Despite Collieston’s increasing popularity with visitors, families continued to move away to seek a better and easier living in Aberdeen. If anything, this was hastened by several seasons of poor fishings.

During the same year in Collieston, the women of the village decided that they had had quite enough of the large number of drunkards who gathered every Sunday to imbibe in the public bar at The Whiteness Hotel. At their instigation the village voted itself “dry” and the hotel closed in June. Apart from the off-licence at the Post Office, it has remained so ever since.

When World War 1 broke out, most able-bodied men volunteered for military service. The immediate impact on the village was to limit fishing to a handful of old men and young boys.

Many men did not return when the war finally ended in 1919. Without enough men to crew commercially viable boats the village could no longer function as a self-sustaining fishing community.