Stromness is the second-most populated community in Orkney, Scotland. It remains in the southwestern part of Mainland Orkney. It is a burgh with a parish around the outdoors with the town of Stromness as its resources. A long-established seaport, Stromness has a population of roughly 2,190 citizens. The old town is clustered along the characterful and also winding main street, flanked by residences and shops built from neighborhood rock, with narrow lanes as well as streets branching off it. There is a ferry web link from Stromness to Scrabster on the north coast of mainland Scotland. First recorded as the site of an inn in the sixteenth century, Stromness ended up being crucial throughout the late seventeenth century, when Great Britain was at battle with France and also shipping was forced to stay clear of the English Channel. Ships of the Hudson's Bay Company were regular site visitors, as were whaling fleets. Great deals of Orkneymen, a lot of whom came from the Stromness location, acted as traders, explorers as well as seafarers for both. Captain Cook's ships, Discovery and also Resolution, called at the community in 1780 on their return trip from the Hawaiian Islands, where Captain Cook had been killed. Stromness Gallery mirrors these elements of the town's history (displaying as an example crucial collections of whaling antiques, and also Inuit artefacts revived as mementos by regional guys from Greenland as well as Arctic Canada). An unusual element of the town's personality is the a great deal of buildings decorated with display screens of whale bones outside them. At Stromness Pierhead is a commemorative statuary by North Ronaldsay artist Ian Scott, revealed in 2013, of John Rae standing erect, with an inscription defining him as "the discoverer of the final link in the first navigable Northwest Passage".