THE home and a large part of an island owned by a famous shark hunter has been put up for sale by his family.
Tex Geddes was an author, adventurer, and boxer who made Soay, off the isle of Skye, his home after buying the island from his business partner, the naturalist Gavin Maxwell, in 1952.
The pair hunted basking sharks around the Inner and Outer Hebrides, which Geddes wrote in his memoir Hebridean Sharker, as he ran a processing plant on Soay to process the oil found in their liver.
The home of Geddes, who died in 1998 while returning from a bagpiping competition in the Outer Hebrides, has been put up for sale by his family.
The sale includes around 1500 acres of croftland, which equates to around 60% of the island, with an asking price of offers over £975,000.
Agents Strutt & Parker, who are selling the property on behalf of the family, said: “The Island of Soay is located in one of the most dramatic settings in the western highlands, located in the middle of Loch Scavaig
“Lying in the shadow of the iconic Black Cuillin mountains of Skye to the north, the island also enjoys panoramic views to the mountains of Knoydart and Ardnamurchan in the east.
“The other inner Hebridean islands of Eigg, Much, Rhum and Canna also provide an interesting sea scape to the west.”
Geddes’s former home, which is described as needing complete upgrading, sits on the shore of Camus nan Gall.
The house is built with traditional materials of stone and slate, with two public rooms on the ground floor and two bedrooms and a bathroom on the first floor.
A former meeting place or hall has been built onto the southern gable.
Soay is accessed by boat from Elgol on Skye.
Geddes, who was also regarded as a boxer, a knife thrower and rum runner, bought the island with his wife Jeanne (above).
He met his business partner, Maxwell (below), at Meoble Lodge, near Lochailort, while on a special operations training base during the Second World War.
In his autobiography “Hebridean Sharker”, Geddes described harpooning a “great number of sharks first of all with hand harpoons” with Maxwell, much in the “fashion of Moby Dick”.
He added: “In retrospect, some of our early hand harpoons appeared ridiculously inadequate; we might as well have tried to catch a shark with a kitchen fork.”
Geddes, who was originally from Peterhead, said he would never forget the spectacle of towing his first shark into Mallaig harbour even if he lived to be 100 years old.
