Baffles all Description
This is a revised version of an article published in Heritage – the British Review (published in the USA as Realm).
The discovery of Staffa
In July 1772, Thomas Pennant, during a voyage of exploration to the Hebrides, sailed north from Iona through rough seas. The heavy swell prevented an approach to what looked to to the Welsh zoologist an interesting island, and Pennant missed the biggest scoop of his tour — the fabulous isla of Staffa and its now most celebrated feature, Fingal’s Cave.
Just a month later, the isle was ‘discovered’ for the outside world by the botanist (and Pennant’s friend) Sir Joseph Banks, who had accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage round the world on Endeavour. On his way to Iceland, Banks was driven by bad weather into the Sound of Mull and heard from the inhabitants there of this great natural curiosity. He was impressed at the sight of the island’s fantastic natural architecture — “a scene of magnificence which exceeded our expectations” — and published details of his find in The Scots Magazine in the autumn of the same year. A fascinated public was inspired by his description of Fingal’s Cave: “one of the greatest natural curiosities in the world”. The cave was soon to become the most famous and most romantic feature of the Western Isles.
Banks was followed in 1773 by Doctor Samuel Johnson and James Boswell during their tour to the Hebrides. They sailed near to the island but, like Pennant, were prevented from landing by bad weather.
Famous visitors to Staffa
In 1829 Felix Mendelssohn was inspired by the sound of the waves crashing into the great sound chamber of the cave, and its serried pillars reminiscent of organ pipes: “What a wonder is Fingal’s Cave, that vast cathedral of the sea, with its dark lapping waters within, and the brightness of the gleaming waves outside!”
The theme of his well-known Overture Fingal’s Cave or The Hebrides was born. The composition was completed in Rome the following year, when he called it the Overture to The Solitary Island. But he was dissatisfied: “The middle portion in E is too stupid, and the whole working out smells more of counterpoint than of train oil, seagulls and salt fish, and must be altered.” He later completed it to his satisfaction and the Overture received a triumphant reception when first presented in London in 1832.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited Staffa in August 1847 in a fleet of steam-powered paddle steamers during their first visit to Scotland. Fortune smiled on the Royal Party. The weather being unusually favourable, the tide low and the water as calm as could be expected, Her Majesty’s barge was able to row into the renowned cave. She noted “the effect was splendid, like a great entrance into a vaulted hall, it looked almost awful as we entered and the barge heaved up and down in the swell of the sea.”
Sir Walter Scott described Staffa as “ . . . one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it; or rather, the appearance of the cavern composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble, baffles all description. You can walk along the broken pillars with a little danger, as far as the furthest extremity. Boats also can come in below when the sea is placid, which is seldom the case.”
A modern-day trip to Staffa
The island, which is about three-quarters of a mile long by a quarter of a mile at its widest, lies about six miles north north east of Iona. On a sunny April afternoon, with a cloudless blue sky and a sea as calm as a duck pond, we embarked for Staffa on Iolaire from Iona.
At its south and west, Staffa’s weird and awe-inspiring cliffs rise sheer from the sea for almost 130 feet to its tilted, rolling plateau. The folds of the vertical curtain of basalt columns known as the Colonnade disappear into the black depths of several caves, and even on a sunny day there is a brooding air of mystery.
From the sea, Fingal’s Cave gives the impression that some great sea monster has tried to peer into the very insides of the island: the cliff seems to have been rent apart like a pair of curtains and bunched up into vertical folds on either side, tearing a triangular gash almost to the top of the cliff.
Iolaire’s skipper, David Kirkpatrick, announced that he would try to make a landing, although it was never certain beforehand that this would be possible, as even on a calm day the swell at the landing place can be heavy. At the third attempt, with deft timing and an expert eye to the rise and fall, he turned the boat and rode the surge to the landing stage. Soon the boat was tied up and we stepped ashore onto the Causeway, a terrace of polygonal stepping stones that runs below the cliffs along the south east shore.
Iolaire at the landing jetty To our left, beyond a narrow channel through which the sea incessantly billowed, Am Buachaille, or the Herdsman — a humped pile of black basalt blocks — thrusts from the water.
A stairway of concrete steps and rope hand holds climbs from the dock to the top of the cliffs and the rolling, grassy plateau.
A well-worn path leads along the Causeway to the southernmost tip of the island. The line of jumbled rocks juts out past the end of the cliffs and points to the sacred island of Iona on the horizon.
Fingal’s Cave
The path turns around the end of the cliff and the rows of ramrod straight columns lead into the imposing black cavity of Fingal’s Cave. The name Fingal derives from the legendary character Fhinn MacCoul, but the original Gaelic name for the cave is Uamh Bhinne, ‘the Musical Cave’.
The chamber is 227 feet long with a height of 66 feet and a depth of about 25 feet, at the entrance, measured from sea level at mean tide. Basalt columns like organ pipes rise to a symmetrical triangular roof of interconnected blocks. The terrace of broken columns continues inside the cave almost to its inner end but becomes narrower and more precarious as the rock becomes increasingly wet and slippery. Iron rings set into the wall are remnants of a steel wire guide rope but the wire has rusted away.
Basalt columns of Am Buachaille, or the Herdsman, and the landing jetty The strange, honeycomb arrangement of the blocks is the result of the cooling of liquid basalt, emitted during a period of violent volcanic activity which found a vent on a line from Skye to Ireland. As the lava began to cool and contract, its molecules were pulled into this characteristic prismatic pattern seen also in the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim.
Staffa has four other celebrated caves — Clamshell, Cormorants, MacKinnon’s and the Boat Cave and in the northern part of the island is Goat Cave, a large sea cave with no special features.
Even on a calm day the sea surges between the Herdsman and the Causeway
To witness for yourself the awe inspiring grandeur of Staffa and its cliffs and caves, you can travel from Oban on a connecting coach and ferry excursion. When the sea is calm enough to allow a landing, though, the visitor to the island can only imagine the awe inspiring power of the wild Atlantic surge.
