Widows and Bairns Sculpture Cove

Teetering on the cliff top at Cove stands another of Jill Watson's moving sculptures dedicated to the men lost at sea on Black Friday in October 1881, when the tiny community lost 11 out of 21 fishermen. Last week saw the 145th anniversary of the calamity that affected Cove and other seaside communities on the east coast of Scotland.

To see it today, it often seems like a sleepy little haven of nothing but golden sand and gull calls. Watching waders race the tide line, it's difficult to imagine the scenes of hysteria that the waiting women would have faced.

Looking down on the flat slabs of Silurian rock below the fishing hamlet, you can sense how strategic the navigation would need to be for the safe retrieval of men and boats. Sliding through the narrow harbour mouth would be near impossible in foul weather.

Four adult women stand feeling the force of the gale in their faces. Look at the way their skirts are battered by the blast. And the children, ranging in age from teens to tots, clinging to the mam's crinolines. Two babies in arms, probably unaware of the whole tragedy, are wrapped tight in their mother's shawls and would grow up never to have known their daddies.

Upon closer inspection, one little girl looks away, clasping her eyes, rubbing away the tears, while another child, barely much older, hip sits an infant, assuming the practical parenting responsibilities that so many younger children would have had to adopt before their time.

Although the impact of the Widows and Bairns sculpture at Eyemouth is huge, and the sheer mass confusion and grief of a community is so well expressed and preserved, I find these smaller sculptures so sad.

In such a tiny place, where fisher families lived in small rows of single-story cottages, the impact of the loss of these men would feel immense.

These women's faces depict the sheer disbelief at seeing their loved ones drown within plain sight. The seafaring hamlet amounted to no more than two dozen households, and this one fateful night of foul weather brought the small community's fishing industry to its knees, leaving behind 9 widows and 18 bairns without their daddies.

Representatives from William Quarrier's Children's Homes visited the area, offering to take away the recently orphaned children to a home in Renfrewshire. The women fiercely refused. Imagine losing your husband and then having to effectively give up your child because you couldn't afford to keep them with no income.

But the collective response from the women was...

Commissioned by the 125 Memorial Association, Jill Watson has created these meticulously detailed family groups in bronze. Something about the small makes it all the more momentous. This huge, life-changing event touched the lives of so many ordinary women and children, and the fact that you have to look at them, focusing on the tiny faces, gestures and reading the grief in their body language, makes you really look and see these people as real people who've lived this experience firsthand.

You can find the other three Widows and Bairns sculptures in St Abbs, Eyemouth and Burnmouth.