The Bass Rock: Gannet Island, Prison and Fortress

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Gannet counts vary by year and method, and figures of "over 150,000 birds" (birds, not pairs) are the commonly cited peak. Early history, such as St Baldred's residence, rests on tradition, and even his century is disputed (c. 600 or before 756). The prison and Jacobite episodes are well recorded. The history of the gannet harvest and the natural-history episodes come mainly from Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey's Birds Britannica (2005).

A volcanic plug

established The Bass Rock is the hard core of an extinct volcano, an igneous intrusion left standing after softer rock eroded away. James Hutton, the founder of modern geology, recognised it as such. It rises 107 metres from the sea with sheer cliffs on most sides; only the south-west offers a landing place.

The gannet city

established The Bass is home to the largest single-rock colony of northern gannets in the world, with more than 150,000 birds at the peak of the breeding season, between about February and October. Gannets are Britain's largest seabird, with a wingspan of up to two metres, and they fish by diving into the sea from heights of up to 30 metres. From a distance the guano and birds make the rock look white.

established The bird's scientific name, Morus bassanus (earlier Sula bassana), was taken from the Bass by early ornithologists, because the colony was so well known. Sir David Attenborough called the Bass "one of the 12 wildlife wonders of the world".

established In 2022 highly pathogenic avian influenza swept through Britain's seabird colonies, and the Bass Rock lost a large proportion of its gannets. Monitoring since then has followed the colony's recovery.

A larder in the Forth

established Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey, in Birds Britannica (2005), record that while ornithologists visited the Bass from the time of Francis Willughby and John Ray in the seventeenth century, most visitors came for food. From at least 1510, for more than three and a half centuries, there was a yearly harvest, mainly of the young birds, averaging about 1,500 gannets until it ended in 1885. Gannet was then no poor man's dish. It appeared at Scottish royal banquets and sold for about 20d a bird in Edinburgh's poultry markets until at least the mid-eighteenth century. Daniel Defoe, who tried it in Edinburgh, was not impressed, calling it "a very coarse dish, rank, and ill relish'd".

established Late in the harvest the trade went downmarket. The gannet expert Bryan Nelson, who lived on the Bass for three years, recorded that the birds were baked by the hundred in brick ovens on the shore opposite and eaten by Irish labourers. In 1876 as many as 800 were still taken off the rock, wrapped in rhubarb leaves, partly cooked and sent to markets in Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle.

established The colony is smelled before it is seen. One account quoted in Birds Britannica says that in an east-coast haar the reek of the Bass gannetry carries so far offshore that it is "far superior to a foghorn" as an aid to navigation.

traditional The naturalist James Fisher believed that the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer, with its line about "gannets' pother", describes a spring scene in East Lothian. It is an attractive idea but an interpretation, not a record.

Visitors from far away

established On 18 May 1967 Professor W. H. Thorpe, who was studying gannet calls on the Bass, looked up from his camera to find a black-browed albatross, a bird of the southern oceans, standing about ten yards away. It stayed for three summers, became a celebrity in the Scottish press, and was once caught by a lighthouse keeper who freed its foot from a tangle of netting. It was not ringed, but it is almost universally agreed to be the same bird, "Albert Ross", that later spent summers among the gannets at Hermaness, Shetland, from 1972 until 1995.

established The Bass also gave William Macgillivray a much-repeated peregrine story: the remains of a black grouse and a pheasant found in an eyrie on the rock implied that the falcon had carried prey of her own weight for at least three miles across the sea.

Hermit, castle and prison

traditional Tradition holds that St Baldred, a Northumbrian missionary, used the Bass as a hermit's retreat. The ruins of a later chapel on the rock are associated with him.

shared His dates are disputed. The 18th-century writer Alban Butler gave his death as 608, which is the source of the "around 600" often quoted. Northumbrian annals record the death of Balthere, a hermit of Tyninghame, in 756. The historian W. F. Skene identified the two and preferred 756, and the Dictionary of National Biography reports both dates. Most modern accounts follow Skene and place Baldred in the eighth century.

established In the Middle Ages a castle was built on the rock, held for centuries by the Lauder family. In 1671 the Crown bought the Bass and turned it into a state prison. During the persecution of Covenanters in the 1670s and 1680s, ministers and others who refused to accept the restored episcopal Church were held there in cold, damp cells.

The last Jacobite fortress

shared After the Revolution of 1688, the Bass became a prison for Jacobites. In 1691 a handful of Jacobite prisoners overpowered their guards while the garrison was unloading coal, seized the island and held it for the exiled James VII. Supplied by French ships and raiding passing vessels, they held out until 1694, when they surrendered on remarkably generous terms. It was the last place in Britain held for James.

Lighthouse and literature

established A lighthouse, designed by David Stevenson of the famous engineering family and cousin of Robert Louis Stevenson, was built in 1902, partly using stone from the old castle. Robert Louis Stevenson set part of his novel Catriona (1893), the sequel to Kidnapped, on the Bass.

Visiting

established The Bass is privately owned and a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Most visitors see it from boat trips that circle the rock, or through live cameras at the Scottish Seabird Centre in North Berwick. Landing is restricted.

• The gannet's scientific name, Morus bassanus, comes from the Bass Rock.
• More than 150,000 gannets crowd the rock in summer.
• Jacobite prisoners seized the island in 1691 and held it for three years.
• Covenanter ministers were imprisoned there in the 1670s and 1680s.
• The lighthouse was built partly from the stones of the old castle.
• Robert Louis Stevenson set part of Catriona on the Bass.
• Bass gannets were harvested every year for more than three and a half centuries, until 1885.
• In 1876 gannets from the Bass were wrapped in rhubarb leaves and sent to markets in Sheffield, Manchester and Newcastle.
• A black-browed albatross lived among the Bass gannets from 1967 to 1969.

• Disputed: How many gannets live on the Bass. Counts vary by year and method. The commonly cited peak of more than 150,000 is a count of birds, not breeding pairs.
• Disputed: St Baldred living on the rock around 600. His stay on the rock rests on tradition, not on a record, and the ruined chapel is only associated with him. The date is disputed too: Alban Butler gave his death as 608, but the hermit Balthere of Tyninghame is recorded as dying in 756, and most modern accounts follow the later date.
• Myth: Anyone can land on the Bass Rock. It is privately owned and landing is restricted. Most visitors see it from boat trips or through the Scottish Seabird Centre's cameras.
• Disputed: Gannets on the Bass in Anglo-Saxon times. James Fisher believed the poem The Seafarer describes a spring scene in East Lothian. It is an attractive idea but an interpretation, not a record.