Stromness

In January 1725 Gow returned Stromness, home to his parents and around two hundred other families at that time. The wars in which Britain was involved between 1688 and 1815 were the making of the small town. Merchant ships would shelter in the deep anchorage in the bay, Hamnavoe, to await favourable winds or even a naval escort.
Captain Cook’s ships, Discovery and Resolution, called in to Stromness in 1780 on their return from the South Seas where Cook had been murdered. Whaling ships, bound for the Davis Strait began to call into the harbour during the 1770s forging a link with the whaling industry which continued until the early 1900s. And the Hudson’s Bay Company ships called in on their annual trips between Rupert’s Land and England. The Hudson’s Bay Company had agents in Stromness to sign up young Orkney men eager to get away for adventure and to make some money. The Company valued these men because they were literate, numerate, docile but tough, conscientious and above all poor, so they could be engaged for small wages.
All of these ships required provisions and water which Gow’s father and other merchants were pleased to supply. Thus the town grew.