Reaper is a Fifie Sailing Herring Drifter, the most popular design of fishing boat on the East Coast of Scotland for the greater part of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
Built in 1902 she began life as a two masted sailing lugger. With a length of 70' she was rigged with a dipping lug foresail and a standing lug mizzen.
In the late 1930's she held the record catch of herring in Shetland , some 223 crans, almost a quarter of a million fish.
She had an engine fitted in 1916.
Reaper continued fishing until the outbreak of the Second World War when she was requisitioned by the Admiralty and saw service in the South of England. After the war she returned to fishing in Shetland until 1957.
For most of her time there she fished out of Scalloway in the county of Zetland.
In 1959 she was purchased by Zetland Council for use as a ‘flit boat’ carrying general cargoes and her name was changed to Shetlander.
The Council stopped using Shetlander in 1974 and shortly afterwards she was bought by The Scottish Fisheries Museum in Fife.
A restoration plan was agreed and over the next few years the boat was restored to her original two masted rig.
