page_title: John Sands (journalist)
section_title: St Kilda
hierarchical_section_title: John Sands (journalist) / St Kilda
caption_attribution_description: English: Chapter 1, a man dispatching the "St Kilda mailboat".
context_page_description: John Sands of Ormiston was a Scottish freelance journalist and artist who also had an interest in archaeology and folk customs, especially the way of life on Scottish islands. He spent almost a year on St Kilda and lived on several other remote islands.
context_section_description: St Kilda is an isolated outlying archipelago in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, and Sands played an important role in bringing the plight of the islanders to the world's attention. On his second visit Sands became stranded there in the winter of 1876–7, and during that time invented the "mailboat" by attaching a message to a lifebuoy salvaged from the wreck of the Peti Dubrovacki and throwing it into the sea. His book Out of the World was published in 1878 after his two visits to the archipelago in 1875 and 1876-7.
  In 1877 he excavated the Taigh an t-Sithiche, an Iron Age souterrain. This unearthed the remains of gannet, sheep, cattle and limpets amidst various stone tools. The building is between 1,700 and 2,500 years old, which suggests that the St Kildan diet had changed little over the millennia. Indeed, the tools were recognised by the St Kildans, who could put names to them as similar devices were still in use. He publicly supported the St Kildans by, for example, writing to The Scotsman newspaper criticising MacLeod of Dunvegan, the island's landlord, for exploiting the residents. He also discovered that the Kelsall Fund, a bequest set up in 1860 to support the island's infrastructure, was unknown to the islanders more than fifteen years later and argued that those who paid taxes on tobacco and whisky were entitled to public services such as postal deliveries. It is possible his visits to St Kilda were in part prompted by his romantic interest in a young woman who lived there.
  Sands spoke a little Gaelic and his only reading material whilst there was a Gaelic bible. He spent nearly a year on St Kilda all told, but his outspoken views created enemies. For example, George Seton published St Kilda in 1878 and:
  using ridicule, traditional right-wing rhetoric  and sarcasm, he sought to discredit Sands, calling him 'the theoretical philanthropist' and mocking his claims to divine inspiration.
  Nonetheless, Sands's efforts were influential in creating a regular steamer service to Hirta, the only permanently settled island of the St Kilda group.
caption: Launching the St Kilda mailboat.
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