Scalloway's People​

This section celebrates people who have made a significant contribution to the life of the village and the surrounding area.

James Smith  MBE 
​(aka  Jim a Berry), 1925 – 2012
​Jim Smith, locally known as Jim a Berry, was a local farmer, pony breeder and inventor with mechanical genius.  His inventions included a swede (turnip) harvester and a machine for gutting white fish on board fishing boats.  He designed and built two single-seater aeroplanes, the second of which he flew successfully and later sold.  His first plane is one of our exhibits.​

Jim Smith (Jim a Berry)

Walter J Gray

Walter J. Gray, 1885-1970
​Scalloway-born Walter Gray was a remarkable individual from humble beginnings. He progressed from telegram delivery boy in Scalloway to Assistant General Manager of the Marconi Company in Canada.  He was on duty at the telegraphy station at Cape Race in Newfoundland ­ on the 15th of April, 1912 when he received the fateful mayday call from RMS TITANIC.   He retired back to Scalloway in 1962 and his legacy lives on in the premises he purchased which later became the Walter and Joan Gray Home.​

​Clement J. Williamson, 1904 – 1994
Clement Williamson was a talented photographer, known far and wide.  He was self-educated but could speak with authority on just about every subject from astronomy to xylophones!  Astronomy was his primary scientific interest and he corresponded with scholars at, for example, the observatories of Mounts Wilson and Palomar.  He even corresponded with H.G. Wells on the subject of time-travel.  Clement was honoured by the Swedish Government with their gold medal of the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his liaison work with the many Swedish fishermen who frequented the village in the first half of the 20th century.

Clement Williamson

Clement Williamson with James Nicolson

​James R. Nicolson, M.A., B.Sc., FRS, FRGS 1934 - 2012
Jimmy Nicolson graduated from Aberdeen University and spent some years as a geologist in Sierra Leone.  But he yearned to be a fisherman and returned to Scalloway where he bought a fishing boat to pursue his dream.  Later he became a full-time writer.  In addition to the numerous articles he contributed to newspapers and journals, he inaugurated a new periodical in 1980, Shetland Life, which continues to this day.  In all, he published 13 books, leaving an unparalleled literary legacy to the village and to Shetland.