
Eric Farquhar
'Wick would have been vaporised'Born: 1938
Duration: 126 seconds
Type: Audio
Filesize: 2Mb
Recorded: 18 January 2018
About this recording
July 1st 1940 was a tragic day for Wick. Fifteen people – mostly children – were killed when a German plane dropped two bombs on Bank Row, which was then a densely populated part of Lower Pulteneytown. Yet it could have been unimaginably worse. In this recording, Eric Farquhar reveals that two huge ammunition ships were berthed in the nearby river harbour at the time. The local fishermen were convinced that if those ships had been blown up then the town itself would have been wiped from the face of the earth. “Wick would have been vaporised,” Eric says. “There would have been no Wick.”
For some of Eric’s other memories, see the recording entitled “Life in ’e Chapel: ‘That was the hub of the universe’”.