An incident in Shetland yesterday draws attention to the power of words. George Mainland has been operating tours to Bressay and Noss from Lerwick for over 25 years. On Friday 5 July at 13.30 his 36' aluminium tour boat, Alluvion, ran aground on a submerged rock known as Score Head on the north coast of Bressay. The account in Shetland News supplies the full details of how the local lifeboat made one of its shorter rescue missions. Skippers of the Alluvion have negotiated this stretch of water scores of times and the rock itself appears on charts.
Here the meaning of the word 'Alluvion' has a certain irony. It is a legal term referring to the increase in an area of land, usually through the deposit of alluvium or river silt. This changes the size of land, known as 'accession', and usually its value, providing a case of 'nowhere' becoming 'now here'. For a full gallery of images from the same source as the one above, take a tour with an Album from University College London.
Scottish Islands Explorer - tries to negotiate the many hazards of publishing
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