How I left my grief for beloved son Digby behind at sea
Amelia threw herself into an ambitious business venture to escape the heartbreak of losing her beloved boy
IN 1989, a woman with a background in antiques and cooking turned her life upside down by launching a charter boat service serving the Western Isles.
Having fallen in love with the Hebrides, and after becoming friendly with local crew, Amelia Dalton set sail on a turbulent decade of voyages and adventures.
It was also an intensely traumatic period.
As well as dealing with choppy seas and an unpredictable business, she had to cope with the death of her youngest son at the age of eight and the end of her marriage.
Amelia, from Yorkshire, has now written a book called Mistress and Commander about her heartbreak and her advenures.
Here she shares her story: IT BEGAN with a love affair with Scotland’s remote coastline and the romance of an unpredictable, sea-gypsy life threading between the Western Isles.
My first encounter with the area was when my father persuaded me to join his party going out to visit St Kilda.
I had not had a break since my son Digby’s birth two years earlier and needed considerable persuading to join the party.
We had been watching Digby day and night.
Diggers, as he was always known, was our second son. Hugo, the eldest, had burst into the world pink, happy and bouncing fit, like a miniature Buddha. But Digby had been frail from the start and I had known something was not right.
He was smiley and usually happy but at times he was clearly in pain and I seemed unable to help.
Four years of ceaseless hospital investigations had come up with nothing.
He’d fought pneumonia three times, his skin was thin and fragile and at the age of four, he still couldn’t walk. I spent every moment of every day and most of every wakeful night trying to figure it out.
On our break, we arrived at a scruffy old fishing boat, its deck awash with plastic carrier bags and no one to be seen. We met Cubby, our future skipper. I had not the slightest indication that from the first beat of the engine, my life had changed. My life at sea had begun.
As a family, we went on to have wonderful holidays boating around the islands, fishing for lobsters and swimming in waterfalls.
They encompassed everything – from the fun of all being together to the fact that Digby was well (the cool environment suited him). He could get around the boat easily as he had a great sense of balance and, unlike others, was never seasick.
Being on a boat is a complete world, a unit on the move, with everyone together all experiencing the same things. It created a wonderful sense of togetherness.
We had simple family fun – we swam in pools under the waterfalls of Mull, caught lobsters around Jura and fished for trout in hill lochs. Grown-ups went for long walks, while the children collected shells and built sandcastles on Colonsay. And one day an idea came to me. Why didn’t I buy a boat and
run cruises to these remote and beautiful islands? I could set up a business and see if my friends Cubby and Kate, who worked on the boat we visited on holiday, would run it.
Then one day, those golden holidays seemed long gone and I couldn’t even let myself remember them or I felt I would slip down into a hole, never to climb out.
I’d gone into Digby’s room to wake him for school. He rarely slept well but he looked angelic, slightly flushed, a gentle snore drifting up from the bed. I decided a day off school for an eight-year-old would do no harm. I went back to the ironing.
Glancing at the kitchen clock a little later, I saw it was 9.30, so I needed to get him up or he would not sleep at all that night.
There was no little sound of gentle snoring as I walked down the passage and as soon as I looked at him, I knew. He was completely still and his lips were pale blue.
Over the next few months, life seemed to take place beyond a thick pane of glass. I was an observer, numb, with no feelings, just an all-consuming, aching emptiness.
I didn’t want to be in the house with all its memories. Everywhere I looked was Digby.
He was lively, intelligent, musical, full of fun and witty.
By the time of his death, we were committed to the boat venture and I had to keep the business going. It was a commitment I had made and there was no choice.
The combination of the way of life at sea, the company of supportive and entertaining friends, the unpredictability of who we might meet and what wildlife we might see, plus making sure the business thrived, was wholly absorbing.
I simply did not have time to dwell on Digby’s death. Going to the west coast gave me a reason to get out of bed, out of the empty house awash with memories, and escape to a colourful, entertaining, demanding, totally different, life.
I had found a neglected Arctic trawler in Denmark, curiously
named Monaco, but as she made her way across the North Sea, on the very first day we owned her, she began sinking.
Later, I realised how ridiculous I must have sounded. An English woman trying to get a shipyard to accept a broken-down Arctic trawler which no one in the tight-knit east coast shipwrights had ever heard of was a tall order.
I was far too naive to appreciate what the tug captain would have to do to rescue Monaco in the middle of the North Sea in January until I tracked him down much later in the pub in Peterhead.
Getting her converted was exhausting and once in Peterhead, I fainted on deck through cold.
Scraping the stinking goo off the hull by hand was horrific but, again, it had to be done.
Monaco was destined to cruise through Scotland’s untamed wilderness of remote islands, teeming seabird colonies and heart-stopping scenery, carrying 12 lucky punters in comfort. The next challenge was to win over the traditional fishing communities who were suspicious and deeply wary.
Slowly, we gained their respect. The lifeboats, rescue choppers and coastguards became our friends.
My favourite memories include the winter maintenance visits to Peterhead, organising a strippergram for a crewman and a Coastguard exercise. Also, being part of that community of colourful, witty resilient people and earning my stripes in a world I would normally never have come across.
The worse memories relate to the later years – being lonely and separated from my family. The never-ending sense of commitment, responsibility and finances. The wet, dark long winters – we worked 11 months of the year – and difficulty of running something from a distance.
After 10 years, it was time to move on. My circumstances had changed. Divorce came as a terrible shock but while it was a wrench after all I had gone through with Monaco, I was ready to spread my wings and take on new challenges.
Within a few months, I was working as a guide on board Hebridean Princess and I established Amelia Dalton Travel 15 years ago.
I have enjoyed visiting Madagascar, Aldabra, Eritrea, the Darien Gap, Sumatra, Myanmar, but most of all a host of small islands scattered across the Baltic, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Gulf, India and Sri Lanka.
My book, Mistress and Commander is a story of characters – the character of the boat, her skippers, passengers, engineers, rivals and officials. All of them men, except me.
I was the men’s employer, competitor, boss, client, hostess and pupil.
If there was a glass ceiling in the world of shipping in Scotland in the 90s, I didn’t notice it and I certainly didn’t care. ● Mistress and Commander by Amelia Dalton is released on May 18 by Sandstone Press, £8.99.