and Huisnish to summon help.

Gerhard Zucker had already unconvincingly demonstrated his rockets – in reality, eight fireworks in a metal tube – around Germany before moving to Britain.

The website astronautix.com details what happened on the early morning of June 6, 1934, on the Sussex Downs: “After a first successful test launch without payload, two launches were made with postal covers. The observers guessed the rockets went as high as 400m to 800m. Banner headlines the next day announced ‘The First British Rocket Mail’ and carried Zucker’s claim that soon he would inaugurate regular one minute rocket post service between Dover and Calais.”

​READ MORE: Mystery of Edinburgh milkmaid in 18th century Scottish painting

Seeing the Christina Maclennan story in the press, Zucker decided to cash in on the publicity and offered to stage a trial between Scarp and Harris.

On July 31, Zucker set up his rocket on Scarp and aimed it in the general direction of Harris. The rocket contained a solid fuel cartridge and 1200 per-sold mail covers. These were stamped and there was even a letter written by King George V himself. They would become highly profitable, but not for the reason Zucker wanted.

For the rocket exploded on take-off, scattering singed mail covers around the launch site. Many of them were collected and proved quite a draw at auction especially after the local postmaster signed them off as “damaged at Scarp”.

Zucker set up a second rocket, this time from Harris to Scarp, and it made the journey successfully, but that was the last of the Rocket Mail, whose story has been told in two films.

Going home to Germany, the Nazis jailed Zucker for selling “secrets”.

Scarp is now owned by the family of Anderson Bakewell, the American musicologist behind the Isle of Harris distillery which has done so much for that island.