coast of Scotland, Wales, Shetland, and the Isle of Man. With the rise in fisheries, the size of the town increased, and Wick replaced Thurso as the centre of both shipping and trade in Caithness. In 1800 a bridge was built at Wick, before which travellers from the south could only cross over into Wick via a footbridge of eleven pillars connected by planks. (Calder 32) In 1803 the Highland Roads Act allowed that the "Parliamentary" road which ran from Inverness to Thurso be extended from the Ord to Wick and then to Thurso, construction of which was completed in 1811. (C&S 67) In 1818, the mail coach, which was already running between Inverness and Tain, extended its reach by passing Bonar Bridge and the Ord to Wick and Thurso, which offered better communication between Wick and the south of Scotland. In 1806, Wick Baptist Church was founded, first meeting in a small loft in Kirk Lane, and later moving into a newly built Church in Union Street in 1865. Wick Town Hall was completed in 1828. Pulteneytown was founded in 1808 to provide space for the many Scots displaced by the Highland Clearances, who poured to the coast in search of work in the fishing industry. Two newspapers were established in Wick in the nineteenth century: the John o' Groat Journal in 1836 and the Northern Ensign in 1850, both of which are said to have espoused Liberal views in politics. The brig Lalla Rookh was driven onto rocks at Elzy, described as a few miles east of Wick, in April 1836, on her way from Newcastle upon Tyne to Quebec in ballast under the command of Captain Green, during a severe easterly gale. The population in 1841 was 1,333. In 1868, Robert Louis Stevenson stayed in Wick while his uncle, Alan Stevenson, a lighthouse engineer, was overseeing the construction of the nearby Noss Head Lighthouse, which opened in 1869. 20th century Captain Ernest Edmund "Ted" Fresson, OBE, the founder of Highland Airways Limited, established the first air service at Wick, using a grass field one nautical mile north of town. On 8 May 1933 Fresson's company began its first scheduled service between Inverness, Wick, and Kirkwall. In 1939, the field was put under the authority of the Air Ministry and turned into an RAF base. The field was improved with hard runways, hangars, and other buildings, and became