Herring Drifter Reaper

REAPER is a Fifie sailing herring drifter, an example of the most popular design of fishing boat on the East Coast of Scotland for the greater part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally built as a two masted sailing lugger by J & G Forbes of Sandhaven, near Fraserburgh, she is 70 feet long with a dipping lug foresail and a standing lug mizzen.

First registered at Fraserburgh in 1902 (FR 958), REAPER moved to Shetland and was registered at Lerwick in 1908 (LK 707) where she had great success at the summer herring fishing. In the late 1930s she held the record catch of herring for Shetland, some 223 cran – almost a quarter of a million fish.

She continued fishing until the outbreak of the Second World War when she was requisitioned by the Admiralty and saw service in the south of England. After the war she returned to fishing in Shetland and was working until 1957. In 1959 she was purchased by Zetland County Council for use as a ‘flit-boat’ carrying general cargoes and renamed Shetlander. She was retired in 1974 after the introduction of the Ro-Ro ferries and was subsequently purchased by the Scottish Fisheries Museum in 1975.

During the following years she was restored to her original 1902 rig and renamed REAPER FR 958. As Flagship of the Scottish Fisheries Museum, REAPER is the last surviving First Class sailing lugger of the ‘Fifie’ type and is now the sole example of a once prolific type of vessel.