The making of Wreckers 8: Shipwrecked

Wednesday 12 April

Another part of Bella’s book that we knew immediately had to be covered in our documentary was Stroma, the uninhabited island in the Pentland Firth just south of Orkney. When we were here on our recce, Chris and I had been bowled over by the island’s mysterious atmosphere with its dilapidated crofters’ cottages gazing out to sea.

This island is right in the middle of one of Britain’s most dangerous stretches of water – a small channel between the Orkney islands and mainland where the Atlantic ocean meets the North sea, causing whirlpools and ferocious currents.

Creative Commons Image leguan001 under CC-BY-NC-ND licence
The Kennedy Mausoleum on Stroma

In its time, the island of Stroma was notorious for its lawlessness – and wrecking. We have permission to film from the top of the lighthouse which gives us a good vantage point over the whole island and surrounding sea and then we film Bella by a campfire reading the passage from Robert Louis Stevenson that first inspired her to write her book.

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