Waterstairs
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Lerwick's Waterstairs were refered to as the only public landing on solid ground within the muddy bay and despite the private Lodberries of Lerwick merchants.
The waterstairs went along a lodberrie just in the southwest corner of what is today the Small Boat Harbour, with the original stairs now under the pavement of the more recent breakwater.
The various travellers to Shetland of the 19th century refer to the quality of the landing in different ways:
Sir Walter Scott, travelling in 1814, simply tells the fact that there is no proper landing.
Others who were familiar with the big ports of Britain like Sarah Squire, a Quaker woman from Huntingdonshire on a missionary tour round Shetland in 1835 left the following note …our sitting room commands a limited view of the landing place it can hardly be called a pier though use as such being mostly made of large stones unevenly laid, and ill broken …
In opposition to that Christian Ployen, then the Danish Governor in the Faeroe and acquainted with the natural landings of his islands, described them in 1839 as a flight of stairs of hewn stone nicely constructed, which at once gives one a pleasant notion of the town …
Robert Louis Stevenson confirmed Scott's view when he stated in a letter to his mother in 1869 that Lerwick still had no landing stage. But we returned again to the water stair beside the town-hall and waved a handkerchief for the gig …
