1783
Shetlopedia - The Shetland Encyclopaedia
- The second Lerwick Parish Church was built.
- Beginning of the first British triangulation: Shetland to Isle of Wight line. Also known as The Principal Triangulation of Britain, it was a triangulation project carried out between 1783 and about 1853 at the instigation of the Director of the Ordnance Survey, General William Roy (1726-1790).
- Faroe, Orkney and Shetland were deluged with volcanic dust after the August 18th eruption of the Icelandic volcano, Skaptar-Jokull. Dust continued to drift in for many months. It destroyed crops in Caithness and that year was referred to locally as the year of "the ashie".
- The Sea Flower, a brigantine laden with a cargo of timber logs and potash, from Memel, Prussia (now Klaipėda, Lithuania), for Limerick, Ireland, was abandoned at sea and drove ashore during of before 1783.
August
18th
A large meteor appears over the North Sea.
