The Isles of Scilly Pilot Gig

The inhabitants of the Isles Of Scilly in the early 19th century suffered much mismanagement by those who deemed theselves in chargr of the islands but had survived by running a more Celtotropic society rather than the Anglotropic, hierarchecal system favoured by English incomers. In 1834 a Hertfordshire Banker AUGUSTUS SMITH, from Berkhamstead, where he had played the autocrat after press ganging a band of mercenaries to quite literally destroy the metal railings around Berkhamstead Common, all in a good cause - we're led to believe...Some how this character imposed himself as the Lord of the Isles - Its worth remembering how easy it was to do that, particularly in Celtic society where decisions about running the isles were usually given maximum chat , Read the Life and Death of St Kilda which although a Scottish Island would have been very closely mirroring life on Scilly. After announcing himself Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Council there was no looking back, I guess the Pilot Gigs represented a form of power for the Isles as they ferried the pilots to ships in distress, and by association were close to the salvaging and mercantile potential for the Islands, it made sense to impose a profit forecast by training the young men in pilotage on a more formal basis than their forefathers had done for hundreds of years previously to 1840, these were years of mass migration to the new worlds, of boom and bust on mainland Cornwalls lode shares, moving fish to market was also a tenious business. Augustus Smiths dictatorship ran very smoothly, including the eviction of the inhabitants of Samson to make way for an aborted Deer Park, to assume these powers there were conditions that were to be applied under the sideways glance of English authority, compulsory schools but the main aim was to cease power of movement in the graceful form of the Gig legacy. Soon every