Lard galore!
Storms send cargo of fat ashore... 77 years after ship sunk by the Nazis
‘I recall barrels opened by fishermen’
AT first glance they look like giant lumps of snow left by the Beast from the East winter weather.
But the white blobs seen on a Scots beach are in fact lard – finally released from the hold of a ship bombed by the Luftwaffe in 1941.
Recent storms have dislodged them from the sunken wreck of the Second World War wreck of the MS Taurus, a Norwegian merchant ship.
The white blocks, which have maintained their barrel shape although the wood has long gone, appeared on the beach at Gourdon in Aberdeenshire.
The wreck of the Taurus, known locally as the Rosebury, is thought to lie further up the coast near Johnshaven, with bad weather setting free its contents over the years.
The appearance of the lard, originally destined to be used in lipsticks and soap, has triggered memories of earlier deposits of the fat at the beach.
Joann Beattie, from Johnshaven, said: ‘My mum told me about the barrels washing in in 1941 and of the villagers going down the beach and helping themselves.
‘There used to be lots of things washed up between here and Gourdon. I have a brass incense burner that washed ashore from the Balmoral.’
Sandy Pittendreigh said he was four when the wartime lard first came ashore at Johnshaven.
‘I seem to recall barrels being opened by a group of local fishermen at the head of the dock at the bottom of the lane down from the Masons’ hall where I lived in 1941,’ he said.
‘The men divided the lard up into large chunks which they gave to anyone who wanted it. I was told later that I came home in a bit of a mess of lard clutching my prize.’
The lard first came ashore on the Mearns coastline in the 1940s and locals would scrape it off and fry up with it.
After a storm in the late 1960s or early 1970s the lard came up onshore again.
One website claimed ‘canny locals’ used the lard for cooking but had to be careful as sometimes German bullets were lodged inside after the ship was hit.
Fishermen in the area were also said to have searched waters close to the wreck for their catch because fish that had fed off the fat had grown well beyond normal size.
Scottish Natural Heritage staff from St Cyrus remembered lard coming ashore in the early 1980s as well.
Some rock-hard lumps of it were also washed up at the north end of St Cyrus beach in 2013 when a storm further broke apart the shipwreck.