As part of Aberdeen’s Festival of the Sea 2024, we created a special series of our Harbour Voices podcast. The second episode in this series features an interview with Willie Deas, skipper of The Reaper - a former Fifie Sailing Herring Drifter.

This type of boat was the most popular design of fishing boat on the East Coast of Scotland for the greater part of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Today The Reaper is the flagship of the Scottish Fisheries Museum, Reaper and is berthed in Anstruther harbour outside the Museum. She is now equipped as a floating museum of the herring industry and sailed to Aberdeen to be part of the Festival of the Sea programme.

In this episode Wille shares his lifetime of knowledge of The Reaper, fishing industry and the sea.

Fisherman Hans Unkles wants a different way of doing things. With a band of fellow eco-aware fishermen, he took apart his old boat and refited it with cutting-edge electronic tech. In this Harbour Voices podcast we take a deep dive with Hans into his building, learning, making mistakes, chopping and welding a path to an easier, and more environmentally friendly way of fishing.

Chris Gove has a long family history linked with Old Torry and many fabulous stories of the Aberdeen’s harbour and fishing industry to tell. This extended version of his previous episode of Harbour Memories captures of few of the best.

Scottish painter and printmaker Joyce Cairns lived and worked in Fittie for many years. The Fittie Community Hall on New Pier Road is her former studio and here she created a large body of work all inspired by the community and harbour. Joyce is the first woman president of the Royal Scottish Academy and in this podcast she shares her rich memories of Fittie – its people and cats – and the influence of living close to water on her work. 

We’re reaching across the generations of Fittie in this Harbour Memories podcast episode. Dorothy Young has been a Fittie resident for over 30 years and her granddaughter Louise Ouston has been a regular visitor since she was a child. Between them they recall the Millennium new year at Aberdeen harbour and the social life of the community old and new. 

Norma Reid’s family have lived in Fittie for generations. In this episode she shares her memories of growing up in the community, the fishing industry that many residents worked in and the strong women who have influenced her life. 

Chris Gove has a long family history linked with Old Torry and many fabulous stories of the Aberdeen’s harbour and fishing industry to tell. This episode of Harbour Memories captures of few of the best. 

In this first episode of our Harbour Memories series, Margaret Wright shares insights on growing up in the Torry area of Aberdeen and the influence of the fishing industry and maritime life on the community.