Postcards delivered via St Kilda Mailboat

Shetlander Euan Crawford, with his children recently discovered a St Kilda Mailboat whilst making the most of the afternoon sunshine down at Cumliewick Sands in Sandwick, Shetland.

The children were the first to discover the homemade ‘St Kilda Mailboat’ which had washed in with the tide.

Taking it up to the house the trio unscrewed the lid from the sturdy cabin to find inside a package wrapped up in plastic and duck tape.

To the children’s delight it turned out to be 11 damp postcards and £25 cash from the Island of St Kilda.

The mailboat and postcards were from a Scottish National Trust working party who we’re working on St Kilda in June 2014.

Euan said: “It seems that this is a ritual the workers do every summer with mailboats washing ashore in Lewis, West Coast of Scotland, Orkney, Shetland and even Norway.

“The instructions on one postcard were to use the money to buy stamps and send the postcards back to their owners from all around the world (Melbourne Australia being the furthest).

“We are currently drying out the postcards in front of the woodburning stove in the living room of our cottage before we take the postcards to the post office and post them on to the workers.”

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