Built upon Herring

With the opening of the railway in 1901 the hitherto isolated hamlet of Mallaig found itself perfectly situated to exploit the rich fishing grounds of the Sound of Sleat and the Minch. Conceived originally as a small local fishing station worked by local crofter-fishermen, in the twentieth century the village became one of the most important fishing ports on the West Coast of Scotland and, for a brief period in the 1970s, was the busiest herring port in Europe. This history of Mallaig uses oral history interviews carried out by the Mallaig Oral History Project and archive material from Mallaig Heritage Centre and the West Highland Museum to tell how the fishing industry became established and how the community developed.