Mallaig
MALLAIG: Temporary sea landing destination
Location: At the NW end of the A830 on North Morar
NOTES: In his excellent book The Triple Alliance Neville Doyle tells this story: “Capt McIntosh had a welcome break from the IOW (My note – Isle of Wight) routine when he flew in Saro Cloud G-ABXW from Cowes to Renfrew on Sunday, September 15th with Captain Stuart Scott, Saunders-Roe’s chief pilot. At Renfrew, they were joined by George Nicholson of Northern & Scottish and Captain Freeson of Highland Airways and set off to explore the possibility of using a Saro Cloud for services to the various Scottish islands.”
“On the Monday, they had a trial landing at Mallaig and spent the night at the Kyle of Lochalsh and the following day they stopped at Portree and spent the night at Loch Maddy. On the Wednesday, they made landings off Lochmaddy Wharf, at Stornoway (for lunch), at Ullapool (for tea) and then on to Longmans airfield at Inverness. Here, George Nicholson, who was only interested in the Western Isles, left to take the night train back to Glasgow.”
“On the following day, Capt Fresson was joined by his wife, Gwen and they were then scheduled to fly to Kirkwall. After about 20 minutes flying, there was suddenly “a frightful bang and the aircraft shuddered with coarse vibrations. Pieces of the splintered starboard airscrew flew into the cockpit….we had flown into an unobserved seagull…” (‘All-Weather Mac’)
“They landed about a mile off shore, to the west of Duncansby Head and after sawing off about 12 inches off the tip of the undamaged blade to effect a rough and ready balance, the vibrations were reduced such that they were able to taxi (My note – I think that should be ‘taxy’?) to within about 50 feet of the shore, where they anchored.” To cut a long story short a fishing boat towed the Cloud to Wick but it is well worth reading the full account, especially when, having discarded his shoes and trousers, to make several trips to rescue his wife, baggage, aircraft logbook and other documents; “…a crowd appeared from nowhere, the ladies being much amused by Fresson’s briefs which tended to slip down as he made his way to and from the aircraft.”
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