The Impact of Coastline Changes on Families

In my last blog post I described how my cousin’s family came to live in and then move from Canada in the 1930s, following their new farm being hailed out in Alberta.          https://mothernaturestests.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-hail-with-it.html 

In my wife’s family there is also an instance of loss of livelihood due in part to natural causes. Her grandfather, Alexander MacKay, was a salmon fisherman for most of his adult life, living and working in a small village called Findhorn on the northern coast of Scotland. Over decades, the harbour in which the village was located gradually became filled with silt brought in both by the Findhorn River and by longshore currents from Burghead Bay. Fishing had been a major industry in the area as far back as the 13^th century with portions of the annual catch exported as far as the Baltic States and continental Europe.

With the shallowing of the bay from sand bar buildup, fishermen found navigation in and out of the estuary increasingly difficult. Gradually the village was replaced as a centre of commerce as boats began to deliver they catches more frequently to other ports. A severe decline in fishing activities was occurring about the time Alexander reached middle age. He is shown on the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses as a salmon fisherman, living in Findhorn. By 1920, though, he and his family resided in Dyke, a small farming village several miles to the southwest. The last twenty or so years of his life were spent working as a farm labourer, no longer being able to make a living in an occupation he had spent most of life doing.

As I explain in my book Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests, Long-shore currents along the northern Scottish coast have carried large quantities of sand and silt from rivers and estuaries and deposited the material in beaches and bars. The bars have always been in constant flux during the centuries since the end of the Ice Age, growing with the generally seasonal deposits and eroding when current conditions increased in strength or frequency. As river mouths became plugged with sedimentary material, they often shifted to areas of less resistance.        https://mothernaturestests.blogspot.com/p/surviving-mother-natures-tests.html

Such was the history of the Findhorn Estuary. Toward the end of the 17^th century, the main channel of the Findhorn River received an inordinate amount of silt, eventually plugging its mouth. Findhorn Bay became a lake. But with continuing water flow from inland, a breech was finally made in the shoreline barrier, somewhere between 1701 to 1704.

 

Shoreline around Findhorn Bay, north coast of Scotland about 1700 AD; also showing relative position of present-day shoreline (modified from Shepheard, 2018: Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests)

The break, as it happened, was right where the old village of Findhorn was located. The community was destroyed. The inhabitants, thought, has foreseen the danger and moved lock, stock, barrel and boat to a new site about a mile southeast. The bay was gradually flushed of much of the silt buildup and the re-created town became the centre for the salmon fishing industry. A new cycle was then established with silt continuing to invade the estuary and a longshore bar built up along the coastline.

These were two minor incidences – a hailstorm (my previous blog post) and a silt-invaded estuary – both in terms of the regions in which they occurred and in the history of our family. One event took less than one hour; the other developed over a generation. But both had profound effects on the people involved as well as impacting future generations. My cousin grew up and made his life in the USA, a country he was not born into. As a result of my wife’s grandfather changing his occupation, her father grew up in an inland, farm-centred village instead of in a coastal, fishing village. Lack of opportunity led him to seek a future in Canada, an ocean away from his place of birth and his heritage.

Reference

Shepheard, W. Wayne. (2018). Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests: The effects climate change and other natural phenomena have had on the lives of our ancestors. St. Agnes, South Australia: Unlock the Past.