Widows and Bairns Sculpture Burnmouth

This thin slice of memorial heritage sits on the thick harbour wall at Burnmouth in the Scottish Borders, not far from Eyemouth. It's a tiny reminder of a momentous event which marked and reshaped the fishing communities up this edge of the northeast coast.

On 14th October 1881, men set out from harbours dotted up and down the coast of Berwickshire to bring the bread home to their wives and bairns, but many were never to return after being caught in the eye of a wild storm which saw the death of 24 men from the small coastal hamlet, and left 11 widows and at least 12 children.

This is one of the four memorial sculptures by artist Jill Watson to leave a lasting legacy of the events and changes to these communities. Widows and Bairns, as the work is titled, hangs on to the loss and grief in the tiny bronze faces of these women and children.

I wonder if the three earliest designed sculptures for Widows and Bairns, which were unveiled across 2007, were perhaps maquettes, test sculptures, for the larger piece designed and situated looking out to sea from the Bantry in Eyemouth revealed in 2016.

From Top right: Cove, St Abbs, Burnmouth and Eyemouth's Widows and Bairns sculptures.

This piece is slight and in sight of the hazardous rocks, faulted and folded, that make this shoreline so treacherous.

The safety of the harbour was not afforded to these fishermen on that fateful night when their boats were broken and battered. So many men perished in plain view of their families.

Look at the faces of each woman and child. This one woman alone carries so much pain in her skyward glance, holding her body in disbelief. Her small son cuddling into her crinolines to comfort her.

Observing from the front or seeing their silhouettes from behind, the grief is tangible. The loss of these men would have ripped the heart out of these close-knit coastal communities.

Each figurine is based on a real person with a genuine tale of grief and loss, and the artist worked with images and oral histories handed down through families to shape this series of community memorials.

The impact of the disaster ricocheted amongst the sympathies of a nation, who clamoured to support these widows and bairns.

The East Coast Disaster Fund was established, with donations from Queen Victoria and the general British public, raising over £50,000. A committee was appointed that gave out weekly allowances to the widows and orphans. And in the winter of 1881, the missionary Ebenezer Mather established the National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, after witnessing the disaster first-hand from Eyemouth. Gravely affected by the tragedy, Mather was spurred into immediate action, pragmatically raising funds to support those working at sea in perilous conditions.

The 125 Memorial Association was established to support the raising of funds and to commission these four pieces of commemorative public art in 2006, 125 years after Eyemouth, Cove, St Abbs and Burnmouth lost such a swathe of their population in the Black Friday disaster.

This was Britain's most calamitous fishing disaster, which left whole communities without their men. It took over a century for the communities to recover their populations, and these four Widows and Bairns sculptures recognise and celebrate the strength of the women who carried these communities.

You can catch a glimpse of the other three sculptures, part of the same series of commemorative work at Cove, St Abbs and Eyemouth.