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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-11-24 · 12:42 UTC

The thread about Leith Fort and why it was soon abandoned as a defensive position

Historic Environment Scotland released a very nice 3D model of a 19th century gun from Fort George mounted on a “traversing frame“.
Screengrab of the 3D model, follow this link to see it for yourself.
In case you didn’t know, there was also once an artillery fort in Leith – Leith Battery or Redoubt (but for simplicity’s sake we shall call it the Fort) – and most of its guns were mounted in this manner. The animation shows a 32pdr weapon and Leith originally had smaller 24pdrs (pdr, or pounder, was the weight of the shot in pounds, the method by which such artillery was classified).
The Fort had been built in something of a panic commencing in 1780, after Leith and Edinburgh had been threatened by the squadron of the American John Paul Jones in 1779 during the War of Independence. A temporary battery of cannon was placed in North Leith to cover the entrance to the Port of Leith from seaborne assault; the tidal nature of the harbour meant any ship intent on entry had to navigate a relatively narrow and defined channel. When the dust from the John Paul Jones panic had settled it was decided to formalise this battery into a permanent defensive fortification. It was somewhat unusual in origin in that it was largely paid for and constructed by not the military but by the City of Edinburgh and the town of Leith. It was further unusual in that its architect was the mason James Craig – better known for his plan of Edinburgh’s New Town – who was not a military engineer. Captain Andrew Frazer, the Army’s Chief Engineer for Scotland who had designed and superintended the construction of Fort George, therefore oversaw the practical details. The Board of Ordnance completed the construction and fitting out of the Fort after it was handed over to them by the Town Council only completed up to the level of the first storey. It took until 1793 until everything was finalised and it was formally occupied by the Royal Artillery.
I have read more than once than the Fort was something of a folly, incapable of fulfilling its intended purpose of defending the Port of Leith. But if you plot the fields of fire of its artillery you get a good idea of how advantageously sited it actually was; the intensity of the red shading shows how many guns can be trained to fire at that particular point. The effective range of the 24pdr weapons was just shy of 1,000 metres; any ship making an attack on the port therefore had to transit a considerable distance under the overlapping fire of the Fort‘s guns. A newspaper report of artillery practice in 1840 confirmed the guns were capable of firing on practice targets located at 200 to 1,200 yards distant with some degree of accuracy.
A map for the Inspector General of Fortifications showing Edinburgh and Leith, made c. 1780-90 by an unknown cartographer. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
A contemporary account notes;
The Battery will effectually command the range from one mile to one mile and a half of the road for shipping and the entry to the harbour
John Smith’s Houses and Streets of Edinburgh
An original survey of the fort made by the Board of Ordnance in 1785 gives details of its planned artillery. The principal battery, annotated at a and b were the eight 24pdr cannons; those at b were on traversing frames, those at a on wheeled carriages. The traversing frame offered the advantage that the gun could be rapidly trained to aim at the target, the wheel carriage was quite cumbersome and required block and tackle to shift its aim. If you follow the link to this Youtube video, it shows such a 24pdr cannon on a traversing frame being loaded, aimed and fired by re-enactors at Old Fort Henry in Ontario, Canada. Notice it takes the best part of 3.5 minutes to complete the loading and firing drill although regular gunners in the 18th and 19th century would have probably had this down nearer to a minute.
Plan of Leith Fort, Board of Ordnance, 1785. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
At c was a colossal 13 inch mortar: that distance being the diameter of the bore, not the length of the weapon! The mortar was a terrifying weapon, more suited to siege work and with a very slow rate of fire thanks to its huge 195lb (90kg) explosive bombs. But even a near miss from one of these would have made it very difficult for any small boats caught in the blast, or for ships trying to anchor outside the port or come alongside its piers. In addition it could fire a special “ball light” shot to help illuminating the scene for night actions. You can read a full information leaflet about the 13 inch mortar here.
In addition to all this firepower there was a trainable 18pdr weapon to protect the seaward entrance and a single 68pdr Carronade mounted at the lower level. The Carronade was for point-blank use against ships trying to force their way into the Port of Leith. It was a compact but very powerful weapon intended to cause extreme damage at shorter ranges. It took its name from its inventors, the Carron Company, a pioneering Scottish ironworks which was further up the River Forth, near Falkirk. Coincidentally they had a foundry in Leith at this time.
A 68 pounder Carronade on the ship HMS Victory. CC-by-SA 3.0 Bjenks
To protect the Fort from naval gunfire it had two broad parapet walls, faced and backed with masonry. The inner parapet, of the battery itself (at B on the diagram) was further protected with a ditch, through which ran a fence.
Section of Leith Fort, Board of Ordnance, 1785. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Protection from the ravages of the waters and storms of the Firth of Forth – which had reduced the seaward walls and bastions of Cromwell’s nearby 1655 Citadel to rubble in a matter of years – came from a sea wall was constructed in front in 1785. To reinforce this and to secure it against direct assault by small boats, 3 rows of large wooden posts were driven into it.
The road to Newhaven, infront of the fort, the sea wall and the rows of posts on the shore. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
The rest of the Fort‘s defences all pointed landward, with loopholes along the walls and corner bastions to provide enfilading fire (i.e. they can shoot lengthways along the face of a wall, to prevent any attackers from taking refuge up against it from the defenders above). As well as its 100 gunners, there was accommodation for a squad of 12 defending soldiers and their sergeant. It was not designed or intended to resist a siege, this was purely self defence to prevent it being overwhelmed before regular forces from Edinburgh could come to its relief.
Landward defences of Leith Fort. Note the characteristic “arrowhead” shape of the defensive corner bastions. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
There is a single contemporary image of the Fort that I am aware of, a sketch made in 1784 looking from the west towards Leith. In it we can see the grass-covered battery wall, with the notches cut in it for firing the guns through, the flag pole, and some of the accommodation buildings to the right.
Leith Fort, 1784, from the Hutton Drawings. CC-by-4.0 National Library of Scotland
Helpfully, it confirms that the Fort was actually armed, one of the 24 pounders can be seen poking through its loophole.
Leith Fort, 1784, from the Hutton Drawings. CC-by-4.0 National Library of Scotland
In 1805 and 1806, it is recorded that Leith had five 24pdrs and four, later siz, 18pdrs. The 24pdrs were still there, on more modern carriages, around 1843 when David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson took some calotype photographs of some of the weapons and men of the Fort. A newspaper report in the Caledonian Mercury of April 1847 noted the strength at Leith Fort was seven 24pdrs, four 18pdrs and a 10 inch mortar.
Major Crawford, Major Wright, Captain St. George and Captain Bortringham of the Leith Fort Artillery. Hill & Adamson, CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland
An 1860s newspaper illustration shows the City of Edinburgh Artillery Volunteers practising at the Fort, but their weapons look to be rather larger than the 24pdrs and on more substantial carriages than the iron ones shown in Hill and Adamson’s photos. It was reported that in February 1860 that three 32pdr and three 64pdr cannon were delivered to Leith from Woolwich; judging by the scale the weapons below are the 64pdrs. The Volunteers were raised in 1859 on the back of an invasion scare, and there was much enthusiasm to join; 9 batteries were formed in Edinburgh and Leith alone. Their role was to man the home defences in times of invasion and to provide mobile support to the regulars, using agricultural horses to haul their weaponry to where it was required.
The Artillery Volunteers drilling at Leith Fort
A side-effect of the invasion scare was that the military stockpiled immense quantities of gunpowder and ammunition in both Leith Fort and Edinburgh Castle. Leith found itself being used as the main ordnance store for all of “North Britain”. The Town Councils of Edinburgh and Leith were alarmed to discover in 1865 that there were one hundred and thirty barrels at Leith, each containing 100lbs of black powder. This 130,000lbs amounts to 59 metric tonnes, “sufficient to blow the whole town into the Firth of Forth” as Mr Wishart, a Leith Town Councillor, put it. Official remonstrations to the government resulted in Blackness Castle, further up the Forth, being converted into a central gunpowder store for Scotland and by 1870 the stockpiles had a much safer new home, away from the centres of population and industry.
Hill & Adamson’s pictures also show a number of small, horse-drawn field artillery pieces. These would have been suitable for rapid deployment to firing positions outwith the Fort in the event of action.
Unknown Offcer and three mounted soldiers of the Leith Fort Artillery, 1843. Hill & Adamson. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland.
Between 1795 and 1815, there are thirteen recorded substantial repair and improvement works at Leith, including making provision for it to hold French prisoners during the Napoleonic wars. However the Fort‘s life as an artillery battery was cut short. When the new wet docks began to be constructed in Leith along Commercial Street in 1801 by John Rennie they blocked the field of fire of the Fort and rendered it “useless as a work of defence“. These docks would take some 16 years to complete and ended in a government bail-out of the near-bankrupt Edinburgh Town Council, requiring that the latter cede land to the Naval Board who moved the Leith Naval Yard from Constitution Street to a more advantageous position directly below the Fort.
John Thomson’s Plan of Leith, 1827, showing the wet docks and Naval Yard built in front of it. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
New defensive bastions were constructed on the sea wall of the wet docks, where cannons could be mounted in times of threat. The outer approaches of the harbour were to be defended by a Martello Tower, work on which commenced in 1809. Left also to the City of Edinburgh to finance and construct, it took them a whole 29 years before they handed it over to the military; unfinished! The Fort was ultimately re-purposed as an artillery depot, as a barracks and as a muster and training depot for artillery volunteers. By the end of the 19th century, the weaponry allocated to the Fort was a mixed bag of older weapons for drill purposes. It continued to serve as an artillery depot right up until the 1950s and its final occupants, the Royal Army Pay Corps, paraded out in 1956 and the location was locked up and abandoned.
The gates locked and Leith Fort abandoned in 1957. Notice the “bollards” at the gate which appear to be a pair of old cannon set in the road surface, and the decorative piles of cannonballs on the gate piers. Most of the structures within are Victorian or later, the pair of guardhouses are Georgian. Contemporary newspaper photograph from the Sphere
It was afterwards re-purchased by the City of Edinburgh and it formed a core part of the Leith Fort Comprehensive Redevelopment Area, its inner buildings apart from a pair of guard houses were demolished and an infamous housing scheme was constructed within it’s tall, oppressive walls.
Leith Fort housing scheme in 2008, CC-by-SA 3.0 Jonathan Oldenbuck
This scheme, which had all the ambience and aesthetic of a prison (and in later life, most of the social ills of one), was demolished in 2013 and a much more pleasant housing development replaced it, with the Fort’s oppressive walls much reduced in height. Somewhat appropriately, the new streets within are called Guardhouse Parade, Cannon Wynd and John Paul Jones View.
Leith Fort in 2022, looking through the old entrance way on North Fort Street, past the guardhouse to the new council housing.
For a comprehensive paper with detailed research on the Fort and the Napoleonic defences of the Forth, you can download The Fixed Defences of the Forth in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1779-1815 by Gordon Barclay and Ron Morris from the Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal. This has proved an invaluable source for me on some of the details of how Leith Fort was actually used and equipped.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-17 · 00:44 UTC

A “saga of procrastination and sharp practice”: the thread about Leith’s Tally Toor

If you were to go down to Leith Docks and venture where security won’t let you go, you would eventually come across a squat, circular and very curious masonry structure. What you have just found is the Tally Toor, the Leith Martello Tower. You would be forgiven for not realising it was there or for never having heard of it. It doesn’t look like much of a tower, but that’s because most of it has been buried within the reclaimed land behind the Easter Breakwater of the Port of Leith. There was a time when this once stood proudly upon the rocks in the Leith Roads.
The Leith Martello Tower. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Richard Webb
Martello Towers were a response to the threat of coastal attacks or even invasion during the Napoleonic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They were built throughout the British Isles and out into the Empire, but Leith is one of only three that were constructed in Scotland. The word Martello (or Tally to Leithers) is an Anglicisation of Torra di Mortella – a medieval Genoese round tower in the north of Corsica. This fortification caused the Royal Navy such disproportionate trouble to overcome it during the Siege of Saint Florent in 1794 that it was taken as a model defensive outpost for home use. The thirty-three men at Mortella had resisted bombardment of British warships and had held off the 700 men sent ashore to take it that it inspired a home grown variant as a model defensive outpost.
Watercolor drawing “View of Mortella Tower” by William Porter, 1794-1796. The Mariners’ Museum #1936.0491.000001/QW83
The basic design of the British tower is rather like a squat lighthouse and they were to be located at advantageous coastal positions. Entrance was via a raised door accessed through a retractable ladder to make capture from the land more difficult. Inside, behind the thick stone walls, were two floors of accommodation and storage for an officer and about twenty-five men. Buried within the foundations would be a well and/or water cistern and perhaps a storeroom. But unlike a lighthouse, instead of a navigation beacon on the top instead there was an open fighting platform fitted with two or three heavy guns that could pivot be trained to attack approaching targets. The height of the tower meant it fired down upon ships, affording a raised and protected position for observation and signalling.
British sketch plan of the Torra di Mortella made after capture in 1794. It shows how the three guns mounted atop could be pivoted to command wide arcs of fire against would be attackers. Royal Museums Greenwish, PAD1622
The Tally Toor was not the first Georgian-era fortification to defend Leith. In 1779, Leith and Edinburgh had been threatened by the squadron of the American John Paul Jones during the War of Independence and the city had responded to the threat from the sea by building Leith Fort to guard the harbour entrance. The Fort was never entirely satisfactory and for most of its life was used as an ordnance depot, a drill barracks for artillery volunteers and as accommodation for army administrators. In light of its deficiencies in 1807 the Board of Ordnance proposed a thirty-two foot high Martello tower on the rocks at the mouth of the Port of Leith to improve the defences.
Admiralty coastal chart, Fisherrow to Queensferry, 1860. This shows the position of the Mortella (sic) Tower relative to the approach to the Port of Leith and also Leith Fort towards the lower, left-hand corner. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Somewhat unusually, the tower was not to be built by the military but was left to the Corporation of the City of Edinburgh to construct. Work began in 1809 but due to a “saga of procrastination and sharp practice” and it was not finally handed over to the Board until nearly 30 years later in 1838. The below painting by Robert Norie shows the end of the outer breakwater at Leith as it then was, with the tower being accessible across the interidal rocks at low water. The incomplete base storeys are being used as a handy mooring point for fishing boats.
Martello Tower, Leith, Low Water by Robert Norie, 1830s © Edinburgh City Museums
It had cost £17,179 18s 4½d, and it wasn’t even finished! Plus ça change for a construction project by the council in Edinburgh! The final structure was 45 feet high, with 16 feet of foundations built down into the rocks. The base diameter was 80 feet and the gun platform at the top was large enough to accommodate not one but three pivoting cannons. As a result of this, from the top the tower has an elegant cloverleaf (or fidget spinner!) appearance on account of the three overlapping gun positions.
Plan and section of the Leith Martello Tower. The height between the lines of A and B has been truncated in half by the artist. Via Trove.Scot SC495680
Within the foundations was a single central chamber and there were two staircases within the walls, leading up to the gun platform. Due to the relative peace with other European powers by the time it was completed the tower was not finally made ready to accept its guns until 1853, thirty-five years after it was first planned, prompted by the crisis of the Crimean War.
The Martello Tower is prominent on the right hand side of “Leith Races” by William Thomas Reed, c. 1811. © Edinburgh City Museums
According to “Martello Towers Worldwide” (where would one be without a copy of that handy?) at that time it was armed with two 32-pdr cannons and was occupied (when required) by a detachment from Leith Fort until 1869 when it was mothballed. The 32-pdr was so-called because it fired a shot weighing thirty-two pounds and was the Royal Navy’s standard heavyweight shipboard weapon. The handy diagram below shows the main parts including the rammer, wad and pricker (no giggling at the back!)
Illustration of a 32 pounder cannon
These were the same such guns as were also mounted at Leith Fort itself, as can be seen in a series of earlier photos made there by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson.
Major Crawford, Major Wright, Captain St George and Captain Bortingham of the Leith Fort Artillery. David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843-47. National Galleries Scotland
The 1849 Ordnance Survey Town Plan clearly shows the tower and also one presumes the obvious route for the garrison to reach it should they ever need to across the barrier of intertidal rocks known as The Weir” the same route as shown in Norie’s painting.
OS 1849 Town Plan. Note the stairs from the sea wall on the left down to the rocks of “The Weir”. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
The rocks on which the Tower was situated, once the Mussell Cape Rocks, became known instead as the Martello Rocks. Further, smaller towers for the Forth were planned at Cramond Island and Inchkeith but were judged not to be a pressing need and so work never started; given how long it took and how much it cost to build the first, that was probably a sensible decision. These would have carried two 24-pdr cannons rather than the three 32-pdrs at Leith. In 1854, the Inspector General of Fortifications prepared a report on the Forth defences in which he stated:
At Leith there are at present twelve heavy guns, mounted for the protection of the harbour and roadstead at Leith Fort and on a tower; it would be, however, very desirable to establish two batteries and a small barrack on the Island of Inch Keith.
Burgoyne’s report
After 1869 the disarmed tower was abandoned, just 15 or so years after it had finally been completed and occupied. Thereafter its main function was an interesting navigation marker for the approaches to Leith.
“Leith Martello Tower” by Francis William Staines (1800-76), with Inchkeith in the background. via Artwarefineart.com.
As war clouds gathered and dispersed again on the horizon, there were occasional plans to re-establish the Tower as a defensive position. It was proposed in the 1880s to mount a 6-inch Rifled Breech Loader (RBL) gun on top, which appears never to have been completed. In 1891 an even bigger 9.2-inch Breech Loader (BL) gun was proposed but by 1894 it was instead suggested to place two 6-inch BL guns on the dock walls. In 1899, approval was given for two 4.7-inch Quick Firing (QF) guns for the Tower but once again these do not ever seem to have been installed. The following year it was back to two 6-inch pieces but again these remained paper plans. All these proposals are detailed in The Fortification of the Firth of Forth 1880-1977 by Gordon J. Barclay and Ron Morris, published by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2019.
“View of golfers on Leith Links with Martello Tower in background”. Watercolour sketch by Walter F. K. Lyon, 1889. Neil Hynd bequest via Trove.Scot, DP312460
In fact it does not seem that the Tower was ever actually re-armed to defend the Port against intrusion from the sea ever again. The citizens of Leith were however left with a curious object to explore, one which was easily accessible at low tide, and it became a source of fascination for generations of children. The picture below shows the scale of the abandoned fortification. Check out the boy in his swimmers looking over the parapet!
The Martello Tower at low tide, from “Martello Towers Worldwide” by W. H. Clements
But that was not quite the end of the story for the Tower as a defensive position and it finally went to war in 1939 when it was reconfigured to act as an anti-aircraft gun platform. The insides were modified with hastily-built brick partition walls to reduce the risk of blast damage and on the top were mounted three concrete and cast iron positions for the guns.
Concrete gun bases and cast iron pedestals on the roof of the Tower in 1971. Trove.Scot SC495681
After the war the Tower’s splendid isolation out at sea was about to be terminated. From the late 1930s onwards the Leith Docks Commissioners had been building vast new breakwaters around the harbour in an attempt to make it non-tideal and they were slowly edging towards the tower. By 1951 it was still outside the sea wall, but only just.
1951 aerial photo of the Martello Tower, from NCAP, showing ongoing land reclamation work behind it
The sea wall finally enclosed the tower in 1972 and with the land behind being built up by reclamation it appeared to be sinking lower and lower into the ground, when in reality the ground was rising higher and higher around it. The diagram below indicates just how deeply the tower was buried within the new docklands.
1972 cross section of the Tower
The slow march of Leith Docks out towards the Firth of Forth can be visualised in the below animation based on maps. It also shows how useful a defensive position the tower initially was when it was built, any ship wanting to enter the docks had to come around the Eastern and Middle Craigs and the Black Rocks, therefore had to pass close by the Tower’s guns.
We can no longer get anywhere near the Tower thanks to the stringent security at the docks, which has been stepped up significantly in recent years. Forth Ports, the current landowner, used to open it once a year to visitors but it’s been around a decade since anyone was afforded that privilege as far as I know. But we can still see the tower in art, look at enough paintings of Leith Docks and it pops up again and again.
“Dutchman off Leith”, an 1820s painting. The Martello Tower can be seen on the left of the short, just to the right of the steam paddle ship. © Edinburgh City Libraries
And if you are ever fortunate enough to get the chance to get up close and personal with it, look out for the mason’s marks left behind by the Irish Navvies who were engaged in its construction:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davydubbit/37503950394/in/album-72157688932723074/

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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-09-07 · 13:14 UTC
Redemption in Leith: the thread about HMS Cossack

The neat, well kept war graves at Seafield Cemetery include 5 men from the destroyer HMS Cossack, who lost their lives in an accident at sea on November 7th 1939, when their ship collided with the Leith steamer Borthwick off the Isle of May.
Grave marker stones for Roy Popple and Thomas C. Richmond © SelfGrave marker stones for William. H. Clarke and Stanley Cowan © SelfFour of the war grave headstones for men of HMS Cossack at Seafield cemetery in Leith. Photos © Self
The protagonists in this accident were the Cossack, one of the Navy’s big, new “Tribal class” destroyers: two and a half thousand tons of guns and torpedoes which could cut through the sea at 36 knots (over 40mph).
Brand new, the Cossack in 1938. This photograph FL 1657 comes from the collections of the Imperial War Museums
The other was the George Gibson & Co. steamer Borthwick, a ship built and owned in Leith which plied the North Sea on the Antwerp and Rotterdam route. She was much smaller than the big warship’,; over 100 feet shorter, about 1/4 her displacement and barely capable of double digit speeds on her single steam engine which had an output 1/300th of that of Cossack.
The Borthwick. Like many George Gibson ships she was named after connections to the works of Walter Scott and the Lothians
It was a dark winter night on the Firth of Forth and ships were showing only the bare minimum of navigation lights. The Borthwick and Cossack were on a parallel course, heading east off the Isle of May, with the destroyer overtaking the little steamer when, for reasons of his own, Captain Daniel De Pass of the Cossack turned across the path of Borthwick. De Pass had a bit of a reputation for poor seamanship, having done something like this before on pre-war exercises. The outcome was inevitable, the bows of the Borthwick cutting into the side of Cossack, right into the seamen’s mess where the men were just sitting down to dinner. Three men died where they sat. Able Seaman Heatherley and Ordinary Seaman Clarke were pulled into the cold, dark North Sea as the water rushed in to their compartment, never to be seen again. Three more men were seriously injured (Ordinary Seaman Clifford Harmer would be invalided out of the Navy with a hand injury) and those in the mess below were trapped for an hour, up to their necks in water. Their ship limped back to Leith for extensive repairs, the men boarded in the Seamen’s Mission. In an interview in 2005, a survivor – Trevor Tipping – pointed out the steel plate of the ship was only 3/8 inch thick and “folded back, like a sardine tin” when the collision happened.
The Seamen’s Mission on the Shore in Leith
The repairs – by Leith shipyard Henry Robb – took almost 2 months and cost £11,250 (£504k in 2023). Captain De Pass faced a Board of Inquiry, which put him 75% at fault. He was court martialled, relieved of his command and posted away elsewhere before taking retirement. His replacement was the dashing yet thoroughly competent Captain Philip Vian.
Sir Phillip Vian (1894-1968), by Oswald Birley, from the Britannia Royal Naval College
The men of Cossack, cooling their heels in Leith while their ship was repaired, raised a subscription to fund a memorial stoner to their lost shipmates out of their own pockets. It was erected in Seafield cemetery, and is situated by the Cossack war graves.
Memorial for the men lost on HMS Cossack in Seafield Cemetery. Photo © Self
The Borthwick was patched up and soon back on the dangerous Leith to Holland route. She was sunk 4 months later – on March 9th 1940 – by the German submarine U-14 off the River Scheldt, on her way home from Rotterdam to Leith. All 21 on board survived and were picked up. The newspapers celebrated on 11th March when news reached home that the men of the Borthwick had all been landed safely in Flushing.
Captain Simpson (right) and Chief Officer Jeffrey (left) of the Borthwick, on their return home after being sunk
Cossack did not leave Leith until 10th January, but was back 3 days later for more repairs after an embarrassing – but fortunately minor – collision with the cable laying ship Royal Scot in Leith Roads. She left again, returning to the 4th Destroyer Flotilla with Captain Vian now installed in command. But she wouldn’t be gone long and would return with the month. This time should would be an international hero, the victor of the daring “Altmark Incident“, a swashbuckling tale that can always do with retelling.

On the face of it, Altmark was a humble German merchant ship. In reality, she was a supply tanker for the Kriegsmarine – the German Navy – and had on board almost 300 British and Allied prisoners, merchant seamen whose ships had been sunk by the “pocket battleship” commerce raider Admiral Graf Spee in the South Atlantic.
A photo of the Altmark in Jøssingfjord , Norway.
The Graf Spee had been scuttled just off Montevideo after the Royal Navy had cornered her into a fight in the Battle of the River Plate on December 17th – while Cossack was laid up in a Leith drydock undergoing repairs. Before the battle she had transferred most of her prisoners to her supply ship, which was heading back to Germany. Conditions on board caused the British press to call her a “hell ship” and a “floating concentration camp“.
Admiral Graf Spee shortly after her scuttling. Toronto Telegram collection, via. University of York, Canada.
Captain Dau of the Altmark intended to sneak back home by hugging the coasts of the (then) neutral Greenland, Iceland and Norway. He had almost made it when, on Feb. 15th, reconnaissance aircraft out of RAF Leuchars spotted her in Norwegian waters off Bergen. The British destroyers HMS Ivanhoe and Intrepid from Vian’s squadron made to board her but the Altmark sought refuge in the safety of Jøssingfjord. The Royal Navy could only look on as the German ship was escorted into the fjord by the Norwegian Navy, who politely but firmly affirmed their neutrality and turned the British ships around.
HMS Intrepid attempting to board Altmark as it runs for the sanctuary of Jøssingfjord
Captain Vian, as commander of the squadron, made contact with the ancient Norwegian gunboat Kjell but was asshured that the Norwegian had searched the Altmark, that all was in order and it was a simple German merchant ship and not an armed, Kriegsmarine prison ship. Vian knew this was rubbish, but had no option but to retreat a respectful distance and to signal the Admiralty for orders.
Norwegian navy gunboat Kjell, around the time of the Altmark Incident
Further reconnaissance flights by the Royal Air Force confirmed that the Altmark was safely holed up right at the end of Jøssingfjord. Meanwhile, Vian’s signal found its way to the desk of the First Lord of the Admiralty, a man who had a reputation for sticking his oar in to operational matters and trying to direct operations from Whitehall. You might be familiar with his name, it was Winston Churchill.
Aerial photo of Altmark in Jøssingfjord.Photograph CS 24 from the collection of the Imperial War Museums
Churchill sent Vian a signal telling him that if the Altmark wasn’t escorted to Bergen for inspection under a joint Anglo-Norwegian guard, he was to board her and free the prisoners, that he had permission to use lethal force in order to do so and that he was to politely but firmly make sure the Royal Norwegian Navy butted out of matters. This was a blatant violation of Norwegian neutrality of course, but there was not a lot the little old gunboat Kjell could do to stop the Cossack beyond yell at her – Vian had permission to fire on her if they fired first, but to stop when they stopped.
And so Vian was set on a course of action and turned his ship around, entering the mouth of Jøssingfjord at 2200 hours on February 16th 1940. He once more went on board the Kjell, this time to give her Captain the ultimatum to either escort the Altmark to Bergen with him, or step aside. When he declined, Vian invited him aboard the Cossack for a grandstand view of what was about to follow, but again he declined. On board the Altmark, Captain Dau saw the threatening shape of the destroyer looming down the Fjord towards him. At first he made to ram her, but instead ended up running his ship aground instead. He next tried to dazzle the Cossack with his searchlight, but the British ship was brought skillfully alongside and in true Nelsonian fashion, a party of 2 officers and 30 men leapt across the gap and boarded the German ship. Legend has it that 4 cutlasses, kept on board for ceremonial purposes, were carried by the boarding party. If true, it would be the last boarding action in which such a weapon was known to be used in anger.
Painting of the boarding of the Altmark by Charles Pears
There was a brief skirmish on board but the German crew were soon overpowered. Just as things were almost over however, a German sailor fired at and injured a British sailor, and for his trouble 9 of his shipmates were shot and wounded in the return fire; 4 died and a further 4 were fatally wounded. Having taken the Altmark, the boarders now combed the ship looking for the captives they knew were held somewhere within. One sailor called “Any Englishmen in there?” into a dark hold and on hearing a cheer replied the immortal words “The Navy’s here! Come up out of it!“
Book cover, “The Navy’s Here” by Frischauer & Jackson
Less than two hours after she first entered the fjord, Vian’s ship was on her way out again with 299 freed prisoners on board (including one, an Indian seaman, suffering from Leprosy). She plotted a course for Leith and set off for home at top speed. The Cossack had last entered Leith with a cloud hanging over her reputation, but on her return on February 17th she did so triumphantly. The press cameras were assembled and waiting to welcome her back and to make the most out of this propaganda opportunity.
HMS Cossack coming alongside in Leith, with some of the Altmark prisoners aboard
Ambulances were ready and waiting to take the injured away to hospital while the newsreel cameras rolled.
Cossack at Leith, with assembled crowds and waiting ambulances
It was a rare bit of good news so early in the war, so reporting restrictions were not observed. The Scotsman carried a full page spread of photos. Many of those pictured coming ashore had lost all their possessions, some had been prisoners for almost 6 months and their families had no word of what had become of them. For weeks the papers were full of stories of reunions and heroes welcomes.
The former prisoners of the Altmark coming ashore at Leith. Pictures from The Scotsman, 19th February 1940
The Dundee Courier and Advertiser printed a picture of some 1940s medical care, with a nurse at Leith Hospital lighting a recuperative cigarette for Third Officer Leslie Ross of the ship Huntsman. 250 of the his companions were sent to the Eastern General Hospital in Leith for attention, with officials from the City and the Shipwrecked Mariner’s Society on hand to sort out replacement clothing, papers, money, cigarettes etc. and arrange lodging and travel. The sailor who had been suffering from Leprosy was taken to the Infectious Diseases Hospital (the “City Hospital”).
Leslie Ross in a Leith hospital, Dundee Courier, Monday 19th February 1940
In Stornoway, the Daily Record interviewed the 75 year old Elizabeth Mackenzie of Newton Street, who had not heard from her merchant seaman son – Donald Morrison – for over a year. She was making a public appeal for his whereabouts, he had last written to her over a year ago and was last known to be on the SS Newton Beech: that ship had been sunk by the Graf Spee on 5th October 1939. “I have been very worried because I am going blind, and I am living here with a brother who is over 80” she told the reporter. “I haven’t many friends, but the Lord is my friend, and that is enough.” The happy news about the safety of her son was soon brought to her by Donald Macleod, another Leodsach sailor who had been with him on the Altmark. “It is good news my boy is safe” she told the Record. Donald Murdo Macleod of Tolsta Chaolais had been on the SS Tairoa which had been intercepted by the Graf Spee in the middle of the South Atlantic on December 2nd 1939. Tairoa had been the penultimate victim of the German raider, and had managed to transmit a distress signal that eventually allowed the the Royal Navy to catch up with her assailant.
The crew of the Newton Beech rowing away from their abandoned ship towards imprisonment on the Graf Spee
Donald Morrison however seemed reluctant to return home and instead went to Hull, telling Macleod to let his mother know he “might go home later“. Instead he went back to sea. It seems the whole experience may have left an indelible mark on him and changed his character. He forfeited bail of £1 in Buckhaven on a charge of drunkeness in February 1941. He was soon in trouble again for going absent from his ship. In May 1941 he was hauled before the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth at the Police Court there, again for deserting a ship. Morrison could offer no explanation for being 31 hours overdue and potentially making his ship miss its convoy, beyond “I just had a good time, that is all“. The Master had dismissed him but told the court he was of good character and had been through “unpleasant experiences” and would gladly take him back again. It turned out Morrison had another ship sunk from underneath him recently and had once again lost all his papers and possessions. The Lord Mayor fined him £5 (half a month’s wages) and allowed him to return to his ship on account of his value to the war effort. He won’t have been the only merchant sailor in the War in the Atlantic to have an experience such as this, and in retrospect we can understand his reluctance to return to his ship and potential death and to want to have one more night of fun on earth…
Back in Leith, the Fife Free Press reported that the Altmark Incident was commemorated with the gift of £500 to the Leith Hospital by an anonymous benefactor on the condition that a bed be dedicated to HMS Cossack for rescuing the prisoners. For his “outstanding ability, determination and resource” and “for daring, leadership and masterly handling of his ship“, Captain Vian received the Distinguished Service Order medal and was promoted off of Cossack in July 1941. He would go on to have a glittering wartime career, and would retire in 1952 as Admiral of the Fleet. Cossack had an eventful 18 months after the Altmark, taking part in the 2nd Battle of Narvik and the hunt for the German Battleship Bismarck
The ship’s luck would soon run out however and she was torpedoed and sunk in October 1941 by the German submarine U-563, west of Gibraltar. In November 1941, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that three local men were missing, presumed killed, from her:
- Petty Officer Alexander Burton Colthart, 22, 20 India Place
- Petty Officer Douglas Maurice Gammack, 32 Parsons Green Terrace
- Assistant Cook Robert “Sonny” O’Hara, 23, 205 Crewe Road North
Her cat, Oskar, survived this sinking: legend has it that he had been the ship’s cat on the Bismarck and was plucked from the Atlantic by Cossack after her sinking. His name was said to have been derived from the code letter for “O” (with a German spelling) which was used to mean “man overboard“. Further legend has it that after surviving the loss of his second home he went on to serve on HMS Ark Royal and survived her sinking also. The whole thing was probably just a sailor’s yarn but Unsinkable Sam has garnered a cult following on the internet: you will find Facebook pages, pop history articles, Youtube videos and even computer game cameos in his memory.
Ship’s cat Oskar, or Unsinkable Sam.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-09-04 · 16:41 UTC
The mining of the “Saucy” and the “Firefly”: the thread about the WW2 loss of forty-two lives in the Forth

I was looking for something in Seafield Cemetery last week and couldn’t help but stop by the war graves. Some are for merchant seamen and many of them were from HMS Saucy, lost with all hands on this day (September 4th) in 1940. As yesterday was Merchant Navy Day, this is a doubly appropriate time to relate their story.
The Saucy was built for the Royal Navy in Hull in 1918 as a 600-ton, 155ft-long Frisky-class rescue tug. She was sold out of service in 1924 but kept her name and was requisitioned in 1939, returning to the UK from Shanghai. She was crewed by merchant seamen, serving under officers of the Royal Navy Reserve (RNR men were professional merchant naval officers who had joined the reserves to be called up in times of war).
HMS Saucy, pre-1924 postcard image
Saucy was based on the Forth at Rosyth, her duties to assist in any damaged vessels entering the estuary and was at sea on September 3rd (Merchant Navy Day and exactly 1 year into the war) when she brought in a damaged Dutch merchant ship that had been bombed by German aircraft. With this charge safely brought in, she headed back out on patrol in the early morning of the 4th. Contact was soon lost with her when she was in a position about 1.5 miles west of the island of Inchkeith; the unfortunate tug had hit a mine and gone down almost instantly, taking all 281 on board with her. It is not clear whose mine she had struck, it may have been dropped by a German aircraft, but just as likely it may have been a “friendly” mine that had broken free from its moorings and had floated further into the Firth.
“The Sea Mine”, Louis Raemaekers, 1916 © Edinburgh City Libraries
Of the crew the 3 officers were all RNR men and the 25 ratings were all merchant seamen. Eighteen came from the Devonshire fishing town of Brixham, 7 from the same extended family. Eight bodies were recovered, 5 of them of Brixham men and all were buried at Seafield – although one was never formally identified.
Sub. Lt. Francis Douglas Phillips (age 36), Fireman Cyril Harvey (age 20), and Fireman Samuel Piper (age 26)Sailor Charles Launder (age 36)Sailor Harry Nicholls (aged 30) and Sailor Thomas Lovell (aged 53)Sub Lt. David Llewellyn Thomas, age 29 and an unknown sailor from HMS Saucy
On this day in 2004, a memorial plaque was dedicated in Brixham Harbour to the men who were lost – it has 26 individual names, however different sources list 27 names and some say there were 28 on the ship’s roll. See footnote.
HMS Saucy memorial at Brixham, from War Memorials Online
A new HMS Saucy was named in her honour in 1942, an Assurance-class rescue tug. The wreck of her predecessor was marked with a buoy in 1940, but it was largely lost by 1945. Sonar surveys by the Navy in 1967 and 1871 failed to locate it, but it was found again by the minehunter HMS Sandown in 1992, and her divers explored the wreck in 1993 and found it to be remarkably intact in 15m of water, position 56° 2′ 10″N, 3° 10′ 33″W.
HMS Saucy (the 1942 replacement), on the Humber in February 1943 © IWM FL 8980
The men whose bodies were never found are further commemorated on the Liverpool Naval Memorial, which commemorates almost 1,400 merchant sailors who died serving with the Royal Navy during WW2 and have no known resting place.
1. Some sources say 26 or 27 were on the ship’s roll. Most also 7 seven men were buried at Seafield, however there is the grave of an 8th and unidentified victim also alongside. ↩︎
Alongside the men from the Saucy at Seafield lie three others who lost their lives to sea mines that year; Lt. D. B. Johnstone RNVR, Chief Petty Officer C. E. Baldwin RN D.S.M. and Sub Lt. C. Dobson RNVR. All three died on HMS Firefly in February 1940. Baldwin had earned the Distinguished Service Medal early in the war for being the first to defuse a German magnetic mine, allowing it to be captured, inspected and countermeasures devised.
Sub Lt. Carl Dobson RNVR, age 29Lt. David Johnstone RNVR, age 37 and CPO Charles Baldwin RN, age 40
Firefly was a requisitioned civilian trawler, hired from her owners as a minesweeper. Trawlers were perfect for this sort of work, which required a seaworthy vessel that could handle the towing of “sweeps” that cut mines free from their moorings before the crew destroyed them (usually by shooting it with a rifle until it exploded).
Oil painting of HMS Firefly by H. Trythall, Victoria BC, 1991
On February 3rd 1940, Firefly was in the Forth, her crew attempting to defuse a British mine that had gotten loose and was posing a hazard to shipping. These sort of mines look exactly like they do in cartoons; a buoyant, black sphere with spiky “horns” in which the detonators are mounted.
“Deadly Instruments of Modern Naval Fighting”, London Illustrated News, August 1914
Firefly was stopped in the water, her crew watching from the railings while a detachment in the row boat carefully manoeuvred alongside the mine to defuse it; dangerous but routine work. Without warning they were hit by the wake of a passing destroyer, which pushed the mine onto the boat. The horn contacted one of the boat’s oars, and 200-250lb of explosives was detonated. Everyone on the boat was killed instantly, as were all except one watching on deck (who would die the next day from his wounds). Only the 3 men in the wheelhouse and 1 in the galley survived from a crew of 18. Sadly one of the four survivors, Lt. Andrew Macgavin Maclean RNVR, would die in the Royal Infirmary two weeks later as a result of infection, he was laid to rest in Strathblane Parish Churchyard (I am indebted to Pat Davy of Strathblane Heritage Society for this information).
Remarkably, the vessel herself was largely intact – apart from damage to her superstructure – and she was towed into Leith by the minesweeping trawler HMS Wardour and repaired. She returned to service, recommissioning in June 1940, and serving out the rest of the war. Returned to her owners and renamed St. Just, she fished out of Harwich until 1961. Wardour herself was sunk by a mine she was clearing in October 1940 but her crew survived. In a curious coincidence, a previous HMS Firefly was one of the first ships to strike a naval mine (which at the time were referred to as “Infernal Machines”) when she and HMS Merlin ran into a Russian minefield off Sveaborg in the Baltic Campaign of 1855, although both survived. In another odd twist of fate, the Firth of Forth was the location of both the first loss of a ship to a torpedo in WW1 (the cruiser HMS Pathfinder), and the last such in WW2 (the Canadian steamer Avondale Park and the Norwegian collier “Sneland I).
“Merlin and Firefly Struck by Infernal Machines” Name, Rank & Resting PlaceName, Rank & Resting PlaceSub Lt. Walter AndersonSub Lt. Frederick JonesSub Lt. Francis Douglas Phillips (Seafield)Sub Lt. David Thomas (Seafield)Third Engineer Edward Pulham*Fireman John Clift*Sailor Thomas Coysh*Sailor Seymour Crang*Sailor William Cudd*Sailor Sidney Foster*Fireman Stanley Gardner*Fireman Cyril Harvey* (Seafield)Donkeyman Leonard Harvey*Fireman Roy Harvey*Sailor Charles Launder* (Seafield)Sailor Vincent Medway*Sailor Thomas Lovell* (Seafield)Sailor Samuel Piper* (Seafield)Sailor Harry Nicholls* (Seafield)Fireman Charles Roberts*Fireman Ralph Stamp*Fireman John Seaward*Sailor George HosieFireman Donald McGregor ReidSteward Donald ReidSailor Robert TomlinsonCook John StenhouseOfficers and men of HMS Saucy, lost in September 1940, asterisked names were men from BrixhamName, Rank & Resting PlaceName, Rank & Resting PlaceLt. David B. Johnstone (Seafield)Lt. Andrew Macgavin Maclean (Strathblane)Sub Lt. Norman Peat (Glasgow)Sub Lt. Geoffrey Vaughan (Bournemouth)Sub Lt. Carl Dobson (Seafield)CPO Charles Baldwin (Seafield)Engineman Benjamin Barker (Hartlepool)Seaman Henry Beavers (Preston)Second Hand John Cowie (Buckie)Seaman John Clay (Preston)Seaman Cook Walter Johnson (Great Yarmouth)Seaman Peter Reid (Buckie)Seaman Alexander Stewart (Buckie)Seaman James Stewart (Lossiemouth)Second Hand Edward Barker (Cleethorpes)Officers and men of HMS Firefly, lost in February 1940
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-03-04 · 16:43 UTC

The First Inuit in Scotland: the thread about John Sakeouse; Hunter, Explorer, Artist, Interpreter, Kayaker, Friend of Leith and

The registers of the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh record that on 17th Feb 1819 a man was interred there, having died 3 days previously from fever. They say he was 22 years old, although nobody was exactly sure. What they do not say is that he was far from the land of his birth and that he was a truly remarkable man. He was John Sakeouse and this is his story.
John Sakeouse, a portrait by Amelia Anderson, engraved by W. & D. Lizars. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland
John was well known in Edinburgh and Leith, infact it was fair to say he was something of a celebrity, for he was a unique character in the city; he was a Kalaaleq , an Inuk from West Greenland, and was the first of his people to travel to Scotland. He was born around 1797 in Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland at a latitude of 69° North. We do not know his name in his native language, but he grew up in an area where Danish missionaries were active and from them he took the biblical names Johannes Zakaeus; John Zacchaeus (also Anglicised to Sackhouse, Saccheuse, but he signed himself Sakeouse so we shall go with that.) From the missionaries he learned about the bible and had a knowledge of and interest in Christianity. He also learned of the world beyond his horizon and picked up a little English.
Icebergs Disko Bay. Cc-by-SA 3.0 Algkalv
John had wanted to satisfy a curiosity as to what was over the horizon and beyond the land of his birth, and he wanted to learn about art. He may have been further motivated by being unlucky in love and rejected by the mother of a potential bride. But his reasons were his own and using his own initiative and ingenuity in May or June of 1816 he took to his kayak and paddled out to a whaling ship that was getting ready to depart the Davis Strait. Using his basic English, he managed to convince the crew to help him stow away and the seamen took pity and smuggled not just John but also his kayak aboard. Once he was safely over the horizon he announced his presence to the master of the ship; who either offered or threatened to turn around and put him ashore, but John was obviously a persuasive communicator and the master, John Newton, was convinced to take him home with him. That ship was the Thomas and Ann, it was owned by Peter Wood and Company of Leith, and that port was its destination. That is how on the 15th August 1816, John Sakeouse came to Scotland “with 11 fish“, as a very special passenger.
The Leith Greenland whaler “Raith”, also owned by the Woods and a contemporary of the “Thomas and Ann”. A model in the collection of Trinity House, Leith.
On the long journey back to Leith, he earned his passage by assisting the seamen in their duties and occupied himself in improving his English.Standing between 5 foot 6 and 8 inches tall, with a head of thick black hair, he was of stocky build and impressed his hosts with his great physical strength, his dexterity and also his gentle nature and eagerness to learn. When the Thomas and Ann finally arrived back in Leith, news of his presence seemed to spread like wildfire and large crowds assembled wanting to catch a glimpse of this unusual visitor. The crowds prevented Master Newton from unloading his precious cargo of whale, so he had Sakeouse taken ashore and lodged in his house in the Timber Bush area. The crowds simply followed and gathered outside Newton’s house instead.
But although John had never seen this many people in his life, he hadn’t come to Scotland to hide himself away. So he took himself and his kayak down to the new Wet Docks, lowered himself into them and with great showmanship put on an hour long display of his proficiency and dexterity in it. He thrilled the crowds by being able to roll his boat over at will, paddle it while inverted and roll it back upright again “in the twinkling of an eye… and scuds off as if nothing had happened“. A ship’s biscuit was floated on the water and from 30 yards he would hit it – and split it – with his harpoon.
John Sakeouse in his kayak, from an illustration by Amelia Anderson, engraved by W. & D. Lizars, CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland
His show was an instant hit, and it was put on each day for the crowds. Handbills were printed and money was collected. On Thursday 5th September, a grand race was organised; John against the best whaling boat and six of the best crew that Leith had to offer. “A vast assemblage of persons of all ranks were collected at Leith. The piers, windows and roofs of houses and the decks and rigging of the vessels, were crowded with spectators; and the water from the harbour to near the Martello Tower was covered with boats, filled with Ladies and Gentlemen.” They set off from the end of the pier, the course being around the Martello Tower and back again; John was the clear winner, taking just 16 minutes.
An exhibition of some of his artefacts was put on in a dockside warehouse, described as “two sea unicorn’s horns, the skulls of a sea horse and bear, the ear of a whale and the preserved skin of a black eagle“. The money these ventures raised helped support him financially; to provide him with the food and clothes that he needed to get through the winter in Scotland until he could return home the following season when the whalers went north again. By the end of August news of him had spread the length of the country; with newspapers not just in Scotland and London, but all across England, in Belfast and in Dublin relating the story of “the Esquimaux* now at Leith“.
* = the French term which was in written use at the time in the press for Inuit. The Scottish whalers used the term “Yackie”, in some contemporary accounts he refers to himself as “Yakee”, a term he undoubtedly picked up from the whalers.
Lodging with Newton and his family, when John was not putting on his displays he attended to studying English in “which he made considerable progress“; he learned to play the flute a little and to dance. He told his hosts that he had received some schooling in his childhood, had some basic knowledge of the wider world and historical facts and had heard of an elephant – but never having seen one was “much delighted” when shown a picture. He had not, however, seen or heard of a cow and on first encountering one fetched his harpoon with which to defend himself from this strange beast. He sat for portraits, was taken to the theatre, and was the toast of the evening soirées of Leith and Edinburgh, comfortably ingratiating himself with all who met him.
John Sakeouse’s handwriting, from an engraving by W. & D. Lizars, CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland
In the spring of 1817, the Leith whalers set out again for the Davis Straits and John was with them, once more on board the Thomas and Ann. Newton was under strict orders from his employer, Peter Wood, that John was to be “treated with the greatest kindness” and returned to where he had been picked up, and not to return with him unless John explicitly desired to. On reaching his home however, John was distressed to find that his only living relative, his sister, had died over the winter. On learning that she had believed him dead and had died of a broken heart, he returned to Newton and made it known that he wished to stay with them and “revisit his country no more.” And so it was in September 1817 once again the newspapers in Edinburgh reported that the Thomas and Ann had returned to Leith and once more it had a special passenger aboard. And once again, this exciting news was reprinted from Inverness to London and from Cambridge to Belfast.
That winter, John exhibited the selfless kindness to others for which he was knows. Enjoying he snows that had fallen, and walking far beyond Leith, he came across two young children whom he observed “to be suffering from the cold“. He took off his sealskin jacket, wrapped the pair of them in in it and carried them safely home to Leith. He refused all attempts at a reward, not thinking himself having done anything remarkable. It was on another winter walk that John’s adventures took an interesting new direction, for who should he by chance bump in to but one Alexander Nasmyth; pupil of Alan Ramsay and one of Scotland’s foremost landscape and portrait painters at that time. Nasmyth recognised John by his dress, and having once drawn a set of native clothing that had been brought to Scotland he was keen to ingratiate himself. He invited John up to Edinburgh and had him sit for a portrait in return for providing him with drawing lessons. Nasmyth got his painting, now part of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, and John got his lessons, proving to have a natural talent and be a quick learner. He was the first Inuit to recieve formal art training, although he came from a rich artistic culture.
John Sakaeus (Sakeouse) by Alexander Nasmyth, c. 1817, CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland
It was through the well connected Nasmyth that John’s life took its next turn; he was introduced to the naval explorer Captain Basil Hall and his father, Sir James, the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The Halls were aware that the Admiralty was preparing an expedition to search for a Northwestern Passage, under fellow Scot Capain John Ross (later Sir John), and were quick to realise that having a native guide who could also act as a translator could prove invaluable to the mission. The Halls wrote to Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty, who agreed with them and asked for John to be sent to London if he was willing. John seems to have turned down offers of payment for his services, and was keen to join the expedition so long as it was not a ruse to send him back to the land of his birth.
In London, John ingratiated himself with his usual ease, and – having taken it with him – as usual thrilled the crowds with kayaking and harpooning displays in Deptford Docks. A trick that went down very well was to throw his harpoon, which he could do with great accuracy over 50 yards, and then follow it up with smaller “darts” with which he could hit the handle of the floating harpoon, time after time. Captain Ross and the Admiralty wasted no time in engaging John’s services, however it nearly wasn’t to be; in late March a stranger, who may have been an agent for the Aquatic Theatre, attempted to lure him away from the expedition and onto the stage, with offers of money and a considerable quantity of alcohol. The usually sober John almost succumbed to temptation, but on recovering his faculties and suffering his hangover thought better of it, apologised to Ross for his change of heart and stayed firmly on board and away from the dockside taverns thereafter. The Admiralty quietly ordered that he was to be kept on board and away from strangers thereafter.
Ross’s expedition departed London on board a small fleet of hired Hull whaling ships on 18th April 1818. Ross led on his flagship Isabella, with Captain Buchan on the Dortothea, Lieutenant Parry on the Alexander and the ill-fated Lieutenant Franklin on the Trent. Their search was for the Northwest Passage and the Bering Strait beyond, and part of the expedition intended to strike out for the North Pole. Their journey would find none of those destinations, but would take them further north than any British navigator had yet been.
“Portraits of the Vessels of the Polar Expedition of 1818”, an illustration by John Ross © Royal Museums Greenwich.
The convoy arrived off Greenland in mid-June. By the end of the month, they reached 70° North. This was Disko Bay, the land where John – or Jack as the sailors had taken to calling him – had been born 19 or 20 years before. John took take to his kayak, returning with specimens of birds for the expedition’s scientists, and also with a party of local Inuit he had contacted. Acting as a translator, he negotiated for a larger party of them to return with the gift of a dog sled for Ross. They were invited aboard for coffee and biscuits and shown around, had their portraits taken and further gifts were exchanged. An impromptu cèilidh was then held on the deck, with the Inuit dancing Scottish Reels with the seamen to the music of their fiddler. Ross describes John as acting as the “master of ceremonies”, calling out the dances. Catching the attention of a young woman in the Inuit party, “by far the best looking of the group“, John was given a lady’s shawl by one of the officers to present to her. She returned his affections with the gift of a ring, and Ross was in “no possible doubt [he] had made an impression on her heart“.
After the ball concluded with more coffee, the guests departed and John was permitted to escort them home and perhaps return with more specimens for the expedition. It was at this point however that he suffered an unfortunate accident; demonstrating a gun to some of the Inuit, he over-filled it with gunpowder under a mistaken assumption that he described himself as “plenty powder, plenty kill. Letting the weapon off, he could not handle the recoil and broke his collar bone. A search party had to be sent out to retrieve him when he did not return to the ship.
Ross’s ships (one ship is in the distance, on the right of the image) in the land of John’s birth at Disko Bay, an illustration by Andrew Skene, an officer and artist on the expedition
They did not linger here and continued north into Baffin Bay, intending on making an anti-clockwise navigation in search of the North West Passage. Ross made an illustration of his little flotilla as it moved carefully through the ice at 70°44′ North. They pressed on and at 75°25′ North they reached a bay that the Greenlanders call Qimusseriarsuaq. Although whalers had been here before, they hadn’t troubled to give it an English name, so Ross Christened it Melville Bay, after Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the man who had given Ross his first commission and a son of Edinburgh (for whom Melville Street is named).
“Through the Ice, June 16 1818, Lat. 70° 44′ N.”, an illustration by Captain Ross
The were able to sail as far north as 75°55′, before becoming trapped in the ice at the start of August and could go no further. It was with a great deal of skill, hard work and luck that they were able to extricate the Isabella and the Alexander, and now headed west around the top of Baffin Bay. An illustration made by Captain Ross shows this desperate scene.
“Perilous Situation of the Isabella and the Alexander”, illustration by Captain Ross
Soon they were heading south again and on August 9th 1818, the Isabella and the Alexander came to what Ross called Prince Regent Inlet. Here, at 75°55′ North, 65°32′ West, and with the unique help of John Sakeouse, they made first contact with what Ross called the Arctic Highlanders: the native Inughuit.
It was the Inughuit who spotted them first. By the time Ross’s lookouts spotted them in return, they took these men far out on the ice to be stranded whalers, and made for them. As they approached, they realised that they were natives travelling on dog sledges. When they came within shouting distance, John attempted to call to them in his language, but the men took to their sleds and fled. Boats were sent out and some gifts left on the ice for them. Ross also had the men make up a large flag showing the image of the sun and the moon, with an outstretched hand holding a spring of a native shrub in the manner of an olive branch (this western metaphor would of course have been completely lost on them.) This was run up a pole in a prominent position on the ice, to which was also affixed a bag of gifts and a large outline of a hand pointing to the ships.
The next morning a larger party of men returned with 8 sleds, stopping on the ice a mile short of the ships. The flagpole enticed the men and their sleds closer, but they remained cautiously 300 yards distant, apparently in conversation. It was at this point that John stepped in. Taking a bag of gifts, and a white flag (another hopeless symbol for communicating with people who had never encountered white men before), John strode out on the ice. Dressed in the garb of a western sailor, they had no idea who he was, or what his act of removing his hat meant, and as he approached they pulled a knife on him, implored him to be on his way and made it clear that they could kill him if needs be. In return, the ever placid John offered them a British-made knife in his possession, tossing it to them. On examining it, the men were impressed and pulled their noses, a sign of friendship. John pulled his nose too, and a rapport was formed. John now presented them with a string of beads and showed them a chequered shirt. This was not just the first time the Inughuit had met white men, it was their first exposure to a Kalaaleq, a western Greenlander. After some initial difficulty, John recognised their dialect as one an old woman who once nursed him had spoken, and was slowly able to communicate. Using his natural talents and the tuition in Western art acquired from Alexander Nasmyth, John would paint a picture to capture this scene, presenting it to Captain Ross.
First Communication with the Natives of Prince Regent Bay, as John by John Sackheouse and Presented to Captain Ross, August10th 1818
John, wearing the blue jacket, with his arm held in a sling and wearing a beaver cap, is seen holding the chequered shirt while two Inughuit inspect the other gifts he has presented them with, one of whom may be holding up one of the mirrors with which they were presented and which caused them wonder and delight. In the foreground, Captain Ross and Lieutenant Parry offer other gifts, receiving narwhal tusks in return. Another man is arriving on his dog sled, and two others are in the distance admiring the ships and a boat which had been hauled onto the ice for repairs. The Inughuit had never before seen a ship; indeed they were not seafaring people, had never seen a kayak and had no word for it, living entirely on the land and using dog sleds for travel and hunting. So it was with some difficulty that they were eventually enticed aboard onto these winged “Islands of Wood” (they had never before seen a shrub with a trunk wider than your finger, so the ships timbers were an incredible sight for them). The men were given a tour of the ship, before being convinced to sit in chairs (something they had never seen and whose purpose they did not understand) to have their portraits taken. They were offered ships biscuit, salt beef, plum pudding and Aquavit, all of which they thoroughly disliked.
Ervick, one of the Inughuit who met the Ross Expedition in 1818, an illustration by Captain Ross
With John acting as interpreter, they were able to learn that the Inughuit did not count beyond ten, that their knives were fashioned from iron extracted from a rock in the mountains, that they lived in family units by a form of mutual agreement between the husband and wife, but had sent their women and children into the mountains to safety; the menfolk had come forth only to ask the interlopers to leave. They had a chief – Tulloowah – to whom other families gave a tribute. They had no organised religion, but each family had a “sorcerer” who could be called upon to commune with the weather or supplies of animals for food. They had no concepts of weapons or war, or of lands and people beyond their own. They assumed that the white-faced Europeans must be some sort of ghost whose ships had flown down from the air. Before leaving, the Inughuit were presented with planks of wood that they had expressed a desire in possessing.
The Inughuit returned a few days later on the 13th of August and again on the 14th. This was a different party than those they had met before, and had come forth after seeing the gifts that the first had returned with and having received assurances that the “Islands of Wood” and their ghostly residents were not an immediate threat. More gifts were exchanged, and the leader of the party helped himself to Ross’s telescope, shaving razor and a pair of scissors, which Ross was pleased to overlook. Before their final departure, Ross gave them a portrait of the Prince Regent as a present for “their king”.
They now pressed further south and west, coming to Lancaster Sound at 74°19½’ North 78°33′ west at the end of August where he took a fateful decision. Imagining that he could see distant mountains (they were actually a mirage), he was convinced that there was no way further through by sea and turned around against the wishes of his subordinate Parry. So convinved was Ross, that he named this distant range – the Croker Mountains – and made a detailed landscape illustration of them.
Lancaster Sound, as seen from HMS Isabella, 3PM, August 31st 1818. The distant range of the Croker Mountains was a mere mirage. By Captain Ross
Ross now headed south along the western edge of Baffin Bay, taking detailed meteorological and astronomical observations, collecting geological and animal specimens and otherwise occupying the expedition now with science rather than their stated goal of seeking the North West Passage. By the end of September they were at Resolution Island at 61°30′ North and well out of the Arctic Circle, and Ross decided to end operations for the season and head for home. A month later, on October 29th, they sighted Foula, the westernmost island of the Shetland Archipelago. On November 14th they dropped anchor for the last time, in Grimsby Roads, and Ross set off at once for London and their Lordships of the Admiralty with his logs, journals, charts and letters.
Ross, unfortunately, did not find the hero’s welcome that he might have imagined. Instead, his subordinate officers challenged his decision to turn around in Lancaster Sound, and Parry was vehemently and publicly sceptical of the grounds on which Ross made that decision. The Admiralty were convinced by Parry and his conspirators that Ross’s findings were not to be trusted, and they organised an expediction for the following year, led by Parry, and on which Ross was not invited. The press lampooned him, a particularly scathing satirical cartoon showing him pompously leading his crew, all mutilated by frosbite, carrying back nothing but specimens of animals and rocks. The implication was clear; Ross’s expedition had been a failure and the scientific results and objects he returned with were worthless.
Landing of the Treasures or Results of the Polar Expedition!!! By George Cruikshank © The Trustees of the British Museum
Ross publicly praised John Sakeouse as “very intelligent and willing to learn as well as being grateful to those who instruct him. A man on whom the utmost dependence may be placed“. The satirist – George Cruikshank – unfortunately did not treat him with the same respect and credit that he merited. Instead he showed him as a deeply racist stereotype, a savage called “Jack Frost”, carrying a narwhal tusk, wearing a fur skirt, and clutching an album of his drawings. The sailors to his right, on wondering “what will they do with Jack Frost“, suggest he should have his throat cut and be stuffed. This was a sad end to the important expedition, and a cruel way to dismiss the contributions of John Sakeouse, which no other man could have made.
John Sakeouse, shown as the savage “Jack Frost”.
John did not stay long in London, and asked to be returned to his friends in Leith. Parry – although contemptuous of Ross – recognised the importance of John and arranged that he should be included again in the 1819 expedition. Unfortunately this was never to be.
John took ill at the start of the year with “a violent inflammation in the chest“. John Newton, the whaling master who had first been convinced to bring John to Leith, and his family nursed John through his illness. At first he seemed to improve, and despite doctor’s orders to the contrary – soon felt well enough to venture out in the search of fish, which he brought back to his lodgings to cook for himself.
A few days later however, he had relapsed into fever. He told his companions that his late sister had come to him in a fever dream and called to him, and that he knew now that he was dying. Calling for his Catechism – in the Danish language that he had been tutored in by missionaries – he grasped it “till his strength and sight failed him, when the book dropped from his grasp, and he shortly afterwards expired“. All of Leith mourned his loss, and a respectful funeral was arranged in the Canongate Kirkyard and paid for by his friends. “He was followed to the grave by a numerous company, among whom were not only his old friends and patrons from Leith, but many gentlemen of high respectability in this city“. His final resting place is not marked, but was given as “in the area 8 feet south of Fraser’s ground and 4 feet from the north walk“.
Approximate location of the last resting place of John Sakeouse. © Self
His possessions, including his sealskin clothing, were left to Captain Ross, who donated them to the Museum of the University of Edinburgh.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-01-21 · 00:11 UTC

København: the thread about the mysterious disappearance of an enigmatic, Leith-built sailing ship

This beautiful ship is the København. She plied the world’s oceans training young men and boys to become sailors, moving cargoes from port to port until one day, some seven years after leaving her builders in Leith, she disappeared and was never seen or heard from ever again. Her fate remains a mystery to this day.
Final fitting out in dry dock at Leith, dated 1921. This was probably to give her bottom a final inspection and coat of paint before handing over to her owners, as described in the Edinburgh Evening News in September of that year. © Edinburgh City Libraries
Despite appearances, the København was a creation of the 20th century; a five-masted Danish sailing barque and one of the largest sailing vessels ever built. Her primary duty was the training of officer cadets for the merchant marine. There is a tradition in a number of European countries, continued to this day, of carrying out such maritime education on purpose-built sailing vessels. To help pay her running costs she also served as a general cargo ship, long after steam had displaced sail as the primary motive power at sea. The early history of this ship is slightly confusing. She was part of an order for the Leith yard of Ramage and Ferguson by A/S Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni (the East Asiatic Company) of Copenhagen in 1913 for three large sailing barques with auxiliary motor power. This particular København, yard number 242, was to have have four masts but war intervened before she could be completed. After lying incomplete for 2 years her hull was purchased by the British Admiralty in 1916 and quickly completed as an oil storage hulk, named Black Dragon and towed to Gibraltar. Sold in 1922 to the Shell oil company, she remained in service there until 1960.
The modelmakers loft at Ramage and Fergusons in 1906. The three vessels being worked on are all large steam yachts of the type the yard was renowned for. © Edinburgh City Libraries
After the war Det Ostasiatiske Kompagni ordered a replacement ship of the same name from Ramage and Ferguson. This new København – yard number 256 – would have not four but five masts, displaced 3,960 tons gross, was 130m long (426½ feet), 15m wide (49⅓ feet) and had a draught of 8.2m (27 feet). Those masts were nearly 58 metres tall (190 feet) and could spread 5,200 square metres (56,000 square feet) of American cotton sails. For times when the wind was lacking or for manoeuvring in harbour she had a 4-cylinder, 650hp diesel engine specially imported from Denmark which could propel her at 6 knots. She could carry 5,200 deadweight tons of cargo or 8,100 cubic metres (288,500 cubic feet) of grain. On account of her size and towering masts she gathered much local attention; taking a walk to observe progress became the done thing to do about the burgh. She was launched – mastless – on March 24th 1921, watched by a large crowd that had assembled to see her huge white hull slide into the dock basin.
The launch of the second København, contemporary newspaper photograph from the Daily Record
The Great Dane, as the British press came to call her, was the largest sailing vessel ever built in the United Kingdom (excluding Brunel’s sail-assisted steamship Great Eastern. Two other Clyde-built ships were marginally longer, but København had a greater displacement.) She was the last of only seven 5-masted barques that have ever been built and ranks in the top 20 largest sailing ships – by length and displacement – ever built.
After launch and fitting out at Leith Docks, 1921. The masts are stepped but there remains much work to be done © Edinburgh City Libraries
She was fitted with a generator to power electric lighting throughout and a wireless (radio) set with a 400 mile range. Her regular complement was 26 officers and men along with somewhere between 45 and 60 cadets, aged between 14 and 20. In addition to her master, her crew included 4 mates, a doctor, 2 engineers, 3 cooks, 2 boatswains, a carpenter, a sailmaker and a wireless operator. At the the rear – the “poop” – of the ship, was her main saloon, captain’s and officers quarters, staterooms, wireless room and infirmary. The rest of the crew and the cadets were accommodated in a deckhouse amidships. At her figurehead she had a sculpture of the 12th century Danish warrior bishop and founding father of the nation, Absalon.
Close-up detail of the proud figurehead of Absalon on the prow
She left Leith for her trials in the Firth of Forth on September 28th 1921 under the command of Commander Niels Juel-Brockdorff of the Royal Danish Navy. Again large crowds assembled to watch the spectacle; it took four tugs to tow her out from the shipyard stern first before turning her around so that she could begin to move under her own power.
The København was brought carefully down the harbour, and the spectators had an opportunity of seeing to great advantage the graceful lines of the ship, its fine figurehead, and other decorative effects. Flags were fluttering gaily from the mastheads, and altogether an exceedingly pretty picture was presented as it passed down between the piers, its size contrasting strikingly with that of the attendant tugs.
Report on the departure in The Scotsman, 29th September 1921
After trials she headed straight to sea and on to a welcome in her home port of Copenhagen before embarking on a circumnavigation of the globe during which time she sailed 38,326 miles, not returning home until 7th November the following year. The ship was now gone from Edinburgh and Leith, but not forgotten. For the next few months one of the most popular shows at the Synod Hall on Castle Terrace starred the København as a feature in Poole’s Myriorama; a panoramic picture and special effect show.
Painting of the København at sea by Peder Christian Pedersen. CC-by-SA 4.0 Hesekiel
In October 1925 she came close to catastrophe when she caught fire in the English Channel en route for Melbourne from Danzig with a cargo of timber. The fire started in the cabins at the rear of the ship, destroying much of her fine wooden fittings, but she was able to to put safely into Plymouth. After repairs she was able to carry her load to Australia without further ado. In 1927, en route from Liverpool to Chile via the Panama Canal, she lost a propeller blade on the Pacific coast of South America and had to put into Calloa in Peru to repair.
København in dry dock in Australia, photo from the Edwardes Collection of the State Library of South Australia
On September 21st 1928, the ship departed the Danish port of Nørresundby under the command of Captain Hans Anderson carrying a shipload of chalk and cement for Argentina. It would prove to be her final departure from home. Arriving safely in Buenos Aires on November 17th 1928, she then waited in that port for 4 weeks for an onward cargo for Australia. None was forthcoming and so the captain decided to leave empty for Melbourne, where he could load with wheat, and departed on December 14th. Depending on the source there were either 60 or 70 souls aboard, including 45 cadets, on a trip that was expected to take around 45 days. Eight days later she passed the Norwegian steamer William Blumer some 900 miles to the west of the islands of Tristan da Cunha and the two ships exchanged signals, København indicated that all was well and the cadets were preparing to celebrate Christmas as they passed south of the Cape of Good Hope. This proved to be the last time she was ever seen or heard from ever again.
The last voyage of the København (approximate) showing the route east from the River Plate, across the South Atlantic and southern Indian Ocean to Australia.
However there was no immediate cause for concern. Captain Anderson had a reputation for taking a “minimalist” approach to using his radio and sailing journeys could easily take far longer than scheduled if the winds were unfavourable. Thus when København did not arrive in Melbourne on schedule nobody raised any alarm. By February 1929, the East Asiatic Company was sufficiently concerned to begin making enquiries with Lloyd’s of London for any information concerning their now long overdue vessel, but it was not until early April 1929 that they finally raised the alarm. The British Admiralty were approached for assistance and the search and rescue operation which now followed has been called “the longest, farthest reaching and most costly in the history of maritime service“. The Admiralty spread the word amongst British shipping and arranged for the Liverpool firm of Alfred Holt and Company to diverted their steamer Deucalion from Cape Town to make a search of potential landfall in southern latitudes on which the missing Dane could either have become bound or wrecked upon. These were the remote Price Edward Islands, the Crozet Islands and Kerguellen. The Admiralty also lent an experienced navigator, a high-powered wireless set and two operators to man it. The East Asiatic Company dispatched their own motor vessel, Mexico, to make her own search.
København , photo from the Edwardes Collection of the State Library of South Australia
In May, news was received from the searching steamer Halesius out of Tristan da Cunha that an English preacher on that island, Philip Lindsay, claimed that he and others on the island had sighted, on January 21st, a five masted sailing ship with a white band round its hull approaching the islands. This apparition came from the south and her first two masts were seen to be broken. It then disappeared from their view towards a part of the island that was inaccessible. Objects were later found washed up on the shore but they could not conclusively be proved to have come from København. Lindsay told The Times:
The sea was rough for our boats and we could do nothing but watch her gradually crawl past and run inside the reefs to the west of the island. She was certainly in distress. She was using only one small jib [sail], and her stern was very low in the water. I estimated that she was within a quarter mile of the shore when we last saw her.
Philip Lindsay, eyewitness
The Halesius made a search of the rocky and unpopulated Gough Island to the south of Tristan, but found nothing and so carried on her way. The master of Halesius put his ship into Montevideo on June 22nd and caused a minor sensation when he was quoted by the press as having found the ship’s wreckage. He had, however, made no such claim and it was a reporting error that had mixed up facts. On the same day it was announced that the Australian steamer Junee, in Sydney, and the Norwegian motor ship Lars Risdahl, in Cape Town, had both been chartered by the East Asiatic Company to carry on the search in the Southern Ocean. They were also diverting the Mexico to Tristan to make a thorough investigation of her own, just in case.
The Halesius in her former guise as the Lord Cromer in 1912, whose sensational attribution to have located the København was unfounded. © National Museums Liverpool MCR/39/17
The intensive search continued for the next two and a half months. The Mexico returned to Cape Town in the middle of July and her master spoke to the London Daily News. He told the reporter that it was his belief that the ship had washed up on the lonely desert coast of southwestern Africa and that he was refuelling before heading off on that particular search course. Every coastline and grid square was combed before the company reluctantly called off the operation on September 9th 1929, some nine months after the København had last been seen. She was officially declared missing by Lloyd’s of London on January 1st 1930. But as hope dwindled, interest in the disappearance was if anything even more widespread with the passing of time and lack of evidence.
Various theories for her imagined loss were advanced. Had she collided with ice floes and been abandoned by her crew? But ice was unlikely to have been encountered if she had passed Tristan da Cunha, so had she become lost and icebound in the Southern Ocean? Some said that the observers on Tristan were mistaken; they had not seen the København at all. No, the much more rational explanation was that they had seen the renowned South Atlantic ghost ship, the Phanton Barque. Did the København capsize in a sudden squall under her immense spread of canvas due to the lack of a heavy cargo in her hold to provide a low centre-of-gravity? This would certainly have given no time for lifeboats to be launched. Others said the ship had simply been swallowed by the ocean, it was well known amongst mariners who had sailed in the Southern Seas just how the mountainous seas and roaring winds could do such a thing. Yet others thought she would still be afloat, drifting aimlessly in the oceans, “a plaything of wind and current, a toy of unmerciful Neptune“, just waiting to be discovered.
Public interest inevitably began to wane but in April 1934 a Captain Soderlund, of the Finnish-flagged grain ship Lawhill which had just arrived in Adelaide, told newspapers that he had sighted wreckage from the København floating in the Great Australian Bight but had failed to retrieve it. Then in September 1934 the New York Times reported that a message in a bottle that had been picked up by a whaling ship on the Bonvel Islands. The message reputed that the ship had been blown into the Antarctic and the crew and boys put ashore on the ice, to watch their ship be driven by the winds to her destruction. It quickly transpired that the “diary” entries found in the bottle were copied out of a Spanish novel by a Danish journalist who passed them off as genuine.
We know our boys are dead, but it is terrible not to know how and why and where the tragedy happened. Perhaps, too, there are some who cherish a faint hope against their better judgement that some day they will come back
A statement from the parents of the lost cadets, reported in the Daily Herald, October 4th 1934
On 11th December 1934 the Belfast Telegraph reported that a Norwegian yacht, the Ho Ho, and her four man crew had arrived in Montevideo after a year long voyage across the Atlantic to search up and down the coast of South America for any signs of the København. Only three days earlier it had been announced that Ramage & Ferguson had gone into voluntary liquidation after years of financial suffering in first the post-war shipbuilding recession and then the Great Depression. One of the last ships completed by them had been the Mercator, a three-masted sail training ship for the Belgian government.
Denmark still has a national sailing training ship, the Georg Stage. Somewhat appropriately, this 1935-built ship visited Leith Docks in April 2022 and tied up alongside Ocean Terminal: a shopping centre built on the site of the Ramage & Ferguson yard.
Georg Stage arriving at Leith in April 2022, with the former royal yacht Britannia and Ocean Terminal in the background © Self
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-01-04 · 13:22 UTC

The Primrose Lady of Lady Fife’s House: the thread about the Ninth Day of Christmas

This part in the Edinburgh and Leith themed Twelve Days of Christmas thread is preceded by a post about the “Maiden Castle”.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; Ladies (dancing). There are many options to choose from with respect to Edinburgh and Leith placenames – there’s at least 16 sets of street names with a Lady or Ladie in them in the book of Edinburgh place names. I shall go somewhere close to home with Lady Fife (sometimes spelled Lady Fyfe) who lent her name to a house, a “brae”, a well, and a street in Leith. Lady Fife was Dorothea Sinclair (1739-1818), wife of James Duff, 2nd Earl of Fife.
Dorothea Sinclair. Picture from the collection of Aberdeen University
Lady Fife’s House was more commonly known as Hermitage House and had been completed prior to 1744 in the lands of Coatfield Mains, just to the south of Leith Links between the roads to Lochend and Restalrig. The origin of the Hermitage name is unclear, but when the house was built, it was advertised as being the house “large new house in Hermitage Park“, which suggests the name was already known for the area, and was not taken from the house itself. It was described as having “Kitchen, 12 fire rooms, garrets, closets and other conveniences, all neatly and substantially finished, with a stable, hay loft and brewhouse, and other offices“. In January 1744 it was advertised for sale in the Caledonian Mercury and described as “new built” and extending to 42 acres of lands. It was at this time the property of the estate of the recently deceased Thomas Mercer of Binhall; his widow, Elizabeth Jamieson, was then still resident in it.
Lady Fife’s House, or Hermitage House, from a painting hanging in Leith Library
The house continued to be advertised for annual let from 1753 to 1760 (it’s unclear if it was formally occupied during this period) and was optimistically described as being “newly finished” at least 16 years after completion! Lady Fife had bought the house in 1794 after she separated from her husband as a result of there being no legitimate heirs (and probably helped by him siring numerous children through extramarital affair). One of the main conveniences of the house was said to be “a pipe of fine water brought into the kitchen“, making it one of the first houses in Leith to have running water. It’s not clear if the water came from the new public supply for Leith from Lochend Loch or if it was tapped off of the well of the name Lady Fife’s Well opposite the house on Leith Links. A large rookery is described as being kept in the grounds.
The distinctive cruciform footprint of the mansion, with four detached wings arranged around the main building, is clear on Roy’s Lowland Map of the 1750s, the house would have been relatively new at this time.
William Roy’s Lowland Map of Scotland, c. 1755, centred on Hermitage House. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
It is described as having “three pavilions, presently used for summer lodgings“, which I assume account for three of the 4 structures at the end of the “arms” extending from the main block of the house. It also had a walled kitchen garden that grew fruit trees and 8-20 acres of grazing.
John Ainslie’s 1804 Town Plan, showing Hermitage House. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
You will notice that in the 1804 map above, the land ownership is recorded as “Miss Primrose” (the same is true in the 1817 town plan also). This is on account of Lady Fife’s mother being Margaret Primrose, Countess of Caithness; Dorothea had obviously foregone using the title of her philandering husband – at least for the purpose of land ownership. She gives this family name to the current day Primrose Street which is just to the west of where the house once stood.
Ordnance Survey 1849 Town Plan, showing detail of Hermitage House.
By 1839, the house was in the possession of the Wood family, merchants and shipowners of Leith. The end of the Wood line of ownership was Miss Mary Wood, who died there in 1871 age 80. She left a huge legacy, including £1,000 for the Leith Ragged School, £2,000 each for Leith Hospital, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the Blind Asylum and £15,000 for the reconstruction of St. James’ Episcopal Church and school on Constitution Street. These bequests alone totalled c. £3.3 million today.
The grounds of Hermitage House were once filled with many species of hardwood trees, but this land was gradually swallowed up by building – the first plots, those along the Lochend and Restalrig Roads, were advertised for sale for “building houses upon” as early as 1771. On these plots were built villas including Upper Hermitage, Hermitage Hill, Hermitage Cottage and Hermitage Park. A row of Georgian villas – Hermitage Place was built along the Links. In 1868 the trees of Upper Hermitage were cut down to be replaced by the model streets of the “Lochend Road colonies” houses that took their name; Oakville, Ashville, Thornville, Woodville, Woodbine, Elmwood and Beechwood Terraces. The Hermitage House itself was demolished about 1877 and the Edinburgh Cooperative Building Company was granted a warrant in October 1878 to complete the Leith Links colonies houses on the site (Rosevale Place). Hermitage Park went around 1910, when new tenements were built on Lochend Road and a new public school taking the name Hermitage Park was built on the parkland.
The building around and then over the site of Hermitage House in three old maps; 1849, 1876 and 1882.
In Lady Fife’s day, she was reputed to be fond of taking a walk on Leith Links. Outside the gates of her house, a public well took the name Lady Fife’s Well. The Ordnance Survey Name Book of 1852-3 records the well as “a spring on the east side of the Links near to Hermitage House, [which] was a favourite walk of Lady Fife residing in Hermitage House“. Beyond the well was (and is) the raised mound of earth given the optimistic title of Lady Fife’s Brae (the latter word being the Scots for a hill, and usually a steep one).
Lady Fife’s Brae, from the Story of Leith by John RussellLady Fife’s Brae. CC-by-SA 2.0 Jim Barton
So what is the brae? Is it natural or man made? The Ordnance Survey marked it as an antiquity, “Remains of Pelham’s Battery” on the map of 1849. Pelham’s Battery, or Mount Pelham, was one of three English siege-works constructed as artillery firing platforms during the siege of Leith in 1560. It was named after its commander, Sir William Pelham. The Ordnance Survey Name Book says of it: “An ancient fort said to have been thrown up by the English Army at the Seige of Leith, it is situation about one chain west of Lady Fife’s Well“.
Field Marshall Sir William Pelham, Lord Justice of Ireland in 1577, by Hieronimo Custodis
The naming authority was quoted as the antiquarian, Dr. David Henderson Robertson. Robertson had produced in his 1850 book, The Sculptured Stones of Leith, a map showing the hypothetical arrangements of the fortifications of the town during the siege of 1560. It was in this book that Robertson determined that the two remaining “braes” on Leith Links were the remains of the 16th century siege batteries.
Robertson’s Map of 1850
Unfortunately Robertson’s map is only partially correct and wrong in a number of respects. The outline of the fortifications he shows is directly contradicted by numerous earlier maps, including a contemporary and accurate one made during the siege. The latter map also accurately shows the siege positions, and that these do not correlate with the mounds on the Links. The mounds are much too close to the walls of Leith for instance, and they are much too small. Plotting the locations of the English siegeworks onto a modern map, based on the contemporary map evidence and subsequent research, puts Mount Pelham (reputed to be Lady Fife’s Brae) on the slopes to the south of Hermitage House. Mount Somerset was categorically not the Giant’s Brae on the Links, but in the grounds of Pilrig House.
Siegeworks of the Siege of Leith in red. The defensive walls are in green. Mount Pelham – that to the right of the image – is much larger and further south than “Lady Fife’s Brae”, where the modern streets of Ryehill and Cornhill now stand.
So if Lady Fife’s Brae isn’t the last remains of an artillery fortification, what is it? I think a far more logical explanation is that these are natural. The Leith Links are an ancient raised beach system; the earliest illustration I can find of them is from a painting by David Allan in 1787 showing William Inglis, captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers who played that game on them. We can see Inglis is standing atop a prominent mound, with the spire of South Leith Kirk, the cones of its glass kilns and North Berwick Law in the distance. This means we are looking north across and the view is over an obviously uneven landscape.
The 1804 Ainslie and 1817 Kirkwood maps both also show the area to be extremely lumpy and bumpy, with many prominent hillocks. The most simple explanation is that when the Links was was being flattened and landscaped in the 19th century these two most prominent mounds were left behind because local lore – supported by Antiquarians – attached a historical significance to them. This is backed up by a letter of 1888 to the Leith Herald, which writes of the intention of Leith Town Council to “level the Links” as “the holes and pitfalls are still so numerous there is a chance of breaking one’s leg if there is a deviation from the pathway“. The author of this letter notes that two “braes” – those of the Giant and Lady Fife – were to be excluded, for what he called a mistaken, sentimental idea of their heritage. He thought they should also be levelled!
Kirkwood’s Town Plan of 1817 showing just how hillocky the Links then were. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Unfortunately, Robertson’s theories have been taken as fact and the story of the two mounds on Leith Links being Marian siege-works have lasted the test of time. Many books have reproduced this story in good faith and the official monument plaques in the park also use this attribution. That doesn’t mean the “braes” aren’t interesting, it’s just not for the reasons that are most commonly assumed.

The Edinburgh and Leith-themed Twelve Days of Christmas Thread continues with a post about Lord Russell Place and Lord John Russell.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#christmas #fortifications #hermitagehouse #january2 #ladyfife #leith
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-12-19 · 12:44 UTC

The thread about the excavation of parts of Edinburgh’s old cable tramway system from beneath Leith Walk, what the various pieces of ironmongery were and how it all worked

This thread was originally written and published in bits and pieces between 2000 and 2022 as bits of tramway came out of the ground. It has substantially re-written here to create a coherent story.

In a previous post I covered how (and why) Edinburgh came to use cable-hauled trams in the 1880s and why Leith didn’t, and also some basics of how that system worked.
The principal of operation of a cable hauled tramway is quite simple. Between the tram tracks is a slot, in which there runs an endless loop of moving cable. The cable is powered by steam engines in a winding house, from where it runs around the system under the streets on an ingenious (and complex) series of pulley wheels. The tram car is fitted with a pair of grippers which slide into the slot; to move forward it grabs the cable with a gripper and to stop it releases the cable and applies its brakes. To move across junctions, between different cables or to pass subterranean obstructions such as pulley wheels, it can perform an elaborate ceremony whereby it grabs and releases different cables with the front or rear grippers – often with a little bit of gravity assistance.
1882 American diagram of a hypothetical cable tramway system. The winding house with its steam engines, gearing and cable drums is towards the top. The cables exit the winding house in a tunnel under the street and then head off around the system in the slot between the tracks, guided by a large system of pulleys.
One of the most common finds has been sections of old tramway rail. A tramway rail differs from a railway rail in that the rail has a flat top with a groove in the middle of it for the flange of the wheel to run in; a railway rail has a domed top and the wheel flange hangs over the side. The rails were relaid when the move was made from cable traction (or in Leith’s case, horse) to electric, so none of the dug up rail sections will be from cable days.
Tram rails on Leith Walk, notice the dark line on the top which is the groove for the wheel flange to run in. © self
The next most common item that was seen during excavations were the U-shaped cast iron “chairs” that formed the supporting base of the conduit structure in which the cable ran beneath the street surface. To better understand what were are looking at (and for, underground), a cross-section of a cable tramway is helpful, I can’t find one for Edinburgh so one from San Francisco will do as the two were fairly similar. The chairs are coloured yellow, and sat on the concrete base of the conduit.
San Francisco Cable tramway cross-section. The rails are coloured green; the horizontal ties in blue; the top of the conduit structure in orange; the supporting chairs in yellow; the small cable support pulleys in pink; and the cable gripper in red.
The Edinburgh system did not use the orange cast slot shown below; it used old rails laid on top of the cast iron chairs to form the slot. Additionally it did not have the small pink cable support pulleys; it used larger, 14inch diameter pulley wheels spaced every 50 feet.
Section of an illustration of a hypothetical cable tramway system, which seems very similar to the system in use in Edinburgh. Note the cable running through the conduit and over the support pulley
The picture below shows a pile of these iron chairs dug out from beneath Leith Walk, plus sections of old rail that had been used to form the horizontal ties. Notice the chairs are caked in old concrete, as they were set into the conduit when it was being poured.
Cable conduit support chairs, September 2021 © selfCable conduit support chairs, December 2020 © self
None of the cast iron chairs are complete; all are missing their top sections; cut and cracked off. However it was not the excavation works of 2021 that caused this, it were those of 1921! A a book kindly provided to me by Chris Wright has a photo of Hanover Street, c. 1921, on the cover. In this scene, a crowd watches workmen digging up the old cable conduit system during the switch over to electric traction (which was apparently the first use of pneumatic drills in the city). The caption explains that for ease, the workmen only removed the top section of the conduit chairs when removing them; the lower sections were left concreted into their bases. There are a couple of broken sections of chair in the pile of rubble below the boy with the cricket bat.
Edwin Catford’s Edinburgh, cover
The cables themselves were driven from the four winding houses at each of the tramway depots; Henderson Row, Tollcross, Portobello and Shrubhill (off Leith Walk). We see the Shrubhill winding house interior in the images below. The engines, each with two cylinders and producing 500hp, are in the foreground. They are connected to the cable system by the ropes strung between the pairs of enormous drums. The larger drums, in the back ground, were connected to the 10 foot diameter cable-driving pulleys.
Interior of Shrubhill winding house, seen from the side of the enginesInterior of Shrubhill winding house. The two wheels in the foreground are those that would drive the traction cables.
The cables were tensioned on weighted pulleys hung from the wall of the winding house, before exiting the building down a long tunnel from the winding house off Dryden Street at the northern end of the site to Leith Walk. The below photo shows the remains of one of these tunnels being demolished in the 1960s during works outside Shrubhill.
Brick arch of the cable tunnel on the right.
These tunnels ran to large brick chambers beneath the road surface and ran off up and down Leith Walk. Each cable required two pulleys; one for it on its outbound journey and one for it returning back to the winding house. Shrubhill drove two cables, so required two sets of these pulleys in chambers below Leith Walk. The diagram below shows the State Street Cable Car power station in Chicago. The winding engines are in yellow and drive 4 sets of cables. The red and blue cables head off right and left out of the power station. The two green cables are for different lines; they travel to the start of those lines “blind” (i.e. not pulling trams), which is why they are running in between the two sets of tracks, rather than between the rails like the red and blue cables. Each cable reaches the end of its line where it turns around and comes back to the power station. Shrubhill was very similar to this but drove only two cables; one for St. Andrew Square and Leith Walk, which also served the branch to Abbeyhill, the other for the Bridges to Newington.
The Street Railway Journal, 1889
The illustration below shows a cross section of those cables coming to and from the winding house down the tunnels, running around the pulleys in their chambers and then off around the network. The chambers are brick built, with arched steel plate roofs. This is a conceptual railway, but has two driven cables, rather like Shrubhill. Notice the return pulley is inclined so as to be able to sit underneath the outward pulley.
Cables to and from the winding house and running around the large underground pulleys
The below images show the destruction of the brick walls of one of the Shrubhill pulley chambers under Leith Walk. The dark patches are not tunnels, the one on the left is a recess in the chamber walls and the other seems to be a previous collapse that had been filled in with concrete.
Leith Walk at Shrubhill, November 2020 © selfLeith Walk at Shrubhill, November 2020. Notice the cast iron chair section onwards the middle bottom of the photo © self
The image below, taken of the same overall excavation hole as those above, shows the huge steel roof section of the chamber – the frame is almost identical to drawings of one for the terminal pulley of one of the Henderson Row cables. There is a supporting structure of steel I-beams that would have sat on the brick walls and foundations, and the metal sheet sections forming the roof on which the road surface lay. The large pulleys that directed the cables in and out of the tunnels to the winding house sat directly below this.
Shrubhill cable chamber roof structure, November 2020 © self
These chambers, and others around the system (particularly where there were junctions) were manned to make sure the cable was running properly. Children were in the habit of tying a can to a piece of string, then dropping the loose end into the slot in the road, where it would catch the cable and be dragged off up the road creating an amusing racket. If there was any snag or derailment of the cable, they would phone back to the powerhouse, who would disengage the cable until it could be reset or re-spliced, or the offending item untangled from it.
The excavations here also uncovered the structure of the railway tunnel under Leith Walk, where the North British Railway passed beneath. This was incredibly close to the surface (as a result of the tunnel being built after the road surface, and the Town Council refusing to allow the road level to be raised where it passed overhead); the outer skin of the tunnel is about only 30cm or a foot below the surface. Indeed, a special system had to be devised here to support the new tramway as there was not enough space to fit the standard concrete track slab. You will notice a large trough in the tunnel structure here. This, I think, is where the cable for North Bridge to Newington ran, as it was not used for traction purposes here and is described as “running blind” as far as Picardy Place, where it came in to use to go up Leith Street.
Leith Walk railway tunnel, May 2021 © self
The shallowness of this tunnel totally precludes the urban myths of any tunnels under the road running up Leith Walk towards Elm Row from Shrubhill. Those tunnels are actually a single passageway, just large enough for a man to walk up, that ran under the pavement from Mcdonald Road up to Picardy Place, which was to carry the first electricity cables into the city from the McDonald Road Power Station.
When Edinburgh moved to replace its entire horse-drawn tramway with the cable system across the city, for various reasons Leith declined. Up until the last minute, it had been hoped and assumed that a compromise could be reached and that Leith would join; but it declined to do so. The Shrubhill winding house had a third winding drum for a cable round the Leith rails, but it was never used. Instead, the cable ran from the winding house at Shrubhill, turned left down the hill to the municipal boundary at Pilrig Street, and then ran back up the hill towards Edinburgh again. This meant that passengers had to change onto a Leith tram to proceed any further north (and vice versa). This 24 year inconvenience became known as the Pilrig Muddle. In the below photo, an Edinburgh cable car loads its passengers at the terminus of the line at Pilrig Street. In the background, the electric cars of the Leith system wait for the exchange of passengers heading the other way. exactly where this pit is.
The Pilrig Muddle © Edinburgh City Libraries
There was another one of these awkward interchanges on the network, at Joppa, which I like to call the Joppa Jumble. Here the cable line from Portobello met Musselburgh’s electric system and again a change had to be made for through travel. But this was at least at the network end, not the middle of a principal route, and traffic here was much lighter
https://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmightycat/5967127413
The terminus of the cable car lines was always on a short, single line siding of track on a slight incline. If the terminus was a downhill incline; the car would disengage from the cable and run by gravity into the siding, where it would pick up the cable running back the other way with its other gripper. The process was reversed for an uphill terminus; it ran into the siding on the cable, and ran out of it by gravity to the return cable. This was required as the cable could not be gripped where the it ran around the huge terminal pulley to change direction. This is shown by the diagram below, where the terminal pulley is in blue, inclined so as to fit below the street surface. The cable (red and white dashed line) is guided to and from it by the orange pulleys.
Terminus of the Edinburgh Northern tramway from Henderson Row.
Much excitement erupted at the Pilrig Muddle in August 2021 when unexpectedly (considering this shoul dhave been discovered way back during the first round of tram works), an almost completely intact terminal pulley chamber was uncovered, with not one but two huge pulleys, each totally complete and in remarkable condition. Both were still sitting on their original bearings, just as they had been left almost exactly 100 years before when they were covered up and forgotten about!
Side view of the Pilrig terminal pulley chamber and pulleys © selfOne of the terminal pulleys, approximately 8 feet in diameter. Photo Credit: ACamerunner / @aljaroo1874
The Pilrig Muddle pulleys are unusual for two reasons. Firstly, they are mounted vertically, usually they were horizontal. Secondly, they are back to back, which makes little sense for the terminus of the line. I suspect they are vertical as the street is narrower here, so there was less room to fit them in horizontally. And I think there are two back to back in anticipation of the cable being extended down Leith Walk into that burgh (which of course never happened). The red pulley on the right would have returned the Edinburgh red cable back up Leith Walk to Shrubhill. The blue one on the left would have returned the blue Leith Walk cable back down to the Foot of the Walk. If the cable had been extended to Leith, at Pilrig trams coming uphill from Leith would have swapped from the blue to the red cable here as they crossed the civic boundary. Because Leith was never added to the cable system, if I am correct the blue pulley would therefore never have been used.
Side view of the Pilrig terminal pulley chamber and pulleys © self
The below animation shows how a car would have swapped cables here. A car travels with its front gripper engaging the cable. As it approaches the end of the cable, it is released before the gripper gets dragged into the pulley. To move onto the next cable it can either use its momentum (known as a “fly shunt”), can use gravity if it is running down hill, or it can push itself off the cable onto the next one by using its rear gripper. When the front gripper is over the next cable, it can be re-enaged and the car sets off again. This was a laborious (and potentially hazardous) process, so by design a cable car network keeps junctions and switching between cables to a minimum.
Swapping cables © self
If you look closely to the left of the archaeologist squatting on the ground peering into the chamber you can see the conduits for electrical wires on the wall along with a box. This is either for electric lighting or the communication telephone.
Electrics in the Pilrig pulley chamber © self
Pilrig was not “de-muddled” until 1922 after the amalgamation of the Burgh of Leith and its Tramway into that of the City of Edinburgh. Edinburgh quickly decided to adopt the electric system of Leith and rapidly converted one to the other. The picture below shows the Muddle being converted. A cable car has reached the terminus at Pilrig Street and is about to return back up the hill. You can see the slot between the tracks for the cable. The tracks on the right are being relaid for the electric trams and a new junction to connect down the Leith Corporation tracks on Pilrig Street is being incorporated. The centre poles for the overhead wires are already in place. I suspect the reason that the Pilrig pulley chamber was left in such good condition, with its pulleys still in situ, was the speed with which the switchover was made. There was no time to demolish the chamber, remove its pulleys and infill it. The new tracks were simply built over it and connected together one night to allow for running of the electric trams the next day.
De-muddling the muddle, 1922 at Pilrig Street looking up Leith Walk.
When Leith Corporation rebuilt its horse tramway for electric traction in 1904-1905, it constructed a large new depot on Leith Walk. This later became the Leith Depot of Edinburgh Corporation Tramways. Sadly the depot structure was demolished for no good reason about 4 years ago now, but the depot office building remains. During excavations at the rear of this, the brick outlines of inspection pits appeared, where the running gear could have been checked and maintained without having to lift the tram body off of it. The tram rails would have run along the top of these walls, see the lower picture for an example.
Inspection Pits at Leith Depot. These were only ever for electric cars © selfInterior of Leith Depot, pre-1920. © Edinburgh City Libraries
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#cabletrams #edinburgh #leith #pilrig #shrubhill #tram
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-11-29 · 01:08 UTC
The thread about Leith’s lost “Eagle Buildings” and what connects them to the building of the Forth Bridge

This thread was originally written and published in September 2020.
I saw a photo tweeted by the excellent Scran resource and was struck by the coincidence that I had looked the place up only a few days before when I had come across some other photos of it on Flickr.
https://twitter.com/Scranlife/status/1308652327373606912?s=20&t=RiEzrm-6XhDoBt2_yhUtig

The Eagle Buildings were at 5 Tower Street in Leith, next to the Sailor’s Home (now Malmaison Hotel).
Animated Now-And-Then transition of the Eagle Buildings (a 1970 photo by John R. Hume) overlaid on the current street view.
Here they are in 1992, when it was being used as a workshop and store by a shopfitter. The photographer suggests demolition was in 1997.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/cagiva1994/14016906377/
Most of that “sandstone” front was mock and was actually a showcase of the Portland cement wares of its occupants, Currie & Co. Ltd, Building-Trade Merchants in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leith and across the Scottish central belt.
The Eagle Buildings at 5 Towers Street on an 1892 Goad Insurance Map, which focuses on the construction of buildings and what occupies them. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Currie & Co, Ltd. had been incorporated in April 1898 by the merger of two similar building supply and cement merchant businesses owned by John Patrick Currie:
- Currie & Co. of Glasgow, founded in 1873, headquartered in Wellington Street. Subsidiary companies included the North British Asphalt Company, the North British Coal and Firewood Company and the Eagle Portland Cement Co. This is the eagle connection; it was a brand to sell cement.
- Joseph A. Currie & Co. of Edinburgh and Leith, founded in 1875 and headquartered in Bernard Street in Leith. This business had been bought in 1893 by John Patrick on the death of his brother Joseph Allan at the age of only 42.
This 1911 advert reveals that they had a lineage going back to the late 18th century through A. M. Ross & Sons, slate merchants in Glasgow.
1911 Perthshire Advertiser advert for Currie & Co.
The headquarters had moved from Glasgow to 19 Rose Street in Edinburgh around this time, that building too was called the Eagle Buildings and it remains so to this day. If you crane your neck and look up as you pass, you’ll see an eagle watching over you high above in its “eerie”.
19 Rose Street, Eagle Buildings
Joseph Allan Currie was born in Cupar, Fife, in 1851. At the age of only 21 he was appointed manager of the Waltham Abbey Gas Works in London. He returned north and settled in Leith two years later, bringing with him a new trade of Portland cement merchant. Cement was not manufactured in Scotland at the time, but was imported from the Medway. Leith was therefore the perfect base for such a venture. Joseph Allan added plaster of Paris, pavement stone, lime, fireclay and earthenware to this business, becoming a successful builders merchant, growing the business to become one of the largest in Scotland. In 1894 his company was reported as being the largest suppliers of roofing felt in the region; an increasingly popular product due to the increasing cost of roofing slate and timber.
His obituary described him as having “indefatigable energy, strong personality and business tact“. Joseph was remarkable as being the sole suppliers of Portland cement for both the Forth Bridge works and the ill-fated first Tay Bridge.
One of the piers of the Forth Bridge, the iron caisson would be lined with masonry, bonded by Currie’s Portland cement.
The construction of the Forth Bridge required some 20,000 tons of Portland cement, which was manufactured on the River Medway and was brought by sea to South Queensferry. Here it was transferred to an old hulk that Currie had purchased called the Hougomont; a ship that had been built in Burma as a convict transport for Australia. The Hougomont could store 1,200 tons of cement, which had to be stored for a certain number of days before it was used. When smallpox broke out amongst the workers in 1886, the Hougomont was moved to Port Edgar and used as an isolation hospital, helping the outbreak to be quickly dealt with.
The Hougomont moored off of one of the Forth Bridge’s stone piers
John Patrick Currie – born 1848 – continued to run the business and became the largest Scottish building merchant and cement distributor, Scottish agents for I. C. Johnson & Co. Isaac Charles Johnson and his business partner had painstakingly reverse-engineered existing cement products, improved them and then produced a different product that they were careful to make sure was not subject to existing patents.
Johnson & Co.s Portland Cement, London & Newcastle
An 1894 description of the company in a trade publication states:
The commodities which Messrs. Currie & Co. deal in principally are: Portland cement, Scotch and Irish limes, pavement, freestone, crushed granite, Arran sand, slates, fireclay goods, barytes, umber, plaster of Paris, whiting, &c. In all these lines Messrs. Currie & Co. hold large stocks, and are ready to meet any demands with promptitude. Their standing is accepted as a guarantee of quality, and they spare no effort to maintain their high reputation for reliable material. The business in every department receives the direct personal attention of its founder and sole proprietor, Mr. John P. Currie, a gentleman whose commercial capabilities are well demonstrated in the success that has attended this influential concern. The business in which Mr. Currie is now so actively engaged derives its support from a thoroughly representative and increasing connection, and continues to develop.
Rivers of the North – Their Cities and their Commerce.
It seems that the Curries named nearly all their properties Eagle Buildings, with at least 3 in Glasgow.
Currie & Co’s Eagle Buildings stables on St. James Street in GlasgowCurrie & Co.’s Eagle Buildings on Bothwell Street, Glasgow. Again an eagle is perched on top
John Patrick died at home in Edinburgh in March 1919 at the age of 71. After his death, the company seems to have moved its headquarters to another Eagle Buildings, this time in Dock Street, Dundee. By this time it was an agent for the Cement Marketing Company, which would eventually rename itself after its most famous product; Blue Circle Portland Cement. The company was still trading in 1953, after which the trail in newspaper archives goes cold.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret
#cement #currie #eagle #edinburgh #engineering #forthbridge
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-11-22 · 15:58 UTC

The thread about Leith shipping owners; industrial whaling, the penguins of Edinburgh Zoo and “Homes for Heroes”

Today’s auction house artefact is a painting of the handsome steam & sail ship SS Windsor of Leith off of Flushing in 1874 by Carl Ludovig Weyts (1828-1875), a Dutch artist. She carries the house flag of George Gibson & Co., a big name in Leith shipping that principally served the Low Countries trade. The Windsor was initially employed on the Leith to Antwerp run and was last noted in newspapers in 1899 when she landed the crew of a French hospital ship, St. Paul, who had been rescued off of Iceland after their ship ran aground and had worked their passage back to Leith.
Windsor of Leith, Capt T. Fulton, Passing Flushing, 1874
George Gibson & Co. was set up by the man of that name in 1820, he had previously been the general manager of the Leith, Hamburg & Rotterdam Shipping Co. His company acquired its first steamer, the Balmoral, in 1850.
An 1886 advert for Gibsons lists nine steam ships in service. Alongside Windsor there was the Abbotsford, Amulet, Anglia, Kinghorn, Mascotte, Osborne, Talisman and Woodstock all serving Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Ghent and Dunkirk from Leith. The naming of their vessels borrowed from the lore of Sit Walter Scott (this was a common fad at the time in Scotland) and their advertising played heavily on links to their principal destinations in the Low Countries, the illustration below shoing the flags of Belgium and Holland and people in national costume. .As late as 1964 the company was still advertising weekly sailings to Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Antwerp and Dunkirk from Leith.
George Gibson & Co. advert
There is an example of the George Gibson house flag in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, the colours below have darkened and the lower bar of the flag was blue as it was based on the national flag of the Netherlands.
House Flag of George Gibson & Co., 1950s, © National Maritime Museum
Gibsons were formed into a limited company in 1916 and on the death in 1920 of the last family owner of Gibsons, a joint parent company was formed, Gibson Rankine Line, with the interests of a number of other Scottish commercial shipping companies; J. T. Salvesen & Co. of Grangemouth, James Rankine & Sons of Glasgow and P. S. Nicoll of Dundee. This formalised a cooperation agreement for advertisement of services and sharing of traffic between these companies that had been in place since 1895. In turn, Gibson Rankine was acquired by the Anchor Line conglomerate in 1972 and had ceased to exist as a distinct subsidiary by 1976.
J. T. Salvesen of Grangemouth was founded in that port in 1843 by Johan Theodor Salvesen, the third son of the Norwegian shipmaster Thomas Salvesen (1787-1853) of Kristiansand. Johan Theodor first founded a business in Leith with a local partner, George Vair Turnbull, in 1846 as Salvesen & Turnbull. The business imported timber for pit props and railway sleepers and grain for distilling from Norway, sending coal and iron back from Scotland in return. They also dealt in Norwegian salted herring, a trade that returned healthy profits.
J. T. Salvesen house flag
Johan Theodor’s younger brother, Salve Christian (known as Christian), was brought over from Norway to help in this business and would take over in Leith, his elder brother running the Grangemouth business. The house flag was a red field with a white-bordered blue diamond in its centre and a white “S” centred within that. Johan Theodore died in 1865, the Grangemoth company passing on to his sons. Christian left the partnership with Turnbull in 1872 and set up on his own in Leith as Christian Salvesen & Co., focussing on trade between mines he owned in Norway and Leith, via Stavanger. His house flag was a Norwegian cross set in a diamond in the middle of a white field.
Christian Salvesen house flag
In 1883, Christian delegated control of the company to his eldest sons Edward T. and Theodore. By the turn of the 20th century the company was sailing between Leith and many Baltic and Scandinavian ports, to as far east as Malta and Egypt. They had also become heavily involved in supplying the North Atlantic and Arctic whaling stations in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes. In 1904 they moved directly into whaling, setting up a shore base at Olnafirth in the Shetland Islands. The company’s whalers would travel up to 200 miles into the Atlantic in the hunt for whales, which they continued to do until 1929.
Processing a whale carcass at Olnafirth. © Shetland Museum & Archives
A depression in the global shipping industry early in the 20th century saw whaling become an increasingly important part of the business, and its profits kept the company as a whole going. In 1907 they ventured into the South Atlantic whaling by setting up a station in the Falkland Islands, In 1909 a subsidiary of the company, the South Georgia Company, founded the port of Leith Harbour in South Georgia as a station closer to the whaling waters. It would become the largest of the seven such stations in South Georgia and Salvesens would eventually go on to become the single largest whaling company in the world.
Some of the Salvesen fleet at Leith Harbour, South Georgia. The factory ship Southern Opal is closest, with at least 8 whale catchers behind. © Edinburgh City LibrariesStripping whale carcasses at Leith Harbour, with the hut encampment of the “town” behind. CC-by-NC-SA 2.0, Edinburgh University Centre for Research Collections
Salve Christian Salvesen died in 1911. Up until 1914 the company’s funnels had been painted red, white and black stripes, but this proved to be too close to the colours of the Imperial German flag. When Salvesen’s steamer Glitra was sunk 14 miles off of Stavanger in October of that year by a U-boat they switched to the red, white and blue of the Norwegian flag. These new colours can be seen below on the preserved whale catcher Southern Actor, now a museum ship in Sandefjord, Norway.
Southern Actor in 2014, the worlds last surviving, functional steam whaler. CC Tore Sætre, @toresetrephoto
After WW1, Salvesens purchased the former Royal Mail steamer Carmarthenshire and had her converted into a whaling factory ship – the Sourabaya – with a stern ramp up which carcasses could be hauled, to be disassembled and processed on board. The factory ships could accompany the whale catchers directly to the hunting grounds and made the whole process more efficient; the whalers had shorter journeys back and forth to the factory ship rather than always back to the shore base, and the partially processed whales could be transshipped to the shore base for final processing and packing. The Sourabaya was used as a cargo ship during WW2 and was sunk by a German U-boat in the middle of the Atlantic in 1942.
The Sourabaya, Salvesen’s first stern ramp factory ship. PD, source Vestfold Fylkesmuseum Digitalt bildearkiv
Salvesens shipping losses during WW2 were particularly heavy for the size of the company. Seven of their ten tramp steamers were sunk; they lost sixteen from their fleet in total, from the 876 ton Glenfarg up to the 12,000 ton factory ship Salvestria. The Salvestria was lost within sight of Leith, bringing a cargo of processed whale blubber all the way from the South Atlantic; she hit a German mine off of Inchkeith in July 1940 and went down with ten of her crew; 5 British and 5 Norwegian. Nine of the company’s whale catchers that had been requisitioned for naval service would also be sunk. After the war, Salvesens began to made good their war losses and return to the South Atlantic whaling. They started by buying up war surplus naval corvettes – a type of vessel built on the hull of a commercial whale catcher and which was easily converted into one.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/scottishmaritimemuseum/48126941931/
Whale catchers were small vessels and did exactly what it said on their tin; they caught up with the whales and caught them by harpoon. They had no facilities for processing the carcasses, which were towed to the factory ships or places onshore like Leith Harbour. The company’s post-war factory ships were enormous, the Southern Venturer was one of two 15,000-ton monsters complete with helicopter, landing pad and hangar. These were built in 1945. We can now look back on this industrial whaling with the horror it deserves, but this was a big and profitable business in depressed economics of post-war Britain.
Southern Venturer, from the Salvesen Archive and Edinburgh University. Note the whale catchers, one alongside and the other in the distance, and the whale carcass being towed into the ship through the stern hatch.
But the company faced a problem of its own making; the extreme post-war modernisation of its whaling fleet was producing ever-diminishing returns; as they had become more efficient, the whale populations were ever more reduced. In turn, the whalers had to hunt further and further for longer and longer to try and find whales and it was ceasing to be a profitable venture. Salvesens now had an about turn in attitude and became a proponent of whale conservation; their whaling assets were sold in 1963 and the company’s “southern capital” at Leith Harbour was abandoned by 1965.
The rusty remains of Leith Harbour, South Georgia in 2007. PD – Markabq
The company was not without a replacement income stream for whaling however, they had been hedging their bets and had also dipped their toes into the Atlantic whitefish business. Again they turned to industrialisation and would revolutionise the industry in the early 1950s when they developed the first stern trawler freezer factory ships. These both trawled for the fish and also processed and packaged it for sale and kept it frozen so that they could be at sea for much longer periods. The first of these vessels was Fairtry I of 1952 and was the brainchild of Sir Dennis Burney who had approached Salvesens in 1948 with the idea. He had been experimenting with the concept and Salvesens quickly saw the potential, buying both his prototype trawler Fairfree and his business. Their experience in factory whaling ships and knowledge of the Nordic demand for fresh white fish made this a common sense business decision.
The revolutionary Fairtry I, built in Aberdeen for Salvesens in 1952
But once again, the company’s heavy technological investment started to produce diminishing returns. As the whales had disappeared so too did the once seemingly infinite shoals of Atlantic cod and haddock. With trawling now waning too, the company survived once again through reinvention and diversification. They moved away from traditional coastal shipping and focussed themselves in specific sectors such as bulk carriers, managing colliers for the Central Electricity Generation Board and in the North Sea oil offshore service industry. On land they moved into containerised distribution, frozen food and storage – all head-quartered in Leith and Edinburgh. I can clearly recall their lorries around town when I was young, carrying the house flag once sported by the company’s ships.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/88738529@N02/16044987670/
In 1986 the company listed itself as Christian Salvesen PLC on the London Stock Exchange and by 1989 took the decision to exit the shipping business entirely to concentrate on logistics and distribution. In 1997 it left its spiritual home Bernard Street in Leith behind for the East Midlands and Northampton. They did at least leave their flagpoles behind! This building at one time also co-housed the Norwegian Consulate.
Christian Salvesen’s former HQ on Bernard Street in Leith
Salvesens are now long gone from Edinburgh and Leith but they have left us behind a few reminders of their presence. The famous penguins of Edinburgh Zoo for instance were first brought back from South Georgia by Salvesen’s ships alongside 4 seals. They were captured by the Coronda in 1913 and arrived in Edinburgh on Sunday 25th January 1914.
Edinburgh Zoo King Penguins, CC-by-SA 3.0 SeanMack
On the banks of the sterile river basin of the Water of Leith, now cut off from the sea and shipping, a Salvesen’s harpoon gun is a bit of a curiosity and a reminder of Leith’s dubious role at the forefront of the 20th century whaling industry.
A whaling harpoon gun from a Salvesen’s ship, now a curious heritage objet on the banks of the sterile river basin of Leith CC-by-SA 3.0 Kim Traynor
The Salvesen family lost a number of sons and nephews in WW1 and after the war Edward T. Salvesen – by now Lord Salvesen – became involved in the Scottish Veterans Garden City movement; a scheme to build “Homes for Heroes“. In Trinity in Leith the SVGCA built a small housing scheme for injured ex-servicemen named Earl Haig Gardens (no comment on the appropriateness of that name.) on land that had been gifted by the Salvesen family, formerly part of the gardens of Salve Christian’s house of Mayfield . Plaques over the doors of some of the cottages commemorate the lost Salvesen men and relatives of some of the other benefactors.
Earl Haig Gardens2nd Lt. Eric Thomas Smervell Salvesen, died 23 April 19172nd Lt. James Harvey Bryson, died 20th October 1918Major James Norman Henderson, died 28th June 1915Earl Haig Gardens and memorial tablets
At Kaimes Crossroads the Edinburgh Ladies Committee of the SVGCA, led by Lady Salvesen, built a row of neat modern cottage houses for disabled ex-servicemen, with ELC plaques on the pediments.
SVGCA cottages at Kaimes Crossroads
Lord Salvesen died in 1942 but his family remained involved in the SVGCA. After WW2 they again helped finance the construction of SVGCA ex-servicemen’s housing, this time in Muirhouse. Salvesen Gardens is a pleasant little cottage housing scheme again laid out along Garden City sorts of lines. If you stroll around you will find commemorative or benefactory plaques by most doors.
Salvesen Gardens at Muirhouse, note the commemorative plaques.
And next to Salvesen Crescent are the former Lighthouse keepers cottages for the Forth shore station, built in 1951 for the Northern Lighthouse Board. These housed the keepers and their families who served the lights of Bass Rock, Bell Rock, Inchkeith, Fidra and the Isle of May. As the lights became automated these were later used as retirement housing for ex-Lighthouse keepers before being gradually sold into private ownership. This is really one of the most charming little bits of social housing Edinburgh has to offer. Small but perfectly formed and with a style that evokes the NLB‘s lighthouse keepers cottage style.
Salvesen Crescent, former Lighthouse keeper’s family housing
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-11-14 · 01:10 UTC

Blitz! The thread about WW2 air raids in Edinburgh and Leith

An air raid on Leith on the night of Monday April 7th 1941 saw extensive property damage caused in North Leith. But it wasn’t just bricks and mortar that suffered: three people were killed and 118 injured in the raid which makes it the 10th most deadly such event (by total casualties) in Scotland during the war.
Leith Town Hall (now the Theatre) commemorative plaque marking damage done in the air raid, original picture © Leith Theatre
Note, there was deliberately limited and non-specific press reporting of the details and casualties of air raids during the war itself. Some such reporting only took place, retrospectively, after the war but understandably details were occasionally incorrect or overlooked. For accuracy and out of respect I have endeavoured to cross-reference everything below that refers to individuals with the official civilian war death records of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Scotland’s People.
One of those who lost their lives in the raid that night was 17 year old Anstruther (Ernie) Smith, a delivery boy from 15 Graham Street who also worked as a messenger for the Leith ARP (Air Raid Precautions – civil defence). On hearing the sirens he had assisted his elderly neighbours to a shelter before reporting for duty at Leith’s Town hall a few streets away where Ferry Road meets Great Junction and North Junction Streets. It was here that he lost his life when a bomb landed nearby and exploded. He was fondly remembered in his community as someone who freely helped the elderly; checking in on them on his way to work each morning to light their fires and make them a cup of tea, and running errands for them. The Anstruther Pensioner’s Club was formed after the war in his memory, it was held in the very room in the Town Hall where we died and it attracted 300 members and a waiting list of 200.
Anstruther Smith, a photo displayed in Leith Library in his memory
Also killed by the same bomb that claimed Ernie was 85 year-old Jane Notman Young, who died in her house by the Town Hall at 21 North Junction Street. Lastly a 19 year-old apprentice draughtsman and Home Guard volunteer, Kenneth James Anderson, died in hospital the following morning after his house at 5 Largo Place was badly damaged in the blast. This block would later have to be demolished.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/15989027951/
Mercifully the death-to-injury ratio was substantially lower than other comparable attacks on Scottish cities; Leith had been hit by two bombs known as Luftmines – large weapons that were dropped on a parachute and intended for use against dock areas to attack shipping. These as it turned out were not very effective against other targets such as buildings, despite their size. Never the less, three hundred people in North Leith were rendered homeless due to the damage caused to housing in the neighbourhood. £1,500 was allocated to Leith from the National Air Raid Distress Fund, which provided emergency clothing, bedding and canteens to raid victims.
“Bombed Out”, illustration by War Artist Edward Ardizzone in April 1941 who was working in Glasgow and Edinburgh at this time. IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 1344)
The bombs that hit Leith damaged the three principal public buildings of the burgh; its Town Hall (which included its main public auditorium), its Library – both of which were hardly 10 years old – and the large David Kilpatrick (“DK“) School adjacent. As well as the tenement houses, the Norwegian Seaman’s Lutheran Church, North Leith Parish Church and a railway embankment and signal box of the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) all suffered varying degrees of damage. The gallery below shows some of these:
A photo showing the wrecked interior of the Leith Town Hall concert theatreDamaged interior of Leith Library during post-war repairs, 1953. © Edinburgh City LibrariesLeith Town Hall in 1957, the damage still not repaired after 16 years. From “The Sphere” magazine.Bomb damage of the “DK” school and annexe, a photo taken in April 1941 but not published until the war’s endBomb damage caused in Leith on April 7th 1941
The main lending room of the library was not fully repaired until 1956 although the reference room had been re-purposed to serve as such in the meantime. The Town Hall and its auditorium had to wait until 1961, a full 20 years after the bombs had fallen. The city’s apparent neglect in restoring the public buildings of Leith after the war caused much local consternation at the time. This damaged caused to the outbuildings of the DK school, which were in use as a nursery school, became known locally as the Bombies and was apparently where pupils would gather to sort out their differences with fists. It would not be replaced until much later and this in turn was demolished, along with the rest of the school, in the 1980s.
Luftwaffe night-time bombing map of Edinburgh, Lothians and south Fife. It is tinted yellow to be better viewed under the night-time cabin lights of an aircraft. Targets (Ziele) were marked in luminescent ink.
Although Leith was marked as a bombing target on German maps, the intended target of this raid had actually been Clydebank almost 50 miles to the west, where 20 souls lost their lives and 313 were injured that same night. This attack was a follow up to the Clydebank Blitz of March 1941 but the raiders had become scattered and twelve other targets across Scotland, including Leith, were hit that night with a total of 49 killed and 456 injured. Most of the deaths night were in Gretna in Dumfriesshire where a lone aircraft jettisoned its bombs and hit a Masonic Lodge, killing 22 and wounding 18. Other bombs were dropped as widely as Bankfoot and Stanley in Perthshire, Loch Nevis in Knoydart, Fife and Arbroath in the east of the country and Greenlaw to the south in the Borders; a huge margin of error. Closer to Leith were the mainline railway leading to the Forth Bridge near Turnhouse and Braehead House in Cramond with thirty four incendiary bombs between these points. These were 1kg aluminium tubes filled with a compound called Thermite which burned at around 2,500°C and were intended to set fire to wooden structures and the timber flooring and roof structures of buildings. These were a far cry from the ineffective rope and tar incendiaries dropped on Edinburgh and Leith by a German Zepellin in 1916.
WW2 German B1E 1kg incendiary, IWM MUN3291
Although this raid caused the greatest damage to property in Leith during the war, it was not the worst in terms of the loss of life. The previous summer, on the evening of July 18th 1940 at 7:45PM, seven people were killed on George Street in North Leith (now known as North Fort Street). At 8 George Street David Lennie Duff (a 33 year-old basket maker) and his sister Lily Duff (a 23 year-old biscuit packer); Catherine Helliwell (a 61 year-old housewife) and her son-in-law Robert Thomson (a 25 year-old baker); Catherine Fallon Baird (74); and Catherine Redpath (41) who had been visiting the address from her home at 20 Gorgie Road were killed. Over the street at number 13, 15 year-old Jane (Jean) Bauld Rutherford from number 17 was killed when the bomb shelter she was in was hit. The fatal damage had been caused by bombs intended for the Victoria Dock, one of which hit the foot of Portland Place where a nearby tramcar was fortunate to miss getting a direct hit that would surely have resulted in more fatalities.
Repairs at Portland Place. © Edinburgh City Libraries
Number 8 George Street, where six people had lost their lives, had to be demolished along with its neighbour at number 10 and was not rebuilt until 1959. The rest of the tenements of George Street – apart from the northern corner blocks – were later levelled by the city planners as part of the Fort Area Comprehensive Redevelopment not long afterwards.
The replacement flats for 8 George Street in Leith, a mid-century building replacing a Victorian tenement.
Four days later, on July 22nd, a raid on Leith Docks killed Robert Hume of 45 Glover Street (aged 33), a fireman with the Auxiliary Fire Service at the Albert Dock. Also on this night Mary Fulton Riach (aged 65) of 23 Woodbine Terrace and Catherine Leishman (aged 68) of 4 Meadowbank Crescent both died from heart failure during the raid, the official cause of death being put down to “war operations“. Two months later, on September 29th, a single stray bomb fell on the block of number 21 – 27 Crewe Place in East Pilton killing the young McArthur children; brother and sister Morag Elizabeth (aged 5) and Ronald Egbert (aged 7) from number 27. Their neighbour Charles Fortune Wilson (aged 69) of number 25 would die the next day in hospital. The landlords and builders of this housing scheme, Mactaggart and Mickel, rehoused the now-homeless survivors and had rebuilt the house at their own expense within 6 weeks. A wartime shortage of timber meant it was given a flat roof, the only such house on the street and the only clue to its sad history.
21-27 Crewe Place, with a flat roof compared to the pitched roof of its neighbours.
Another single, stray bomb dropped that evening hit a bonded whisky warehouse of the Caledonian Distillery on Duff Street in Dalry. The distillery was home to over a million gallons of highly-flammable spirit and an immense fire erupted, so ferocious that the reflection on the clouds in the night sky was apparently visible to German aircrew flying over Middlesborough, 150 miles (240km) away to the south. The bond was totally destroyed, as was one adjoining tenement of fourteen flats at 28 Springwell Place.
Firefighters damping down the remains of the Duff Street whisky bond.
A week later around 745PM on October 7th, five small bombs were dropped in the district of Marchmont, landing at 29 Roseneath Terrace, 20 Meadow Place, 16 Roseneath Place, 13 Marchmont Crescent and 21 Marchmont Road. Eleven people were injured by flying glass and splinters. Three weeks later on the morning of October 26th, Margaret Ridley Stuart (aged 72) died at her flat at 45 Tolbooth Wynd in Leith from a heart attack brought on by another air raid leaving her husband Thomas, a retired dock labourer, a widower.
Unusually, a photograph of the raid that caused damage in Marchmont was published in the newspapers at the time, under the vague caption of “Tenements Resist Bomb Blast… in South-East Scotland”. Notice how many windows have been blown out.
The following month the animal population of Edinburgh Zoo was reduced slightly when, on November 4th, two stray bombs hit the park killing six budgerigars and a wild rabbit (as reported by Zoo Director T. H. Gillespie to The Scotsman, Friday 20 December 1940). The craters were left unfilled and became a visitor attraction. A crater caused by a bomb dropped on the lawn of Holyrood Park was used by enterprising locals to raise money for a Spitfire Fund by charging for access to view it.
The month after the raid on North Leith which had killed Ernie, on the night of 6th May 1941, five lives were lost in the suburban bungalows of Duddingston on the outskirts of the city. One large bomb, three smaller ones and 100 incendiaries fell on Niddrie Road (now called Duddingston Park South), Milton Crescent and the Jewel Cottages at around half past midnight. Leonard Arthur Wilde (aged 39), an Air Raid Warden, was killed in his home at number 27 Milton Crescent along with his neighbours Joseph Watson (aged 40) of the Home Guard and William Dineley (aged 37). Lilias Tait Waterston (aged 69) was killed in her house at 26 Niddrie Road and her neighbour Barbara Thomson (87) was killed at number 30.
The last bombs of the war which caused fatalities in Edinburgh fell on Loaning Road in Craigentinny on the night of August 6th 1942, demolishing the Corporation tenement at number 35. Two people were killed; Elizabeth Veitch (aged 13) at number 35 and Robert Wright (aged 66), the janitor of Craigentinny Community Centre next door. A replacement tenement was built here post-war.
View from the back greensView from the frontPost-war replacementBomb damage at 35 Loaning Road, © Edinburgh City Libraries
You can see in the first picture where the bomb has left a crater (green arrow), upended an “Anderson” shelter (blue) and the entrance to another shelter (orange). Note the white painted poles, so you don’t run into them in the dark
Air raid shelters in the back greens of Loaning Road. © Edinburgh City Libraries
Edinburgh and Leith were mercifully spared most of the horrors of aerial bombing meted out to other cities during WW2. Altogether there were 21 civilian deaths and about 210 injuries caused directly by aerial bombing. At least 5 further deaths were recorded as being due to “war operations” when people had heart attacks brought about by the shock and stress of experiencing an air raid.
Date of Air RaidLocationFatalities18th July 19408 & 13 George Street, North Leith722nd July 1940Albert Dock, Leith1 29th September 194025 & 27 Crewe Place, East Pilton37th April 1941North Leith36th May 194123-27 Milton Crescent & 26-30 Niddrie Road, Duddingston56th August 194235 Loaning Crescent, Craigentinny2Civilian fatalities in Edinburgh and Leith directly due to aerial bombing
If this thread has proved interesting you may be interested in a thread on the first aerial raids and shooting down of German aircraft over the UK in WW2 which took place over the Firth of Forth in view of Edinburgh and Leith or a thread detailing some of the anti-aircraft defences of the city during the conflict.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-11-06 · 22:44 UTC

The thread about a Leith “Beggar’s Badge”; when the Scottish state sanctioned begging as a privilege for a select few

This thread was originally written and published in December 2020.

Today’s Auction House Artefact is this Leith beggar’s badge or token. It is inscribed on the front with an earlier version of the emblem from the Burgh coat of arms and motto Persevere. The date 1565 which refers to the date of Mary Queen of Scots writing permission for Leith to erect its Tolbooth, and on the back with “Leith Poor No. 10.” It’s not date stamped, but I would wager this is from the second half of the 19th century, given the better quality of the token, the style of the crest and the fact the Persevere motto does not appear in use until around the 1860s.
Front and rear of a Leith beggar’s badge. Move the slider to reveal each face.
“The growth of a large class of beggars in medieval times led to the necessity for limiting the numbers of those
officially entitled to beg“. This was put into Scottish law by an Act of Parliament as early as 1424. Only those with a badge were allowed to beg, and it had to be worn on outer clothing. Begging was seen as a privilege for certain “deserving poor” and restricted to such charitable cases as widows, the aged or those with disabilities or injuries that precluded them from working.
Jacques Callot, Family of Beggars, 17th century. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland
Anyone found begging without a badge was liable to be dealt with severely by vagrancy laws. Sheriffs would round up “masterless men” and arrest them – these might itinerants such as wood or wool gatherers. They would be given 40 days to find a master or craft, under pain of either imprisonment, banishment from the county (which may involve the hand being branded) or being sent into bonded labour such as coal mining or salt panning. “Egyptians” (gypsies) were in particular persecuted, being banished from Scotland if they did not renounce their itinerant ways. Landowners and heritors in the 17th and 18th century were subject to a tax called “Vagabond Money”, which was to pay for the employment of vagrants as labourers. The words vagabond and vagrant both come from the Latin vagari, to wander.
Parishes and burghs all over Scotland issued these badges, as they were responsible for the maintenance of their own poor. It allowed the bearer to beg in the burgh or parish that issued it, and protected them from the force of the vagrancy laws. The parishes and burghs were resentful of having to support “idle beggars” or “sturdy beggars” from other areas, and so wanted to be able to identify their own. Begging was thus an official and strictly controlled activity.
A blind beggar in Edinburgh, c. 1750. Sketch by Paul Sandby. © Trustees of the British Museum, Nn,6.35
Beggar’s badges were generally lead, pewter, copper or some other easily cast, cheap metal. Stone and pasteboard are also recorded. Not many survive, they usually have a serial number. Dates are less common and the holder’s name is almost never seen. There are at least four further Leith badges in public collections. The National Museum of Scotland lists three. Two are shown below, the third is described as “A lead circle, featuring the arms of Leith, similar to the one at the start of the thread, numbered No. 9“:
A lead oval, featuring the arms of Leith (below left), numbered No. 5A clipped lead oblong from from the 18th century, one round and one oval, numbered No. 7 (below right)
I believe the Hunterian collection in Glasgow has a No. 4. And there are a wide range of other designs from across Scotland. Interestingly, as far as I’m aware no tokens from the 2 largest burghs (Edinburgh and Glasgow) are known to survive, this may be because they were melted down and recycled whenever they were renewed.
18th century Tokens from Adrrossan, Ayr, Alves, Conveth, Coupar Angus, Crieff, Croy and ellon.
The other authority which could issue beggar’s token was the Crown. Such “King’s Bedesmen” were first appointed by King James VI. They were commonly known as Blue Gowns, on account of the official cloak that they were issued with, or Jockies. They had a lodge house outside the city of Edinburgh; the Jockies Lodge – this is where the neighbourhood of Jock’s Lodge takes its name from. Every birthday of the reigning monarch, each Jockie received a new cloak, their tin badge with the motto “pass and repass“, a Scots shilling for every year of the monarch’s age and their dinner. “Pass and repass” referred to the holder being allowed to pass freely through the land, not being subject to the local begging laws and being charged with vagrancy. The artist David Allan sketched many of the common folk of Edinburgh in the 1780s, including a blue-cloaked and badged Bedesman. Paul Sandby, whose work in the city in the 1750s clearly influenced Allan also drew numerous beggars and vagrants, and frequently colours their coats blue.
A late 18th century illustration of a Jockie. Note his blue cloak and badge. His clothing marks him out as a former soldier, and his missing leg is probably why he was given the beggar’s “privilege”.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-25 · 23:36 UTC

RMS Forth: the thread about the unusual end of a Leith-built ship on a Mexican reef

Today’s auction house artefact is this print of the launch of the Royal Mail Steamship (RMS) Forth in Leith in 1841, by the shipbuilders Robert Menzies & Sons.
The Launch of the Steam Ship Forth by Thomas Freebody, 1842.
Forth was launched on May 22nd “in the presence of 60,000 Spectators”. The Scotsman newspaper reported it was “a glorious thing to see… streams of people gaily attired, moving towards one point, and animated by one feeling of joyous anticipation” and The Sun of London declared it to be the largest crowd assembled in the city since the visit of King George IV in 1822. At 1,940 tons burthen (that’s an estimate of her carrying capacity or “tonnage”), she was “without a doubt” and “incomparably” the largest ship ever built at Leith up to that time. Her overall length was 245 feet, her breadth was 60 feet across the paddle boxes and her draught was 30 feet. The engines, to be fitted by Mr Barry in Liverpool, would produce 225 horsepower each and she had cabins for 100 passengers.
Closer view of the Launch of the Forth, © 2022 Royal Museums Greenwich PAH8902
The ceremony was officiated by Mr Menzies, the builder, and Miss Colville – daughter of the deputy chairman of the owners – performed the honours at 2PM by smashing a bottle of wine against the hull to bless and commence the launch. The builders had built a special gallery for which admission was charged to view the launch up close, the surplus from this being donated to the Leith Dispensary and the local Humane Society. Fourteen years earlier, Menzies had launched the little Sirius, of just 412 tons burthen, which in 1838 became the first steam ship to complete an east-to-west Transatlantic passage.
SS Sirius in 1842 by Samuel Walters, from the collection of the Royal Museums Greenwich
The newly established West India Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. was funded by a government subsidy and had a contract to provide a fleet of not fewer than 14 ships for carrying all Her Majesty’s mails to the West Indies; “to sail twice every month to Barbados in the West Indies from Southampton or Falmouth” . These new steamers were all named after British rivers, with Thames, Medway, Trent, and Isis (built at Northfleet); Severn and Avon (Bristol); Tweed, Clyde, Teviot, Dee, and Solway (Greenock); Tay (Dumbarton); Medina (Cowes) and finally Forth at Leith.
A colour print for a Royal Mail Line advertising poster showing RMS Forth
The Forth did not have a long life however and was wrecked in January 1849 on only her seventeenth mail run from Southampton to the West Indies. She departed the former port on September 2nd 1848 under the command of Captain Sturdee. In January she ran aground on Scorpion Reef off the north coast of Yucatán, Mexico. All her passengers and crew, 126 souls in total, were fortuitously landed on the reef and were saved. It took many months for news of her loss to be confirmed back in the UK, in early March the papers were still speculating on her fate.
The Forth from the London Illustrated News, March 1849
When the account of her loss finally made it across the Atlantic, it was found that Forth had arrived in Havana from Jamaica on January 11th, from where she was to go to the following day to New Orleans and thence onwards to Vera Cruz. She left Havana on the Friday 12th as expected, and at daybreak on Sunday 14th she hit the Scorpion Reef. It was stressed at this point that:
“Captain Sturdee, the commander, was wholly free from blame, one of those inexplicable currents peculiar to the Gulf of Mexico, having negatived all his calculations, and that his subsequent conduct was in every way remarkable for firmness and self-devotion“.
Sturdee and his crew calmly embarked the passengers onto the lifeboats. While the best course of subsequent action was being decided, a sailing ship was spotted and some of the crew under the command of a Royal Navy officer who was on board as a passenger volunteered to row out of the reef and sail to their potential saviour. With the assistance of this ship, the passengers and crew were landed on the island of Perez. Captain Sturdee lead a salvage party back to the wreck to recover supplies and the passengers’ personal effects, and they were rescued from Perez by a passing Yucatan brigantine on Wednesday 17th January.
The Wreck of the Forth, contemporary newspaper illustration
It was noted at the time that the Forth was the fifth large Royal Mail Steam Packet steamer lost since commencement of the steam mail ship service to the West Indies in 1841, the others being Medina, Isis and her sister ships Solway and Tweed. Tweed was lost on the Alacranes Rocks in the gulf of Mexico; which if you know your Spanish translates into English as the Scorpion Rocks; exactly the same that claimed the Forth two years later. Indeed one of Forth‘s passengers related to the newspaper men that he had read the account of the loss of the Tweed the night before the Forth was lost and on relaying his concerns to Captain Sturdee, was given an audience in the latter’s cabin to go over the charts and reassure him that they should not be within 18 miles of those rocks.
Captain Edwin Sturdee lived a long life, dying in 1897 at the age of 81. He was the uncle of Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee, the Admiral who avenged the Royal Navy’s loss at the Battle of Coronel in 1914 by winning the follow-up Battle of the Falkland Islands and sinking the German ships that had been victors of the former action.
Doveton Sturdee’s battlecruisers sailing out of Port Stanley in 1914 at the commencement of the Battle of the Falkland Islands. By William Lionel Wyllie, 1915. Collection of the Royal Museums Greenwich.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-25 · 15:31 UTC

The Burning of the “Brilliant”: the thread about the loss of a Leith steam packet and the death of Captain Wade

The PS Brilliant was one of the earliest steamships in Scotland, built by James Lang in Dumbarton for the Leith & Aberdeen Steam Yacht Company (of Leith) way back in 1821 – just nine years after the pioneering Comet introduced this type of vessel to the world. Her owners were based at 22 Bernard Street in Leith, the commercial quarter of that town and where many a shipping and merchant company based itself.
Post Office directory for Edinburgh and Leith, 1825-26, show appendix entry for the Leith & Aberdeen Steam Yacht Company
Apart from the addition of the steam plant and paddle wheels, the Brilliant wasn’t really that different in form or construction from a sailing coaster and in common with early steamers was also rigged as a sailing vessel, for times when either there were favourable winds (to increase the speed or make her more economical) or when the mechanical propulsion broke down. She was fairly small; displacing 159 tons, being 120 feet (36.6m) long, 20.5 feet (6.2m) wide 8in the beam, with an 8 foot (2.4m) draught below the waterline and had a crew of 10
Plans of the Brilliant, shown as an example of a steam packet in “A Treatise on Marine Architecture” by Peter Hedderwick, 1830. Photograph from the fold-out plates sold at auction in November 2025
The little ship proved successful and reliable vessel in service and plied the east and north coast of Scotland over the years following her launch, originally between Leith and Aberdeen and soon adding intermediate stops in Fife or Dundee along the way. Summer saw her sailings extended to Inverness and even Wick. She was joined in service by sister ships the Sovereign and Velocity. An advert in the 1839-40 Edinburgh and Leith Post Office directory shows that the company’s ships sailed from Leith to Aberdeen every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with reverse journeys departing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, with a 14s fare for cabin passage or 7s for steerage. Her master was Cawfield Wade.
Coastal steam packets proved themselves in service – they could move against the wind as well as with it – and could therefore keep a faster, more reliable timetable. Before there were long distance railways in the country, they were the fastest way for people and trade to move (so long as you wanted to keep to the coasts). The industry saw a flurry of speculative investment followed by the realities of business, which resulted in a consolidation of the various companies. In 1826 Brilliant‘s owners merged the rival Aberdeen & Leith Shipping Company to form the Aberdeen & Leith Steam Packet Company and a little over ten years later in 1837 it merged with others to become the Aberdeen, Leith, Clyde & Tay Shipping Company, usually shortened to just the Leith & Clyde Co. Under this ownership we can find Brilliant in the fateful year 1839 in Lloyd’s Register.
Lloyd’s entry for 1839 for the Brilliant. The figures record where she was built, dates of previous repairs and re-engining, her insurance condition, registered dimensions, master (Campbell at this time), ownership, and her usual route of Aberdeen and Leith.
Brilliant’s usual southern terminus was of course the Port of Leith. In the engraving below after a painting by W. H. Bartlett we see a paddle steamships arriving at the quayside – note the boarding gangway hung off the back of the paddle box – and we can allow ourselves to imagine that this might be the Brilliant (although the position of the funnel and single mast says otherwise…)
Engraving after an 1828 original by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd by T. Higham, “Leith Harbour from the Pier” showing a steamer arriving at the quayside. Credit: Edinburgh & Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries
Because of the poor state of the Port of Leith in the 1820s and 30s the ship often sailed instead from the Trinity Chain Pier, which had been built as a speculative scheme to provide a steamship pier less affected by the tides of the Forth. She could quite possibly be one of the small steam ships seen in the picture below.
“Newhaven Harbour and the Chain Pier, looking east” coloured print of an engraving by R. Brandard after W. H. Bartlett, originally published c. 1840.
By 1839 Brilliant was sailing thrice a week from her home port of Aberdeen, to Leith, under Captain Cawfield Wade. The journey took about twelve hours, although she had managed it with the wind at her back in only ten and three quarters, and called at intermediate piers along the Fife and Angus coast. The schedule was well maintained, intermediate stops took only 5-10 minutes and were conducted offshore: passengers who wished to join or leave the steamer were rowed out to meet her from those ports. Once a week in the summer she would make a run from Aberdeen to Inverness and back again.
Of Captain Wade we know relatively little as his death predates statutory registers and surviving census records. In 1835 he was the master of the Aberdeen & London Shipping Co.’s smack Aberdeen Packet, sailing between those ports. He had then been a mate (officer) in steamships on the Aberdeen and Leith route before being promoted to master of the Brilliant, which seems to have been his first command in that company. He married Lilias Reid in Aberdeen in 1837, a farmer’s daughter from Alford, and we know he had a brother William, also “a mariner in Aberdeen“. I can find neither of these men in Scottish parish birth registers however Wade is an uncommon name in these parts at the time. The Caledonian Mercury would however later describe him as a son of Stonehaven.

On the afternoon of 11th December 1839, Captain Wade took the Brilliant out of Leith and headed north on what should have been just another one of her thrice-weekly scheduled runs. In the picture below we can see a steam packet departing Leith in choppy seas.
Leith Pier and Harbour, 1843 engraving by R. Wallis. Credit: Edinburgh & Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries
The little ship headed into a choppy Firth of Forth and began her scheduled calls along the Fife coast, but weather conditions were worsening.
“Rain Clouds over the Forth”, John Houston, c. 1984 .Fife Cultural Trust for Fife Council.
Up in Aberdeen Captain Morrison, the Aberdeen harbour master and pilot, was awoken from his bed by a terrible storm. It was this maelstrom into which the Brilliant would sail early that morning.
Unidentified steamer in a storm, © Aberdeen Maritime Museum
Struggling through heavy weather and violent seas and almost within sight of Aberdeen, disaster struck. At around six O’ clock in the morning when she was off the welcome site of Girdle Ness Lighthouse the deck was suddenly swamped by an unexpected wave. Cawfield Wade, at his station on the quarterdeck, could do nothing to stop himself being swept overboard and disappeared into the sea, never to be seen again. But the troubles were not over yet – the approaches to Aberdeen harbour had a fearsome reputation in Victorian times, one which was well earned. Brilliant was now wallowing through the storm towards it without her master and was about to become the first steam-powered victim of this entrance.
Brilliant’s sister ship, Sovereign, entering Aberdeen Harbour in inclement seas. Credit: Aberdeen Maritime Museum
The sea was rushing on from the beam (her sides) as the little steamer approached the harbour entrance. Passing through a feature known as The Bar her helmsman was not able to keep her clear of the churning water around the head of the pier and she was driven side-on into the harbour wall, just below the Fittie (Footdee) lighthouse.
Fittie Light House at the end of the north breakwater, entrance to Aberdeen Harbour. OS Town Plan 1866. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
The Brilliant was mortally wounded and this was quickly apparent to all onboard. The call to abandon ship was given but in his haste to get to safety the ship’s engineer failed to draw the fires from her boilers, which quickly began to run dry. Overheating due to a lack of water they soon set the wooden vessel ablaze. The artist J. Faddie captured the remarkable scene that night for us.
Brilliant ablaze off the Fittie Light. Note the assembled crowds being held back by soldiers on the pier and salvage attempts being made. Credit: Aberdeen Maritime Museum
Miraculously, all on board – except the tragic Captain Wade – were saved. Salvage parties were even organised to return to the burning ship and recover most of her cargo: the bow of the ship was stuck fast on pier allowing them to work in (relative) safety while the stern burnt out. We can see them on deck in the painting above. The mainmast was deliberately cut down about ten O’ clock in the morning, to stop it collapising on the workers, and an hour later the funnel and mizzen (after) mast did collapse.By sunset on the twelfth of December the ship had burned down to her waterline and the pounding of the seas was beginning to make short work of scattering her remains across the seabed and shoreline.
The body of Cawfield Wade would never be found. His will shows he left an estate of £50 (about £5,000 today), about a year’s pay for someone in his position and to his wife Lilias he left their household goods worth around £40. To his brother William he left his “suit of coloured clothes“, his best jacket and his watch (although it’s likely he may have taken these with him to his watery grave). To a man described as brother-in-law he left his “suit of black clothes“: his Sunday and mourning attire. These bequests were made with the unusual condition forbidding his “nearest in kin from troubling or molesting” his widow. Lilias lived out a long life as the “Widow of the Late Captain Wade“, running various lodging houses in Aberdeen. She died at the age of 87 in Old Machar parish in Aberdeen, her last address a respectable granite house in Margaret Street. This way of supporting herself would have been one of the few options open to her beyond remarrying.
The house were Lilias Wade died.
William Wade is never heard of again, although a woman Martha Wade and a child, William Wade, are in the 1841 Aberdeen census; they may have been a wife and child or sister and nephew. That William Wade junior would become a seaman and get a master’s ticket in later life.

The entry to the harbour would prove to be treacherous for the Aberdeen steamers. Nine years later in 1848, Brilliant‘s sister – the Velocity – would be wrecked in almost exactly the same spot and circumstances, driven onto the Fittie wall by heavy seas. Again all aboard were saved but the ship and all cargo were demolished within an hour and scattered along the Torryside. In 1853, the Duke of Sutherland – at the end of a long journey from London – was wrecked in the harbour entrance with sixteen lives lost.
The Wreck of the “Duke of Sutherland” on the Torry Shore, 1853
In 1863 the Prince Consort would also come a cropper. She broke her back but miraculously was salvaged, repaired and returned to service only to be finally wrecked nearby on the Hasman Rocks, a few miles south of Girdle Ness, four years later. Fortuitously there was no loss of life in either accident.
The (first) wreck of the Prince Consort on Aberdeen’s north harbour breakwater in 1863. Sir George Reid. Creidt: Aberdeen Maritime Museum
The Aberdeen, Leith, Clyde & Tay Shipping Co. would go on to prosper, becoming the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Steam Navigation Company, more commonly known as just the North Company, which connected the ports of Orkney, Shetland and the north of Scotland with Leith.
North Company share certificate from 1882
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-19 · 21:36 UTC

The thread about #NowAndThen photo montages of old railway stations, tramways and bridges around Edinburgh and Leith

This thread was originally written and published in December 2017 and a further part in May 2019.
This thread features #NowAndThen photo-montages of long gone railway stations, tramways and bridges in Edinburgh and Lieth; period photos overlaid on the current streetscape to show just how much or little things have changed over time.
Duke Street in 1954 on the last day of service for the No. 25 tram. This service ran from Corstorphine to Portobello King’s Road via Leith Walk and the Links. Not much else has changed on this side of the road, although the occupants of the buildings certainly have. On the left was the Palace Cinema, with a snooker hall above. It is now a J. D. Wetherspoon pub.
No. 25 Tram at Duke Street. Original image © Kenneth G. Williamson
Commercial Street in 1955. The No. 17 tram from Granton passes the “Highland Queen” bonded warehouse of MacDonald and Muir. It is running across the railway lines that crossed into the docks from the former North British railway at North Leith / Leith Citadel station. The bond is now flats, through the West Dock Gate where the railway ran is the now the Scottish Government building – Victoria Quay. The Old West and East docks are infilled, unimaginatively used as car parks. The Victoria Dock is cut off from the harbour basin and is a sterile and bleak water feature in front of Victoria Quay.
No. 17 tram at Commercial Street. Original image © Kenneth G. Williamson
King’s Road at Portobello in the 1950s. The No. 12 tram from Corstorphine via Leith, it has just passed the ghost of a car heading the other way to Portobello. The background is dominated by the great red brick lump of Ebenenzer J. Macrae’s Corporation electric power station.
No. 12 Tram at the King’s Road. Original image © Kenneth G. Williamson
Tollcross in 1956. There was a tramway depot here – where the central fire station now is – and the route was also a junction where 3 routes from the suburbs converged and then split immediately into two to head into the city by different routes. As such this was always a busy place on the network and this scene is busy with shoppers and tramcars. The tenement on the right and the castle are all that remain of the original buildings in this shot now.
Trams at Tollcross. Original image © Kenneth G. Williamson
Trinity Crescent in the 1950s. A no. 17 tram squeezes under the bridge carrying the railway from Trinity Station along Lower Granton Road to the docks. The low bridge and tight S-shaped turn of the road meant that the tramway here was single line in the middle of the road, with the overhead line lowered. A set of traffic signals allowed only 1 tram at a time into this short section and warned motor vehicles that a tram was about to pass as their route swung onto the right lane to make the turn.
No. 17 at Trinity Crescent.
And Trinity again in 1986. A ghost train crosses Trinity Road on track removal duties. Click on the link to the EdinPhoto website to see more images of this series.
Trinity railway bridge in the 1980s. Original photo © Peter Stubbs.
Moving on to animated transitions, here is Balgreen Halt station. A 1934 addition to the suburban railway network by the LNER (London & North Eastern Railway), it was closed in 1968. Estimate the old photo is early 1960s.
Balgreen Halt. Original CC-BY-SA Ben Brooksbank
And at the end of the line at Corstorphine. Always a hard one to get your head around as no hint of the stations presence is left under the 1980s housing, beyond the name “Station Road”
Corstorphine Station, 1926. Original Image © Edinburgh City Libraries
Side fact, Corstorphine had extraordinarily long platforms for a suburban station (250m, sufficient for a 12 coach train of 60 foot stock), I believe this was because the railway company hoped that a new barracks to replace the Georgian cavalry establishment at Piershill would be built nearby. The new barracks were ultimately built at Redford instead but Corstorphine was left with its overly large station. There were 2 full platforms and 2 full length carriage sidings. As a result it was used to stable and clean coaching stock overnight and on occasions such as rugby and football matchdays.
Another overlooked Edinburgh suburban station; the awkwardly located Piershill at the foot of Smokey Brae, between Meadowbank and Restalrig. The road here running under the bridge is Clockmill Road, which connected to the Clockmill Lane. This was the ancient route from the Canongate to Restalrig, cut in two by the London Road when it was built in the early 1820s. The road was obliterated and the bridge cut off by the groundworks for the 1970s Commonwealth Games stadium, the velodrome being built on top of the road. The bridge is now blocked up as a garage, but may be re-opened as a through route in the future when the eastern end of the stadium site is redeveloped as housing.
Piershill Station. Original Image © Canmore
Leith Walk station – no, not the big one at the Foot, but the one called Leith Walk towards the top.The demolished tenements of Shrub Hill and Shrub Place are in the background, plus an intriguing belfry. I’m guessing it was the old school next to Pilrig Model Buildings, which later became the “Royal Caledonian Bazaar”.
Leith Walk station, 1890s. Original from The Story of Leith by John Russell
Now the site of the Inchkeith House multi-storey flats, the Royal Caledonian Bazaar was a “posting and livery establishment”; basically a horse transport depot. The proprietor was one John Croall. The Croalls were established in the horse business and were pioneers of motoring in Edinburgh. They gave their name, unsurprisingly, to Croall Place, the tenement at the top of Leith Walk where it meets Macdonald Road. Croall & Croall later built car and bus bodies and had a number of works around the West Port and Lothian Road. They later became part of the SMT (Scottish Motor Transport) empire.
Granton Road, once an important suburban commuter station and tram route. It was much more conveniently located for the wealthy suburb of Trinity than the station of that name, and later for the big new housing scheme at Boswall.
Granton Road station, 1955. Original image © Kenneth G. Williamson
There’s an old cast iron column just outside where the station was, I always assumed it was a tramway pole for the overhead wires. This photo shows it supported no wires – there’s an actual tramway pole right behind it – and it had a crown-shaped vent cap. It’s not a pole or a lamp post at all, it’s actually a sewer vent – a stink pipe – which is why it has survived.

We move on to Granton station itself. One of the first in Edinburgh and originally the site of a pioneering train ferry to Burntisland before the Forth was bridged. It closed in 1925 as an economy as there was little need by this time for a passenger station in the middle of the docks – most people taking the ferry across the Forth found the electric tramway much more convenient to get into the city than taking the train.
Granton Station, pre-1925. Original image © Kenneth G. Williamson
The slip for the train ferries is still used by the Royal Forth Yacht Club. Thomas Bouch’s Floating Railway was an ingenious and effective solution to bridging the Forth before the technology allowed a permanent structure. Basically an early, steam-raised linkspan that lowered a ramp on to a special ferry boat, allowing wagons and carriages to be run aboard. The whole apparatus, rails and all, was on a great wheeled carriage, allowing it to move with the tides. The rails were in short sections, bolted together in such a way that they could flex.
Bouch’s “floating railway”, a rather ingenious solution to the problem of bridging the Forth by rail
Thomas Bouch is an engineer remembered for his greatest and most infamous creation, the first Tay Bridge, but he had a long career in which he constructed many pioneering and innovative solutions to the problems of getting railways across obstacles.
I’m quite chuffed with this image, which shows the evolution of the Upper Drawbridge at Sandport Place. Not only is the river much higher now since the docks were dammed, but the deck was widened and the central arch of the current bridge replaced the lifting section.
The “Upper Drawbridge” over the Water of Leith. Original Image © Peter Stubbs
The Water of Leith is no longer a tidal river, as in the 1960s a set of lock gates were installed at the mouth of the docks to keep the dock basin always filled with water to allow bigger and deeper ships to use the port, and not be so restricted by the tides when coming and going. The water level these days is frequently within a foot of the central arch but you can still see the “river bed” in the right conditions only a few feet below that, there must be a good 20 foot of mud and silt and sludge built up on the river bed, unable to be washed out by the tide.
The next image is the same spot as before but looking the other way, to St. Ninian’s Wharf (named for the old North Leith Kirk behind, with its distinctive Dutch tower). The site of a dry dock and boatbuilding yard in the 1850s and 60s.
St. Ninian’s Wharf, original image by Thomas Vernon Begbie, taken in the 1850s. © Edinburgh City Libraries
The photo confused me for a good while, as I assumed that the ship must be in the dry dock, which was one of the first dry dock in Scotland so pre-dated the photo by about 100 years. I later realised that the ship being built in the picture is not in the dry dock at all, but on a building slip alongside, with a temporary coffer dam following the line of the river wall – marked in red on the Town Plan below.
OS 1849 Town Plan. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
That ship may even be on a “patent slip”, a Leith invention.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-18 · 23:18 UTC

The thread about Conder Tokens; when Edinburgh and Leith issued their own money

This thread was originally written and published in September 2020.
Today I have found out about Conder Tokens. Did you know about Conder Tokens? Until yesterday I didn’t know what they were and until today I didn’t know what they were called
1796 Leith Conder Token. © Historic Environment Scotland, Trinity House collection
Long story short, in 18th century Britain there was a chronic shortage of small denomination coinage due to excessive counterfeiting and low production of non-precious coins by the Royal Mint. But demand for them was soaring due to industrialisation and the need to pay workers and that there were ever more consumer goods around for people to buy. As a result, counterfeit coinage boomed, perhaps two thirds of all low-value coins may have been forgeries. The Royal Mint’s response was to simply stop producing copper coins and for 48 years from 1773-1821, they struck no copper coins.A Welsh industrialist – Thomas Williams of Llanidan, “the Copper King” – proposed an anti-counterfeiting edge to the coins to the Royal Mint so long as they used his copper, but they declined.
Thomas Williams by Thomas Lawrence, c. 1792.
Clearly a modern industrial country could not function without a means to pay and buy, so industry, led by Williams, resorted to simply producing their own coinage. Such coins, or tokens, could be traded freely at the denoted value and presented to some wealthy sponsoring merchant, industrialist or local worthy for exchange as required. Most people didn’t travel far or hold on to money for long, so these tokens were an ideal way for them to be paid and for them to buy things.
A halfpenny token issued by the Parys Mine Company of Anglesey in 1788.
The idea quickly caught on. The tokens were of a much higher quality than official coinage – indeed they are instantly recognisable to us as a variation of our modern pennies – and as they were issued by prominent businessmen the provenance could be trusted. The value of the copper content also made them less susceptible to being speculated on than promissory notes or other cheap tokens – they had an intrinsic value of their own. One of the biggest manufacturers of such coins was the industrialist Matthew Boulton (James “Condensing Steam Engine” Watt’s business partner).
Matthew Boulton in 1792 by Carl Frederik von Breda
Boulton had the machinery, the capital, the interests in copper mines, a personal stock of copper bought in a slump in the market and the contacts. He established the Soho Mint in the West Midlands in 1788 and went into volume minting of quality tokens. His machines were of his own patented design and were driven by steam engines. Each could mint 70 to 85 coins per minute.
Boulton’s “Soho Mint” in the late 18th century
Such was the demand for small coinage, these tokens quickly spread and were issued on a town-by-town, county-by-county basis. As such they are often called Provincial Tokens. The name Conder Token comes from James Conder, an issuer of such coins who soon became an avid collector and cataloguer of them.
1794 Ipswich Conder Token, issued by Conder himself
In 1797, the Government finally came to its senses about the financial crisis and issued Boulton a contract to mint official copper coinage and so provincial tokens began to wane. Production ceased by 1802, with a brief return in 1811-12, before finally being forbidden in 1817. Many Scottish municipalities joined in issuing local coinage during this time. The table shows the number of different coins known for each area of the country. The financial capital in the Lothians and the industrial capital in Lanarkshire were unsurprisingly the most prolific, alongside the trade centre in Dundee (Angus).
CountyTokensCountyTokensAberdeenshire1Kirkcudbrightshire1Angus43Lanarkshire54Argyle5Linlithgowshire5Ayrshire9Lothian150Dumfriesshire1Perthshire11Fife16Renfrewshire6Haddingtonshire4Roxburghshire1Invernesshire5Selkirkshire1Kinrosshire1Non-regional8Conder tokens of Scotland by local area
And so this is how we come to there being such a thing as a Leith Ha’penny. This one, of 1797, shows a sailing ship on one side – an obvious Leith connection – and Britannia on the rear.
1797 Leith ha’penny
And the John White (a merchant of the Kirkgate) Leith ha’penny, wishing “Success to the Port” with another nautical scene, showing a ship entering the Port of Leith, and featuring the stuff of profitable trade on the back; gin and tea.
1796 Leith Ha’penny
So of course if Leith has Ha’pennies, of course Edinburgh has to have them to! Notice that Britannia is a gain a common theme, as are recognisable civic buildings. WRIGHT DES on the front refers to James Wright, an engraver from Dundee who designed many tokens. He was a correspondent with Conder, himself and was as keen a proponent and collector of them.
1796 Edinburgh Ha’penny, the newly completed Register House on the front. © RMG1796 Edinburgh Ha’penny, Britannia and a trading ship on the rear © RMG
And another version, earlier from 1790, featuring the municipal coat of arms and motto, thistles, and St. Andrew himself. Note the anchor on the rear, a symbol of both Edinburgh’s merchant prosperity and also its dominance over its port at Leith. These tokens were produced by Messrs. Hutchinson of Creech’s Land, an important old building at the west end of the Luckenbooths where Alan Ramsay had his book shop and had opened Scotland’s first circulating library in 1725.
1790 Edinburgh Conder Token
The Campbell’s Snuff of Edinburgh Ha’penny, the Turk’s Head being a connection to smoking. if you squint you can make out the name “James” below the head, for the engraver Charles James. Campbell’s shop was apparently the business of Euphame Campbell, which makes this doubly interesting as it must have been very rare to have a token in the name of a woman.
1796 Edinburgh Conder Token
The Archibald, Seedsman of Edinburgh Ha’penny. The coin features an Archibald family coat of arms on the front and an advert for his wares on the back. This Archibald was Joseph Archibald of West Nicolson Street, a burgess of the city, who kept a shop at 88 Chapel Street and a nursery at Lauriston, where a street, Archibald Place, is named for him.
1796 Edinburgh Conder Token1796 Edinburgh Conder Token
Harrison of St. Leonards, Ha’penny. Henry Harrison was a bucklemaker on St. Leonard’s Hill. Harrison’s cypher is on the reverse, with the anchor of trade on the front.
1796 Edinburgh Conder Token
Anderson, Leslie & Company Ha’penny from 1797, featuring the then new college building of the University on South Bridge. Again James Wright was the engraver. The wording around the edge of the reverse translates as “Nor let even the poor and infertile grounds lie neglected” and features a gardener. Not surprisingly given this design and wording, Anderson, Leslie & Company were also Seedsmen, based opposite the Mercat Cross in the Old Town.
1797 Edinburgh Conder Token
The Scran archive has a wide range of photos of other Scottish Conder tokens (If you have a library card issued by most Scottish councils, you can log in using your library card number to get more meta content and bigger pictures) – click here.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#coins #economy #edinburgh #leith #oldtown #trade
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-17 · 22:19 UTC

The thread about Edinburgh and Leith under occupation; when “Gardyloo”, Christmas and being rude to Frenchmen were banned

From 1548 to 1560, the Port of Leith was occupied by a French garrison in support of the Queen Regent of Scotland, Mary of Guise. During that time the French fortified the town and made themselves generally unpopular with the locals. Such was the mutual bad feeling that in 1555 Mary of Guise’s Parliament made it an offence to speak ill of Frenchmen. I am not sure if this act has been repealed yet…
The arms of Mary of Guise, Regent of Scotland (Maria de Loraine, Regina Scotie) in South Leith Kirk. CC-BY-SA 3.0 Kim Traynor
One of the reasons for the French being so unpopular was their constant requisitioning of ships – this was a town that relied on the sea for its prosperity and in doing so the occupiers were directly impoverishing its occupants. As a result of this, shipowners were in the habit of making their vessels be spontaneously elsewhere whenever they got wind that the French might need them, which created logistical problems for the garrison commander. In 1550, the French governor in Leith employed two pynours (porters) to remove and impound all the rudders of the ships of Leith to prevent them from slipping away without his say-so. Twelve days later, all Scottish vessels from Kinghorn to Crail were ordered to leave for Leith within three hours or face being forfeited with their masters put to death.
Opposing the French in Leith were Scottish Protestant lords – the grandiosely titled Lords of the Congregation, or The Faithful – backed by an English army. An English general, Randolph, noted in 1560 that “in no other country were ever seen so many particular quarrels, which daily cause many to keep off who mortally hate the French“: Randolph could not understand how the Scots resented the French occupiers so much but yet were so reluctant to fight with the English against them. He had money to finance 2-3,000 Scots troops to eject the French but could not get them “for love nor money“. The English ended up assaulting Leith under an incompetent commander, with untrained recruits and ladders that were too short to scale the walls. This amateurish attack was repulsed by the stretched, starving but competent and well entrenched French garrison. Further bloodshed was spared when Mary of Guise died shortly thereafter and a short peace was agreed, allowing the French to leave.
“Incident in the Siege of Leith”. It is not clear which party is which here and what they are fighting over. But nobody seemed to be getting along.
Less than 100 years after the exit of the French, Leith would find itself once again under military occupation after the calamitous defeat in 1650 of the Scottish Covenanter forces at the hands of Oliver Cromwell in the Battle of Dunbar. Relations between occupier and occupied this time were less strained; although English rule was firm and uncompromising there appeared to be more mutual tolerance on both sides, probably both were just exhausted from nearly 12 years of bloody warfare. The population and economy of Leith had also been shattered by a plague in 1645 that killed nearly half its population.
Cromwell at the head of his Army at Dunbar, a 19th century painting by Andrew Carrick Gow. CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 Tate Gallery
Cromwell entered Edinburgh on Saturday 7th December, just days after victory at Dunbar. Although the remnants of the Scottish army fought on it had abandoned the city to wage a protracted war of retreat across the country. The occupation was initially marked by restraint on the part of the victors and under Cromwell’s direct orders on 27th December three of his men were publicly flogged through the town by the “Provest marschellis men” for the offence of plundering houses without orders. Another unfortunate Roundhead was strapped to a horse with a pint jug tied around his neck, his hands bound and muskets tied to his feet, and ridden around the town for 2 hours for the offence of drunkenness. In May 1652, an English officer had his ear nailed to the public gallows and thereafter cut off for toasting the King’s health.
Cromwell enters Edinburgh, from an 1886 souvenir of the Edinburgh International Exhibition telling the history of the city
Civilian administration in those days was relatively limited, but the English were sensible enough to allow that of Edinburgh to continue to function – under close observation. Leith however had no such local authority of its own beyond that of Edinburgh and so was ruled directly through military courts headed by English officers “without partiality or favour“. In November 1651 they hung one of their own troopers at the Market Cross “a gallant, stout fellow” for robbing a butcher. A soldier found drunk and swearing in Leith was bound, hit repeatedly in the mouth and tied to a pillar with “a paper bound to his breast” specifying his crimes. Relations in Leith with the English seemed to be downright cordial at times (perhaps because the locals were pleased to be relieved of the constant political and economic interference from Edinburgh) but things ended up becoming too cordial. In October 1651 English soldiers had to be forbidden from marrying Leith women without the written permission of their Major and in February 1652 this prohibition was extended to the keeping of female servants!
In Edinburgh, although the town itself had been easily taken, the Castle garrison had held out and was being besieged by Cromwell’s New Model Army. Anyone found treating with the garrison was dealt with severely. A gardener at the West Kirk (now St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church) was accused of giving intelligence to the Castle; he was taken to the city guardhouse and hung from his thumbs with burning slow matches (the sort used in matchlock firearms) between his fingers until they were “burnt to the bone“.
“Cromwell’s Bartizan, Edinburgh”, by James Drummond RSA, 1861. Oliver Cromwell surveys his newly conquered lands from a rooftop in the Old Town of Edinburgh after the Battle of Dunbar. A bartizan is an overhanging projection from a defensive wall. The solider in the background has a matchlock firearm over his shoulder, and the slow match is the fine cord that can be seen above his gloved hand. The auction listing suggests this is Cromwell at the Castle, but it was then under siege and he is lower than surrounding buildings. The original RSA listing confirms he is actually stood on a housetop.
In March 1651 the English soldiers in Edinburgh mutinied due to the lack of provisions and pay; what had been sent to them by sea had been turned back by unfavourable weather. They put their own commanders in jail and “ran through the markets of Edinburgh, plundering and robbing the people of the town, so that few would go out on the streets“. General John Lambert arrived in Edinburgh at the end of November that year to restore order and to make arrangements for quartering of his army in the city over winter. He seems to have made a positive impression with the locals; on finding out that there was no local magistrate in place to dispense justice, he reinstated some of the old ones. He also ordered the Incorporated Trades to choose their own Deacons (the principal officers of the Trades, who formed a core of the Town Council). He did however maintain a right of veto over appointments and kept the appointment of the Castle’s governor to his personal choice.
Oliver Cromwell (left) and Lieutenant General John Lambert (right), 1745 mezzotint by Andrew Miller after Robert Walker, 1650. © National Portrait Gallery, London NPG D32974
In December, Lambert ordered citizens in both Edinburgh and Leith to hang out lanterns and place candles in their windows or doors from 6PM to 9PM on account of the disorder being committed by the soldiers. This was observed but cost the inhabitants dearly as candles were an expensive commodity. Anybody found not complying was to be fined 4 shillings sterling, with the master or mistress of the house being thrown in the city guardhouse until it was paid. He also set about the perhaps impossible task of the cleaning up of Auld Reekie. Orders were given on the 24th December that the streets, closes and wynds in Edinburgh were be cleansed within 13 days and “no filth or water should be thrown forth from their windows upon pain of paying immediately 4 shillings sterling“. The proceeds of such fines were to be split equally between the informant and the poor of the town. Clearly it did not have a long lasting effect as just three years later the city was ordered to procure carts and horses for the carrying away of the filth.
“The Flowers of Edinburgh”, a satirical 18th century print on the traditional manner of “flushing the toilet” in Old Town Edinburgh. © The Trustees of the British Museum
On December 25th 1651 the English authorities in Leith ordered that Christmas should be banned. The point being made here was probably moot however given it was not something that would have been openly observed or celebrated in Presbyterian Scotland. Indeed the Kirk, the usual incumbent authority on moral matters in Scottish towns and burghs, had banned its celebration back in 1640. However ten years later it had nothing like its former authority, especially in Leith where it had been evicted from its church buildings and relieved of its civic duties by the occupiers.
Entry for 2th December 1651 from the Diary of John Nicoll
On February 7th 1652, under orders of the Commissioners of the English Parliament who were at that time resident in Dalkeith, the symbols of the Stuart Kings’ arms, crowns and royal unicorns of the city were taken down wherever they were to be found. They were stripped from the King’s pew at St. Giles’ Kirk, from the Mercat cross, the Netherbow Port, Parliament House, Edinburgh Castle and the palace of Holyroodhouse. They were then taken to the gallows and publicly hung.
In May 1654 General Monck, who had been Cromwell’s military commander in Scotland until 1652, came once again to Edinburgh to proclaim the union of England and Scotland as the Commonwealth. He was received by the Lord Provost and Bailies of the Town Council (the most senior members of the civilian authority) in their finery. Perhaps they were mindful of the rape and pillage of Dundee committed by Monck’s men back in 1651 and set out to woo the General lest they incur his wrath. They conveyed him to a “sumptuous dinner and feast, prepared by the Town of Edinburgh for him and his special officers. This feast was six days in preparing, and the bailies of Edinburgh did stand and serve the whole time of that dinner“. They also laid on a “great preparation” of fireworks which were set off from the Mercat Cross between 9PM and midnight, “to the admiration of many people“.
George Monck by Peter Lely, c. 1665
Cromwell also left it to Monck to resolve the interminable squabbles between the city of Edinburgh and Port of Leith. The latter wanted freedom to trade without interference from its neighbour, the former wanted to assert its historic legal rights to her port. An English merchant in Leith at the time said that the town had been “under the greatest slavery that I ever knew” and should subject to under Edinburgh no more than “Westminster to London.” As part of his overall strategy to pacify and control Scotland, Monck proposed enclosing Leith in fortifications as a garrison town – probably reconstructing the 1560 walls and bastions. The prospect of this terrified Edinburgh, as it would make it substantially easier for Leith to act independently. Edinburgh shrewdly counter-offered that it would pay £5,000 instead for a standalone Citadel outside of Leith – or it may be that the it was Monck being shrewd and he had played Edinburgh off against Leith to get them to finance his scheme. In the end the £5,000 citadel apparently cost many times that to build. The city would later buy it back for a further £5,000 from Charles II, so ended up paying for it twice. Although it was well engineered it was soon abandoned as a defensive fortification; the seaward walls and bastions had been impossible to protect from erosion by the sea and had collapsed within 30 years.
By May 1660, the Commonwealth was over (assisted in no small part by Monck) and the Houses of Parliament had proclaimed Charles II to be King. Orders were sent to the Governor of Edinburgh castle to fire 3 volleys from the guns, one for each of the Three Kingdoms. The chief gunner at the Castle gave the orders to his men but one refused saying that “The devil [would] blow him in the air that loosed a cannon for that purpose” and “if he loosed any cannon that day sum man should repent it“. The complainant was transferred to a gun overlooking the West Kirk. The first volley was duly fired and when this man went to reload his weapon, he recharged it with powder only for it to spontaneously discharge while he was doing so, there being a smouldering ember in the barrel. He was blown clean over the castle walls and off the Castle Rock itself, falling over 250 feet to his death. He was buried near where he landed in the West Kirk.
“The Prospect of the Castle and City of Edinburgh from the Nor’ Loch”, by John Slezer in 1693. The unfortunate gunner met his end by falling from the walls on this, the north side of the castle. © Edinburgh City Libraries
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-16 · 22:58 UTC

Take the “High Line”: the thread about Leith’s unbuilt park through the rooftops

I found something very interesting hidden away in a cardboard file in a corner of Leith Library. The title – City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices. – was so snappy that I couldn’t help but start reading it. This was the plan for a £90 million redevelopment and rejuvenation of Leith, which by this time was suffering badly from industrial decline, urban depopulation, poor housing stock and a general lack of public amenities. As part of this plan it was proposed that the Edinburgh Corporation as it then was (after 1975 it was Edinburgh District Council) would purchase the abandoned trackbed of the Caledonian Railway which ran from Pilrig Park to Seafield via Restalrig, over Leith Walk and Easter Road. This would be converted into a landscaped walkway through the area, what nowadays we might term a linear park.
Line of the Pilrig to Seafield section of the Caledonian Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of Scotland
This section of railway, formally known as the Leith New Lines, was one of the last to be built in the city and did not open until 1903. Its purpose was to give the Caley access from its existing line into Leith Docks from the west to the expanding eastern portion of the docklands. It would cut its way through the dense industrial heartlands of Leith and Bonnington, serving these with large and convenient new goods stations.
Ordnance Survey 6-inch scale map of Leith, 1906. The North British Railway is highlighted blue, the Caledonian Railway in red and the Leith New Lines in green. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
On paper this was a sound proposal but by this time the best potential routes through Leith were already well built on, therefore it had to take a winding and circuitous route requiring substantial and expensive engineering. There were numerous cuttings and viaducts required plus skew girder bridges over thoroughfares at Bonnington Toll, Leith Walk and Easter Road. As if that wasn’t enough, it also had to cross three different North British Railway lines, the Water of Leith and cut beneath Ferry Road.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/40040319893/
This railway never fulfilled its potential, a planned passenger service was never introduced and its twin tracks soon singled. The western section between Newhaven and Bonnington closed in 1965. In 1968 the low bridge over Bonnington Toll was removed and the goods station off Leith Walk at Stead’s Place (Leith Walk West) was closed. For a few years the eastern section at Seafield lingered on giving access to the Leith East goods yard at Salamander Street but this too closed in 1973, making the entire line redundant. British Rail gave notice at this point that it intended to demolish its monumental girder bridges over Leith Walk and Easter Road plus a smaller one over Halmyre Street to reduce their maintenance burden.
Easter Road #NowAndThen image overlay showing the Caledonian Railway bridge in 1974 and the modern Google Streetview background. Original from Edinphoto. This bridge was removed between January and February 1980.
The 1975 path scheme saw the opportunity to purchase the route from British Rail before they proceeded with demolition and proposed to replace these large, expensive structures with lightweight footbridges and to retain the smaller bridge over Halmyre Street. This would give an elevated walkway from Pilrig Park, across the arches of the viaducts at Jane Street, Manderston Street and Gordon Street and from there along the embankments and cuttings all the way to Seafield.
Cover, City of Edinburgh, Leith Local Plan, Draft Final Report, April 1975. Volume Two. Schedules and Appendices.Proposal diagram for the Leith Walk Sawmills and Caley railway yard land off of Pilrig Park.
The bridges at Easter Road and Manderston Street would be removed in early 1980, with that over Leith Walk following in September that year.
It have assumed that because the bridge over Halmyre Street was to be retained that the viaduct between there and Easter Road, which cut its way rudely through the back greens between Gordon Street and Thorntree Street would have been kept too.
1929 aerial photo showing the trackbed of the Leith New Lines between Easter Road (bottom right) heading west towards Leith Walk (top left). The large roof to the top right of the photo is Leith Central Station. That building along with the tenements along the line of Manderston and Gordon Streets have since been demolished. The large white roof belongs to the Capitol cinema, until recently a bingo hall. SPW027351 via Britain from Above.
This ambitious urban realm scheme of course never came to pass. By the time an updated version of the Final Plan was published in 1980 it had been quietly dropped. One assumes this was because of the disruption caused to local government when the old unitary Corporation of the City of Edinburgh was replaced in 1975 and split up into the two-tier system of Edinburgh District Council and a combined Lothian Regional Council. Instead there was a cut back scheme to purchase the trackbed between Seafield and Easter Road and to landscape it as a pathway with funding from the Scottish Development Agency (SDA). While this at least did come to pass, the word “landscape” is doing a lot of heavy lifting and in reality this path was really just a strip of compressed dirt covered in dog mess and rubbish, with obstructive barriers to try and stop you cycling it without getting off and pushing. This would not be remedied until around 2010 when it was properly surface, the barriers were removed, new access points were added and lighting was provided.
Excerpt from 1980 report.
Item 26 on the above list, the railway embankment through Pilrig Park, did also ended up being achieved although the link through to Leith Walk never happened. The viaduct from Pilrig Park to Leith Walk remains fence off, although recent redevelopment on the site of the former Leith Walk West goods yard means there is now a rather roundabout connection some 45 years later through an access road.
Looking along the viaduct above Jane Street towards Leith Walk on a very grey day in 2021. Photo © Self
Item 27, the second walkway which was planned in both 1975 and 1980, along the old North British Railway trackbed alongside the Water of Leith, from Coburg Street to Warriston, would come to pass. This opened in June 1982, making it the first old railway track to formally be converted to a foot and cycle path in Edinburgh, and the first of many more miles to come.
Line of the Coburg Street to Wariston section of the North British Railway, traced over a 1971 OS land use survey map on a 6-inch to the mile base map, 1966 survey. CC-by-NC-SA via National Library of Scotland
The opportunity to do something between Pilrig Park and Easter Road is one that has never been properly grasped. In more recent times (although over 10 years ago now!) there was a semi-serious attempt to drum up interest in reviving the idea, with a connection between Pilrig Park and Halmyre Street achieved by building a show-piece timber and cable bridge across Leith Walk. How serious this actually was I do not know, I don’t recall any funding ever being in place even for planning, and providing level access to street level at the Thorntree Street end remains a difficult proposition. Even if it had been approved, like other schemes such as the section of Railway between Powderhall and Meadowbank, there’s a very good chance that it would still find itself in development limbo.
Renderings by Biomorphis of their engineered timber and cable bridge structure they proposed over Leith Walk.
But if you happen to find yourself walking along past the garages which occupy the Manderston and Gordon Street arches, it’s easy to forget that there’s actually a railway station platform up there above your head, one which was built over 120 years ago but never actually opened. Although some lucky souls in the path have at least had the chance to get off a train there and head down its stairs to street level…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/127340508@N05/20376697129/in/photolist-boJLaJ-fcWT7Y-x3BU9i-2dg6Nwb-2cYnzaH
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#nowandthen #caledonianrailway #cycling #development #leith #localpolitics
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-16 · 00:30 UTC

The thread about John Paul Jones; the Scottish-American “pirate” who tried to capture Edinburgh and Leith but lived to tell the tale

This thread was originally written and published in December 2019.
It was on a day like this, 240 years ago, with a west wind howling up the Firth of Forth, rattling the window panes and lifting the roof tiles, that Edinburgh and Leith were saved from sacking by the fledgling United States Navy. The year was 1779 and it was the middle of the War of Independence when a squadron of American ships of war appeared in the Firth. Their objective; to disrupt shipping, spread panic and “raise a contribution” to the American war effort of two hundred thousand pounds from the wallets of the good folk of Edinburgh and Leith. These ships were the 36-gun Bon Homme Richard, the 32-gun Pallas and the 12-gun Vengeance and in command was one John Paul Jones. To the Americans a great hero, a father to their naval service:
John Paul Jones by Charles Wilson Peale
To the British, a common pirate. Of course, they would say that, because he beat them at their own game, rattled the establishment to its core and made the mighty Royal Navy look rather impotent.
“Paul Jones the Pirate”, a contemporary British caricature
So who was John Paul Jones? For a start, he wasn’t born as John Paul Jones or an American, he was actually from Kirkcudbrightshire. He was born in 1747 as plain John Paul to John Paul (senior), a gardener and Jean Mcduff. In 1760, John junior was apprenticed to a sea captain in Whitehaven and took to the seven seas on the merchant ship Friendship. He sailed the Atlantic trade route, mainly between Britain and the colony of Virginia where his older brother was settled.
The cottage in which John Paul was born in 1747, now the John Paul Jones Cottage Museum. Pic © johnpauljonesmuseum.com
For quite a few years John kept this up, working his way up the ranks to First Mate by 1768. At this point fate begins to intervene and steer his life on a new course. In Jamaica, he decides to abandon his ship and work his passage back to Scotland. Once home, he finds a new ship – the appropriately named John – and is taken on as lower mate. When the master and leading mates unexpectedly die of fever, he takes command and brings the ship and her cargo safely home. In gratitude, the owners raise him to master. So at the tender age of 23, John finds himself a ship’s master with 10 years experience under his belt; life has worked out well for him. But then some things start to go wrong. On only his seconnd voyage as master he has someone flogged for insubordination. This was a very common and non-noteworthy act for the time, sailors were kept in check with fairly equal proportions of corporal punishment, alcohol and the promise of the occasional pay packet.
But the flogged man has connections back in Scotland and when he died (from Yellow Fever), the blame for his death is laid at the feet of John. As a young captain from a humble family he has little influence himself over matters once he’s off his ship and finds himself thrown in the Tolbooth of Kirkcudbright to await his fate. But clearly he is not without any friends as he is bailed and given some quiet advice to get far away from Kirkcudbright before the law has its way. This was sensible advice, which was followed.
“The Old Tolbooth, Kirkcudbright” by Charles Oppenheimer © Manchester Art Gallery
As a result he quickly leaves Scotland for England and finds a new ship, the Betsy, and spends 18 successful months toing and froing in the Caribbean, before once again clashing with a subordinate crewmember. This time, he allegedly runs the man through with a sword in an argument over pay. He would claim this was self defence, but having fled from the law before he must have realised that he couldn’t go back and face any more music the music and so headed north to the Virginia colony in about 1772. He finds that his brother has died and so takes takes over his affairs there.
John Paul Jones. Quick, perhaps too quick, with his sword.
Perhaps it is to cover his tracks that in Virginia he changes his name to John Paul Jones, with American folk legend suggesting that it was in honour of statesman Willie Jones. JPJ takes to his new home and when war breaks out with Britian he signs up to fight for his adopted homeland against that of his birth. Whether this was opportunism or patriotism is not clear but in 1775 he is part of the newly formed Continental Navy. As an experienced sailor and officer, JPJ’s potential is recognised by founding father Richard Henry Lee and he is appointed First Lieutenant of the frigate Alfred. Like most US ships of this time it’s a converted merchantman, but the line between smaller naval and civilian ships at this time was rather blurry so it was not that uncommon.
“Continental Ship Alfred“, W. Nowland Van Powell, 1974
It is apparently JPJ who had the honour of hoisting the Grand Union Flag – the first national flag of the United States, on a US ship, for the first time. He and the Alfred sail to the Caribbean and raid Nassau, but after this this point he takes a demotion to a smaller ship, the sloop Providence, as a step on the ladder to commanding a frigate of his own.
Providence, flying the Grand Old Union Flag. W. Nowland Van Powell, 1974
Long story short, JPJ rapidly impresses his superiors with a combination of skill, aggression and good luck. By 1778 he is in charge of the new frigate Ranger. On February 14th, on the Ranger, he took a salute from a French naval squadron under La Motte Picquet in the Robuste at Quiberon Bay, the first official recognition of the young American state by a foreign government.
“First Recognition of the American Flag by a Foreign Government”, Edward Moran, 1898
He is now sent to take the war to the British on the other side of the Atlantic but finds that his crew – and in particular his officers – are completely lacking, unwilling to take risks or to follow his orders. A raid on the sloop HMS Drake fails due to poor seamanship. A raid on Whitehaven, his old home port, fails due to a combination of poor weather and an uncooperative crew who decided to visit the pub instead of set fire to the shipping in the harbour.
“Launching of the White Haven Raid” by Charles Waterhouse © National Museum of the Marine Corps
JPJ next hatches a plot to kidnap the Earl of Selkirk for ransom from St. Mary’s Isle, but this scheme is foiled as the Earl is away; the Americans are instead cordially entertained by the Earl’s wife before leaving after helping themselves to some silverwear. (JPJ would later buy the loot back, at his own expense, and return it to the Selkirks).
“John Paul Jones seizing the silver plate of Lady Selkirk”, his crew depicted as pirates. A print from 1903.
The effect on British morale and general public alarm was much significant. Here were American rebels acting with impunity, not just in British waters but also on the land! It was a national scandal. But the reality was that his raiding around the Solway proved fruitless and resulted in a crew who were restless from the lack of prize money. And so JPJ sails the Ranger back across the Irish Sea and finally catches up with his previous quarry, the sloop HMS Drake, off of Carrickfergus. A roughly equal fight on paper, he deploys a ruse to get the initial jump on Drake before bettering her with skilful gunnery. Five of the British crew, including their captain and the first lieutenant, were killed in the fight and after an hour the Drake surrendered. This was another national scandal for the Royal Navy in home waters at the hands of the young man from Kirkcudbright.
The surrender of the Drake, from “The Boys of 1812 and Other Heroes” by James Soley, 1887.
JPJ has Drake sailed to Brest to be sold to the French as a prize. This was finally a great victory for him and the Continental Navy, but there was much acrimony between captain, second in command Lt. Simpson (who he tries and fails to have court-martialled) and the crew. In France, JPJ is given a bigger ship, the merchantman Duc de Duras, which has been gifted to the US Navy by a sympathiser. On conversion to a 40-gun warship he has her named Bonhomme Richard after Ben Franklin, who used the pseudonym “Poor Richard” to publish his almanac in Paris
Bonne Homme Richard in 1779 by F. Muller
JPJ assembles a little fleet and prepares for war in Lorient in June 1779 but is forced back from his initial cruise by bad weather and in need of repairs. A second attempt is made in August; Bonhomme Richard, Pallas and Vengeance are accompanied by the French naval cutter Le Cerf and two privateers, Monsieur and Granville. Monsieur falls out with JPJ only days out of port and leaves the fleet – falling out with his subordinates is quickly becoming something of a hallmark for JPJ’s expeditions. But this time the Royal Navy are better prepared and locate and attempt to chase the Americans. He is able to lead them on a merry dance around the north of Scotland before shaking the pursuers off. On his way, despite ongoing squabbles with other officers, he is able to take 16 merchant ships as prizes.
And so it was on the 16th September 1779 that there is great alarm on both banks of the Forth when John Paul Jones and his three remaining ships (the others had returned to France by this time with the prizes), appeared in the Forth intent on sailing up it and doing as they pleased.
Looking down the Forth towards Inchkeith in the distance in 1791, by David Allan.
A panic spreads through Edinburgh and Leith. The moneyed classes secure their goods and flee the city for their estates. The banks are locked up, the garrison barricade themselves in Edinburgh Castle, the church bells are rung and “neither a carriage nor a horse [was] to be seen“. Leith’s fortifications, the great Marian walls and the Cromwellian citadel are decrepit, having been partially slighted and then left to the elements and those intent on pilfering the masonry for building material. A more fundamental problem is that they were never designed to offer defence from seaward, but from landward. But the enterprising folk of Leith try to mount a defence of sorts as best they can. Three spare old cannon were retrieved from the Naval Victualling Yard on Constitution Street and manhandled along to the walls of the Citadel.
The remains of the citadel do at least provide something of a raised firing platform to cover the mouth of the harbour, but this battery was “extremely perilous to those who worked it“. Edinburgh sent down a couple more old cannon and gunners from the castle and these were posted near Newhaven with small arms were handed out to the Incorporated Trades of Leith. With this meagre defence, the town battened down the hatches and awaited its fate.
But the folk of Kirkcaldy, on the opposite shore of the Forth, take an alternative approach to defence. They follow their minister, the Reverend Robert Shirra, down to the sea and begin to pray for almighty intervention.
The Reverend Robert Shirra by George Watson. © Kirkcaldy Galleries
Now deer Lord, dinna ye think it a shame for ye to send this vile piret to rob our folk o Kirkcaldy; for ye ken they’re puir enow already, and hae naething to spaire
Shirra’s sermon against John Paul Jones (translated, “Now dear Lord, don’t you think it a shame for you to send this vile pirate to rob our folk of Kirkcaldy; for you know they are poor enough already and have nothing to spare”)
And would you know the almighty happened to be listening? For no sooner had Kirkcaldy prayed for salvation than, in the words of John Paul Jones, “a very severe gale of wind came on, and being directly contrary obliged me to bear away after having in vain endeavoured for some time to withstand its violence“.
“Inchkeith on the Forth in a Fresh Gale”. Ships in Leith Roads would shelter in the lee of the island from a gale. John Gabriel Stedman, 1781. CC-by-SA National Galleries Scotland
As the wind blew up, JPJ’s ships were not yet in the shelter of Leith Roads in the lee of Inchkeith island where they could ride out the storm, so despite being “in a cannon’s shot of the town” they were obliged to follow the wind back out to sea. In the process, the ship Friendship they had taken in prize was lost. The little fleet was blown straight out of the Firth and down the east coast. Edinburgh, Leith and Kirkcaldy have been saved!
A week later the Royal Navy finally encounters JPJ off Flamborough Head when he runs into a convoy of merchant ships under their protection and a somewhat scrappy and confused battle takes place. In the course of the action, the Bonhomme Richard is damaged so heavily that she will sink the next day, but JPJ in return manages to capture the British flagship HMS Serapis and takes her instead.
The Battle of Flamborough Head by Richard Paton, 1780. HMS Serapis is in the foreground with “Bonhomme Richard” behind.
The outcome of the battle is still hotly debated; JPJ and the Americans can claim another embarrassing Royal Navy scalp, in sight of British soil and once again they have failed to stop JPJ. But the merchant convoy – the real prize – has slipped away unharmed. However that is a somewhat hollow strategic victory for the Royal Navy. Once Again, the Americans press have their hero and the British their villain.
John Paul Jones the Hero.John Paul Jones the CorsairHeroes and Villains; Two different portraits of John Paul Jones at Flamborough Head.
After the battle, JPJ wants to head for France, but his subordinates insist they follow orders and head for the neutral Dutch island of Texel in the United Provinces. A tricky diplomatic incident ensues as they have lost the Continental Navy’s flags when Bonhomme Richard went down, and couldn’t fly the Royal Navy’s ensigns from the Serapis and so were technically operating under no flag. This allowes the British to claim that they were pirates. So, based on only a written description, (“colors should be white, red, and blue alternately to thirteen… [with a] blue field with thirteen stars… in the canton“) JPJ had his men run up a new – and rather unconventional – Continental Navy flag. The Dutch dutifully checked that the flag matched the description (they were very unlikely to know what the flag of an American warship should look like as they’d probably never seen one) and entered it with a sketch in their records to make it official.
The “John Paul Jones” or “Serapis” Flag.
With its 8-pointed stars and irregular groupings of red/white/blue tricolour stripes, the “Serapis flag” is unique, the true work of a sailor handy with needle and thread and not someone versed in the rigid conventions of vexilology. John Paul Jones’ wacky flag was enough to save him from international charges of piracy and now takes pride of place on the coat of arms of the US warships that have taken his name.
Coat of Arms of the US Navy Destroyer John Paul Jones, featuring the “Serapis Flag” on the left and a likeness of JPJ
Back in Leith, plans were immediately drawn up for a new artillery fort to protect the port and the city of Edinburgh behind from the sea. These were drawn up by local celebrated architect James Craig – who laid out Edinburgh first New Town – despite him having no background in military engineering. The fort and the land on which it was built were provided “at the expense of the citizens of Edinburgh and Leith“. It was a fairly straightforward defensive structure, a half-moon battery of cannon facing out to sea, protected by a perimeter ditch, low masonry wall and a large earthen glacis heaped up infront of it to seeward. To the landward there is were a pair of blockhouse corner bastions to protect it from rear assaults. The Fort’s battery of guns covered the navigable channel of the approach to the Port of Leith.
One of Craig’s original drawings. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
So there you have it, the tale of the lad from Kirkcudbrightshire that the Royal Navy couldn’t sink, who tried to capture the Earl of Selkirk, who put the willies up the good folk of Edinburgh and Leith, who rocked the vexilogical world but who could not overcome a Kirk minister and the weather. Oh, and how this modern street on the site of Leith Fort got its name:
John Paul Jones View, Leith Fort council housing. © Self
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-09 · 12:43 UTC
The thread about exploring Cromwell’s enigmatic Citadel of Leith

I was quite very excited to find this image in the Edinburgh City Libraries collection that I’d somehow missed before. It’s the “Gate of the Old Citadel of Leith“, an 1818 watercolour by the lawyer and prolific cityscape artist of Edinburgh, James Skene.
“Gate of the Old Citadel of Leith“, James Skene, 1818 © Edinburgh City Libraries
The Citadel was part of Oliver Cromwell’s plan to subdue and control Scotland during his occupation of the country after the Battle of Dunbar in 1650.
It acted not just as a base for the occupying forces, but by protecting and controlling the Port of Leith it guarded the supply lines and meant the Army could be provisioned. Its construction was ordered in 1653, overseen by Cromwell’s man on the ground, General Monck, and was reluctantly financed by the city of Edinburgh to the tune of £60,000 Scots (£5,000). According to Nicoll’s Diary, construction began on May 26th 1656. The occupiers brought with them a printing press to churn out official declarations and propaganda and so it’s no coincidence that the first newspaper in Scotland is said to have been printed on an English press within the Citadel; “The Mercurius Caledonius – Comprising The Affairs now in Agitation in Scotland With A Survey of Forraign Intelligence“. It only ran for 12 issues from Dec 1660 – Jan 1661 and is not to be confused with the later Caledonian Mercury. It printed reports from Parliament, “Forraign Intelligence” and other stories sourced from the London papers. Monck also encouraged other English merchants and industrialists to set up in the safety of The Citadel and they introduced the craft of glassmaking, something Leith would later become famous for.
Mercurius Caledonius, edition of the first week of 1661.
As I may have said many times before, as far as I am aware there are no surviving contemporary illustrations or plans of The Citadel and the earliest map showing it accurately in plan was not made until 50 years later, after it was abandoned as a fortification and encroached upon by the sea. Before we look further at Skene’s illustration, it’s worth getting an idea of the layout of the fortress.
The Citadel followed the classic 5-pointed “Star Fort” layout, with projecting, arrowhead-shaped bastions at each point of the star. These were fortifications explicitly engineered for the age of artillery; the corner bastions formed raised firing platforms to mount your defensive cannons. Gone were the tall, stone walls of medieval castles, in were carefully sculpted and aligned ditches and earthen mounds to resist cannon fire. John Naish’s 1709 survey and plan of Leith is the best reference to get an accurate survey of some of the walls and internal buildings. Note we can only see three sides and corners of the five walls; even at this stage he calls it the “Ruins of the Cittadell”. It can be seen from where he delineates the “high water mark on a raging full sea” that where the remaining walls and bastions should be has been reclaimed by the North Sea. The ditch that surrounds it all could be filled to a depth of 6 feet, and it can be seen on Naish’s map that a small pond has formed to the east of the walls.
Excerpt from John Naish’s 1709 survey and plan of “Leith, Surveyed May 28th 1709”. Crown Copyright, MPHH 1/32
We also have a first-hand description of it during construction from the travelling English naturalist John Ray:
…one of the best fortifications that we ever beheld, passing fair and sumptuous. There are three forts [bastions] advanced above the rest and two platforms; the works around about are faced with freestone towards the ditch and are almost as high as the highest buildings within, and withal thick and substantial. Below are very pleasant, convenient and well-built houses for the governor, officers, and soldiers and for magazines and stores. There is also a good capacious chapel, the piazza, or void space within, as large as Trinity College, Cambridge, Great Court.
After the Stuart Restoration in 1660, The Citadel was abandoned as a military fortification. The contents of its chapel; its timber, seats, glass, masonry and even its steeple, were used in 1673 to refurbish that of Heriot’s Hospital. The City of Edinburgh were allowed to buy it back by King Charles II, so in effect they paid for it twice. Its walls were abandoned to the sea, or quarried out for building materials, and the modern buildings within them became something of a desirable place to live. John Skene’s delightful little sketch was made in 1818, a full 109 years after Naish’s map and 150 or more years after it was first built. But even in this time period, few other images of the subject matter were created and it remains a real rarity. So what does it show us of The Citadel, how does that relate to what we know of it and where was the artist positioned to sketch from. Let’s now find out, shall we?
Despite being a small watercolour, Skene has crammed a lot of interesting detail in there. The obvious thing is it shows a port (gateway). From this we can confirm that the gateway was surrounded with dressed masonry, the walls themselves were faced in stone and were likely filled with earth and rubble. It also gives us an idea of overall idea of the height of the walls and gateways as there are figures here for scale. If we suppose these are accurate, then the gateway might be 10-12 feet high and the walls 20-30 feet in total. The wall height of the contemporary Ayr Citadel is 25 feet, so this fits nicely.
The Citadel gateway, close-up.
In the background of the image we can see limewashed buildings with pan-tiled roofs; standard, vernacular east coast Scottish style at this time. This building looks particularly tall, but if we work it out from the window spacing, it’s probably just 3 storeys plus an attic dormer. Skene often plays with the height of buildings and stretches them to make the scene look more dramatic. The chimneys are smoking, so these buildings are in use, most likely residential.
Pantile roofs and whitewash
We can also see that the blocks of buildings here don’t meet at right angles, given it was a five-sided fortification we would expect them to therefore be at about 72 degrees (give or take, as it was a slightly squished pentagon in plan). This distant range again looks to be 3 storeys with perhaps 2 in the attic dormer.
Pantile roofs and non-right angles
We see can also see street lighting. From a previous thread on the topic we can be sure these are “train oil” (i.e. whale) lamps.
A lamp post.
And a woman hangs out her washing to dry on the grassy slope that is all that remains of the former wall embankment.
Washing day.
In the foreground, two men appear to be working stones. He in the red seems to have a regular block propped up and his partner in the blue looks like he’s trying to heave a slab off the ground. I wager they are reclaiming masonry from the collapsed walls; we know at both Leith and Ayr that this took place.
Working masonry.
And just to the right of the two masons are two intriguing square posts. The Citadel was surrounded by a broad engineered ditch, which we can clearly see on Naish’s map, and it’s more than likely it would have had wooden trestle drawbridges across it. It’s nice to think that those posts may be part of that, they are after all aligned with the gateway.
Wooden posts in the water
In the left midground we have yet more pantile roofed, whitewashed buildings. This range is two storeys and has curving, external stairs to the 1st floor. We know that there were at least two 2-storey blocks within the complex which would have been barracks quarters and stables and we can see evidence in maps of the late 18th and early 19th century that some of the buildings had external staircases.
Curving external stairs to the first floor
And lastly, auld Leith wouldn’t be auld Leith without a forest of masts and rigging in the background. These are the ships of the port, crammed into the river basin beyond. There were no formal wet docks here at this time, everything tied up in the river mouth and alongside the quays of North and South Leith.
Masts and rigging of the Port of Leith
So to conclude an answer to the first question, we can see rather a lot. We can see that the fortifications were largely gone, but bits remained; we can see its buildings were actively occupied and in reasonably good repair at this time, and we get a good idea of the building style and some of its inner layout.
And on to the second part; where was Skene’s viewpoint from where he made his drawing? Well that’s easy of course because we know exactly where The Citadel’s port was as it’s still there! (Many people are amazed to find out that there’s a well preserved section of Cromwellian Fort wall hiding in plain sight at the end of a car park in Leith).
The surviving Citadel Port. The upper level of dressed masonry and the wall to the left are more modern © Self
An 1804 Town Plan showing Leith by John Ainslie is roughly contemporary with Skene’s illustration. The gateway in the photograph above is marked S, and so Skene would have to have been outside (to the east or right of the S), looking inwards or west.
Ainslie’s 1804 Town plan of Edinburgh & Leith. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Except there’s actually three problems with this hasty conclusion.
1. Firstly, in Skene’s image we are looking into The Citadel from outside and there is no way for there to be ships and masts in the left background as that is dry land well away from the shoreline. Skene is a reliable and accurate illustrator, it’s not likely he just made a big mistake.
2. Secondly, there was no range of buildings in the north of the inner courtyard of The Citadel; the buildings on the right of Skene’s image should not be there.
3. Thirdly, and crucially, the arch in Skene’s picture is a plain, rounded arch and clearly doesn’t match the segmental profile of the one in the photo above; it is also finished plainer, missing the tracery.
So how can we be looking at the arch from outside The Citadel bearing all of this in mind? The answer is quite simple actually, we can’t be. We are looking at a different arch! – Until the early 19th century, there was the remains of another port; the western or St. Nicholas Port. It is clearly marked T on the map below, set into W, which is the remains of old walls.
Aitchison’s Town Plan of 1795. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Suddenly it all begins to fall into place. Skene is located on the shore, to the left of the above map, looking at the St. Nicholas Port. The stonemasons are working not on the shore but in the ditch outside the walls, and the washerwoman is hanging up her whites on the slope of that wall W. Beyond is the range of buildings marked X and on the map can see two small projections on those buildings, which I would suggest are the external stairways. Beyond X is the further range of buildings offset from them at an angle around 72 degrees. Skene is now looking directly towards the piers and quayside of the Port, shown on the map below, and so the masts and ships are now in the correct place.
Aitchison’s Town Plan of 1795. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Lastly, we can corroborate all pf this with a further map, that by William Bell dated 1813, which shows the layout of buildings and land ownership in The Citadel at that time, and confirms two Citadel Ports again; you can see one marked on the left below the word “Property” of “Mr. Campbell’s Property” and the other on the right, to the right of “Citidal Green“. Bell’s map shows that at this time the whole area was being encroached upon by the building of the wet docks.
Bell’s Plan of the Regality of Canongate etc., 1813. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
I’ve only ever seen one other illustration of the western port of the Citadel, which refers to it as “Oliver’s Mount” (i.e. Cromwell) on account of the mass of earth that had once formed the core of the wall rising above it. Confusingly it shows the passageway as bifurcating, which makes little defensive or engineering sense, and conflicts with Skene’s sketch. However, my understanding is at one time it may have been used as a cattle store and had been given a dividing wall internally. The artist of the below drawing may have been working off of a second-hand description and hence made it look like there were two separate passages, not one that had been divided.
“Oliver’s Mount” from Leith and its Antiquites by James Campbell Irons, 1898
Another semi-contemporary image shows the “Cromwell House“, in which Cromwell most likely never stayed. It was probably built as a governor’s mansion and would have been a desirable property to take over after the fort was abandoned to residential use. The general style and scale of this building does not contradict Skene’s illustration. This building, also known as the “Governor’s House” was still standing in 1825 when it was advertised as for sale.
“Cromwell House” from the Story of Leith.
A last piece of the puzzle and one which helps to tie everything nicely together can be found an etching by John Clerk of Eldin (who was a thoroughly good landscape draughtsman). It is something which is very easy to miss, but if we squint at “Leith from the West” we can see our gateway (highlighted blue) and the range of two-storey buildings with the curved, external staircases (red). The Leith Custom House is highlighted in yellow to help get our bearings. The full engraving is digitised in the National Galleries Scotland collection, you can zoom in on it and explore it at your leisure.
Excerpt of “Leith from the West” by John Clerk of Eldin. Move the slider to see the coloured highlightes. CC-BY-NC National Galleries Scotland.
We can then take all of this evidence and add it on to Naish’s map to get a good idea of the layout and what the various features we can see on it actually were for.
Naish’s map, conceptual details of the Citadel filled in and annotated. Base map Crown Copyright, MPHH 1/32
I know of know reconstruction plan or illustration of the Leith Citadel, but one does exist for another one of the Scottish Cromwellian citaels of this era, that of Ayr. This is similar in some respects to Leith as it was built on the shore of a port town, but was larger and had 6 instead of 5 corner bastions. The illustration below gives a reasonable impression of what Leith would have looked like though.
Ayr Citadel by Robert Nelmes
Surviving sections of the walls of Ayr also give us a good idea of what Leith might have looked like:
A bastion of Ayr Citadel. CC-by-SA 3.0 Rosser1954
I find the Leith Citadel hugely enigmatic. It was a massive, dominant fortification that was totally unlike anything else in this part of the world. It was built at great expense and yet from a military point of view was abandoned within a few years of completion. It very briefly saw some military action in 1715 when Jacobites under Mackintosh of Borlum occupied it and had a standoff with government forces before retreating and briefly in 1780 some old cannons were mounted on its walls to counter the threat posed by John Paul Jones. I also find it remarkable that even though much of The Citadel survived so long and after its abandonment, so little was left by the way of record. We are lucky indeed to have the remaining gateway and a small section of wall, tucked away in a car park in North Leith.
The tantalising remaining fragment of the Citadel Wall. © Self
The other great survivor of The Citadel is less obvious from the ground, but it you look at a map of streets in the area it is immediately obvious that there is a pentagonal arrangement, bounded by Cromwell Place, Couper Street, Coburg Street and Dock Street. This directly aligns with the orientation of the walls, ditches and internal structures as you can see on the below animated image transition of old maps of Leith on the modern streetscape and overlaid with a schematic of The Citadel.
Transition animation of the Citadel. NLS maps reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-09-08 · 21:03 UTC
Ocksters, Oxscares and Oxcars: the thread about the islands of the Forth and what some of their names mean

Oxcars. A lump of rock crowned by a lighthouse in the Firth of Forth. I was interested to see that a 17th century variation of the name was Ocksters – the Scots word for armpit!
Ocksters – Excerpt from Greenville Collins’ map of the Firth of Forth, 1693. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
A few years previously it’s down as Ockstairs on the original sketches for John Adair’s map of the Forth, but then in a 1703 imprint it has been amended to Oxscares. The oldest variation is recorded in 1621 as Oixtaris in the Register of the Privy Council on the subject of the need for a beacon on these rocks, which are submerged at high tides.
Oxscares – Adair’s map of 1703. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
If you are wondering where these variations come from, then wonder no more. The root is Ox Scaris, as in ox skerries; ox being the animal and skerries being intertidal rocks. Ocksters etc. are simply phonetic variations. It’s likely this animal theme lent its name to the neighbouring rock of Cow(s) & Calves, which was traditionally Muckriestone as it lies off the north on Admiralty coastal charts.
Cows and Calves off of Inchmickery, OS 1 inch map of 1895. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Working our way down the Forth from it’s outer reaches, we can explore the toponymy of the islands; the meanings of their place names. The Isle of May, at the eastern extreme, is likely from the old Norse, Má ey or gull island. Stands to obvious reason. The Gaelic Magh, an open field, is less likely.
Isle of May – Excerpt from Adair’s map of the Firth of Forth, 1703. Excerpt from Greenville Collins’ map of the Firth of Forth, 1693. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
About 8 miles south, and a little west, of the May is the Bass Rock, whose unmistakable outline is prominent along the East Lothian coast. The origin of its name has been lost to history, John Milne suggests a relation to death, from the Gaelic bàs, as it was long a place of banishment and execution, but that’s just conjecture and some of Milne’s use of Gaelic is often a little bit too convenient. But we do know that the Bass gives the scientific species name to the Northern Gannet – Morus bassanus – for which it is the largest colony. These animals were scientifically described as far back as the 16th century as Anser bassanus, and later in the 18th by Linnaeus as Sula bassana. The Scots word for them was however the solendguse or solen goose. In the spring and summer, the Bass takes on a white appearance, caked in the birds and their droppings.
The Bass Rock, John Gabriel Stedman, 1780. Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland
Moving west, the next island is Craigleith. Milne suggests the Gaelic Creag Liath – the grey rock. (In Gaelic, Liath – is the colour of a blue sky, but when used in reference to the landscape it refers to something being greyish. This is a feature of the Gaelic language when dealing with place names; the colour use is subjective and descriptive, not literal). However Craigleith is actually comprised of very dark, volcanic rocks – it needs to be squinted at in combination with the stains of guano to take on a greyish hue. It should also be noted that in Gaelic the word liath does not have the soft “th” ending that Leith does in English. Notice on the 18th century map below that the earliest spelling is Lieth, with the I before the E, which was also the case at this time for maps showing the port and town of Leith along the coast.
Craig Lieth. Excerpt from Adair’s map of the Firth of Forth, 1703. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Next up is The Lamb. Milne goes for the easy Gaelic Làmh for an arm or handle, one assumes for the shape, but in that language the –mh sounds like an English –v. As I said before, sometimes Milne’s use of Gaelic for the roots of place names seems to be just too convenient. There might also be a Norse origin for the name, or it may simply be named after the animal (see already Oxcars, Cows & Calves). It is after all flanked by the North andSouth Dog rocks. This island was bought by Uri Geller (yes, that Uri Geller) in 2009 so he could dowse for Egyptian treasure on it. Yes, I’m being serious, he described that it’s an analogue for the layout of the Egyptian pyramids and holds the buried treasure of Princess Scota. He recently told the BBC that he has spent a single night on his island and didn’t enjoy it one bit and was declaring the island a micronation, the Republic of Lamb. In January 2026 Mr Geller again made the headlines when he declared Donald Trump an honorary citizen and president of the island.
Lamb, North Dog and South Dog, from OS 6 inch map, 1853. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Moving west is Fidra, for which Milne once again gives a fanciful Gaelic derivation, but it’s now believed to be Old Norse, from Fiðrey or Feather Island as a result of all the seabirds. Eider feathers would have been gathered here in yore for use in bedding. Robert Louis Stevenson based his plan for Treasure Island on Fidra (amongst other islands). Like its eastern neighbour, Fidra too is guarded by North and South Dogs.
Fidra as shown on the OS 6-inch map, 1854. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Next along is Eyebroughy, the fourth and final of the basalt islands between North Berwick and Aberlady. It is shown as Ibris in Adair’s 18th century chart and the 1850s Ordnance Survey place name book for East Lothian also gives Eyebrochy. The Old Norse Ey for island seems an obvious start for the word, but I cannot find a reference explaning the second part.
Ibris. Excerpt from Adair’s map of the Firth of Forth, 1703. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
There is now something of a gap until the next major island; it is 12.5 miles from Eyebroughy to Inchkeith, which looms large in the centre of the Firth. Its etymology gets a whole chapter on its Wikipedia page, but the logical explanation may be Innse Coit, a hybrid of old Gaelic (Island) and Welsh (wooded); a wooded island. The oldest recorded form is Ked in the 13th century, but as the Place Names of Fife points out, its an unlikely candidate to be known for being wooded, so once again we probably just don’t know. It was used to quarantine victims of syphilis from Leith and Edinburgh in the 15th century, of that we do know. The Grandgore (syphilis) Act of 1497, saw the island made a place of “Compulsory Retirement” for sufferers, obliged to board a ship at Leith and to remain on their island “till God provide for their health“.
“Inchkeith on the Forth in a Fresh Gale”, John Gabriel Stedman, 1781. Collection of the National Galleries of Scotland
Interestingly, the Georgian mapmaker extraordinaire of Scotland, William Roy, left Inchkeith off his Great Maps of both the Lowlands and Highlands, with the Forth forming the boundary between these two geographical divisions in the east of the country. But there is a square that looks like a repair where it should be…
Here be… nothing? The position of Inchkeith on Roy’s map. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Next up is Oxcars, 5.5 miles west of Inchkeith, where we started this thread. If we move south from there we get to Inchmickery and Mickrystone (now Cows & Calves, as previously mentioned also). The derivation of Mickery may be from the Gaelic Innis nam Bhiocaire, island of vicars, as like most of the islands of the Forth it has been a Christian retreat at one time or another. The island was fortified during both World Wars, and it’s not without good reason that there’s a legend that its outline was deliberately made to look like an anchored battleship. The logic is that any U-boat commander who made it into the Forth would pop up his periscope, be taken in by the cunningly disguised island and would have fired his torpedoes and disappeared before realising he’d wasted them on a rock. If you know your Royal Navy ships, the fortifications are a reasonably good likeness to HMS Nelson and Rodney, but I have it on expert authority that the legend is precisely that, a legend.
Inchmickery. CC-BY-SA 2.0, Anne Burgess and HMS Nelson. Move the slider to compare the outlines.
North of Cows & Calves is Inchcolm; probably the best known of the Forth Islands and certainly the most visited. It is named for Saint Columba (Colum Cille in Gaelic) who reputedly visited it in the 6th century. The modern name is from the Gaelic Innis Choluim orColumba’s Island. The old joke goes “how many inches are there in the Forth?” and you’re meant to count the islands. In The Scottish Play, Shakespeare refers to the place as Saint Colmes Ynch.
“Inchcolm on the Forth in a Summer Shower”, John Gabriel Stedman, 1781. Collection of the National Galleries Scotland
Just off Inchcolm lies Inchgnome, but the jury of the best minds in Scottish placenames is still out on where that one might come from. Probably from some obscure Gaelic saint.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwshack/26451815521
South and west lies Cramond Island, which obviously takes its name from the village off which it lies. That in turn comes from Caer Amond, Caer being old British for a fortification (referring to Roman fort on the site), and Amond or Almond is the river of that name. Like the rivers Esk and Avon (and others), River Almond is a tautology as the latter word simply means river.
Cramond Island
Another tautological place name is the island of Carcraig , just northwest of Inchcolm. The Car element is an Scots word for rock (from the Old English Carr) and the Craig bit is the Scots word for the same, from the Gaelic Creag.
Carcraig, from OS 6 inch map, 1853. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
The other principal islet off of Inchcolm is Meadulse. This rock is entirely covered by the tide which makes it an excellent growing place for seaweed and the name likely comes from the edible dulse which grows there and is known to have been a medieval food source.
The final, and westernmost, of the Inches of the Forth is Inchgarvie, that convenient supporting foothold for the Forth Bridge. Its name is likely from the Gaelic Innse Garbh, or rough island, the –bh sound in Gaelic sounding like a –v in English. This is on account of its rugged appearance (and perhaps its legendary population of giant rats!).
Inchgarvie, OS 25 inch map of 1892. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
Upstream of the Forth Bridge there are fewer islands. The Beamer Rock‘s name is quite literal, and refers to an early beacon that was there from time immemorial to guard ships from it. The older form was Bimar or Bymerskyrr, the –skyrr from the Scots skerry, for a low islet or sea rock. This islet suffered the indignity of having the very beacon it was named for demolished (the base was blown up with explosives) in 2011 to make way for a tower of the Queensferry Crossing.
Beamer Rock in 2010. CC-BY-SA 2.0 Simon Johnston.
I won’t move any further west than this, as this site is principally concerned with the geography of Edinburgh, Leith and the Lothians. However there are of course countless other islets and named rocks in the Forth. Many of these are simply a variation on Craig, Carr and Bush, all words referring to rocks. Selected others in the Edinburgh area include:
- Birnies, a collection of tidal rocks at Granton. I cannot find a description of the name, but the –birnie in the placename Kilbirnie comes from the Gaelic Cill Bhraonaigh, or Saint Brendan.
- Another rock near the Birnies, Chestnut logically takes its name from its similarity of appearance to the fruit of that tree
- General’s Rock on the Granton Foreshore, allegedly where English forces under Lord Hertford (Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset) landed in 1544 before the burning of Edinburgh and Leith.
- Gunnet Ledge, a navigational hazard directly north of the entrance to the Port of Leith and west of Inchkeith, marked by a pair of bouys called the East and West Gunnet since at least the start of the 19th century. Probably a variation of Gannet, alternative older spellings include Dunnet and Guneet.
- Martello Rocks, sitting at the old tidal entrance to the Port of Leith and named retrospectively for the Martello Tower that was constructed upon them to defend the approaches
- Megmillar another intertidal rock off of the Granton foreshore, whose name I can find no explanation for.
The names of many of these islands were given to Council housing tower blocks built in the north of the city in the 1950s and 60s. There re are of course many more, but I hope this whistle stop tour has been of some interest.
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2024-01-30 · 15:04 UTC

The Palace at the Foot of the Walk: the thread about the many lives of an early cinema

The Foot of the Walk pub in Leith has been in the news recently as its owner has put it on the market for sale, to much local indignation. These premises first opened on 1st January 1913 as The Palace cinema (in reference to the term “Picture Palace“, which was in use at the time to differentiate the upper end of the cinema market from the lower), showing a programme of illustrated nursery rhymes, a film about a gang of horse thieves and other “pictures of a humorous kind, which were greatly appreciated“. The cinema, as built, had a proscenium 32 feet wide by 22 feet high which gave it the largest screen in all of Edinburgh or Leith. It had a capacity for 2,000; 900 in the pit, 650 in the pit stalls and 450 in the upper gallery and a feature was that both the roof and balcony were cantilevered, with no supporting pillars to get in the way of the view of the screen. Great attention was paid to fire safety; the Brackliss Motiograph projector was installed behind the auditorium, within fireproof walls, there were 8 emergency exits from the auditorium and lighting was electric, rather than gas.
“Palace Buildings & Foot of Leith Walk”, James Valentine picture postcard, 1913. The round tower over the entrance is long gone. © Edinburgh City Libraries
It cost the Leith Public Hall & Property Co. around £20,000 to build (around £1.8 million in 2023) and was part of a syndicate of cinemas controlled by theatre impresario Robert Colburn (“RC”) Buchanan; a man described by Scottish Cinema journal at that time as being gifted to the trade “by the gods“. Buchanan was for a time the managing director of the Gaiety theatre in Leith, which stood on th opposite side of Constitution Street from The Palace. The latter site had long been the premises of Bell, Rannie & Co., one of Leith’s longest established wine merchants, where brothers Robert and John Cockburn served their apprenticeships.
The Foot of the Walk in 1891, looking towards Bell, Rannie & Co.’s vaults and house in the centre distance. The buildings on the right were replaced by Leith Central Station in 1903, those on the left remain, now the British Heart Foundation shop. © Edinburgh City Libraries
A fire at Bell, Rannie & Co.’s George Street shop in 1910 led to the sale of their Constitution Street warehouse and offices. It was briefly thereafter occupied by the Rev. John Findlater and the Leith Methodist Church, which had recently become homeless after its church across the road was demolished to allow the construction of Leith Central Station. Shortly after this, it too was cleared, to make way for the cinema which was built on top of Bell & Rannie’s old vaults.
Sale of Bell, Rannie & Co. vaults etc. at 171-173 constitution street, The Scotsman- 5th February 1910
The cinema was surrounded at ground floor level with shop units on both Constitution and Duke Streets and at this time the opportunity was taken for the former street to be widened and a corresponding portion of the latter narrowed, to improve the road layout at the Foot of the Walk. Upstairs, on the Duke Street side, there was a hall that was long occupied by the Leith Central Snooker Club.
The Foot of the Walk in Ordnance Survey Maps of 1849 (left) and 1944 (right). Move the slide to compare how the plot of the Palace Cinema was changed from that of Bell & Rannie by widening Constitution Street and narrowing Duke Street correspondingly. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
One thing that wasn’t included in the demolition and rebuilding was an adjoining bonded warehouse, the property of Cockburn & Campbell, wine merchants at 15 Duke Street. This sad looking, long-abandoned old building is actually one of the oldest in this part of Leith – dating from at least 1804!
The Duke Street wing of The Palace in 1953. The number 19 tram to Tollcross passes by as someone steps into The Marksman public house (which is there to this day). On the first floor gable a painted sign can be read “The Palace, Continuous 6 – 10:30” and the old Cockburn’s warehouse is the dark, windowless building beyond.
The Palace was designed around showing two programmes every night, at 7PM and 9PM, and so was laid out internally such that one audience could enter through the foyer while previous one exited through separate doors onto Duke and Constitution street, without any mutual disruption. The advert below shows the opening week’s programme, which described the venue as “a Lordly Picture House. The Largest. The Latest. The Best.“
The Palace – “A Lordly Picture House”, opening week programme. Evening News – 6th January 1913
The opening feature – “A Race For An Inheritance” (A Drama rushing from sensation to sensation) – was a Gaumont film that had only recently been released.
Kinematograph Weekly – 7th November 1912
This wasn’t the only “Palace” cinema in the neighbourhood, there was Pringle’s Picture Palace at the other end of The Walk on Elm Row and they were joined by the Empire Picture Palace on Henderson Street in 1917. Further afield there was the St. Bernard’s Picture Palace in Stockbridge, which opened in 1911, The Palace on Princes Street, which opened on Christmas Eve 1913 and the New Palace on the High Street that opened for talkies in 1929. The Leith Palace was wired for sound in September 1930 to allow it to join that latest cinema craze. In 1931 the Cimarron with Richard Dix and Irene Dunne was one of the first such pictures being shown. Alterations were made at this time by renowned cinema (and roadhouse!) architect Thomas Bowhill Gibson, whose work includes the Dominion in Morningside and former George / County in Portobello. These may have included removal of the tower over the entrance that is seen in the first picture on this page.
George cinema in Portobello, 1971, photograph by Kevin & Henry Wheelan. © Edinburgh City Libraries
The Palace quietly prospered in the 1930s and 1940s, although eclipsed by newer and larger and more modern houses (such as The Capitol on Manderston Street and The State on Great Junction Street, it remained popular. However by the 1960s, like many smaller houses it was beginning to struggle to compete with television and closed without ceremony on December 31st 1966, 53 years to the day since it opened, showing The Trouble With Angels starring Rosalind Russell and Hayley Mills.
The Palace in the early-to-mid 1950s, taken looking down Constitution Street from the Foot of the Walk. Picture from “The last picture shows, Edinburgh : ninety years of cinema entertainment in Scotland’s capital city” by Brendon Thomas
The cinema went on the market and was purchased by new owners, Norwich Enterprises Ltd, trading as Palace Promotions. It was shortly thereafter converted to serve the new craze of bingo, still under the Palace name. A fire in 1968 destroyed most of the auditorium roof of the building on March 24th 1968, fortunately some hours after the 1,000 patrons who had been playing had gone home. It was repaired thereafter and soon back in business.
Palace Bingo Club, 1971, photograph by Kevin & Henry Wheelan, 1971. © Edinburgh City Libraries
In 1978 the Bingo hall closed and was replaced by Cuemasters Snooker and Social Club and in turn the long established Leith Central Snooker Club upstairs closed in 1983. In 1992 a small church called “The Potters House” moved in to the latter space.
Potters House Christian Centre, Evening News, October 15th 1992
The old cinema was refurbished and reopened as the Wetherspoon pub The Foot of the Walk on 27th June 2001. Few of the original features are visible inside, but if you use your imagination you can get a rough idea of the original layout. The upper balcony still exists, hidden away, with its seats, carpets and wall coverings as they were when the last film was shown in 1966. You can view pictures of it here on the excellent Scottish Cinemas website. After over 20 years of security in the guise of a cheap, cheerful and popular watering hole, its future is once again uncertain. In its life it has spent 53 years as a cinema, 12 years as a bingo hall, 23 years as a snooker hall and a further 23 as a public house; like many former cinemas it has now spent longer not being a cinema than the time it spent serving its intended purpose.
The Foot of the Walk, JD Wetherspoon promotional picture.
As for the name “Foot of the Walk“? It’s a name for this locality that’s as old as postal directories are in Edinburgh and Leith, appearing in Peter Williamson’s first directories in the 1770s. And we can push it back 40 years more in the newspapers, an advert for one of the first houses built here appearing in the Caledonian Mercury on January 4th 1737.
“At the foot of the Walk of Leith”, Caledonian Mercury – 4th January 1737
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Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2023-02-01 · 19:46 UTC

Gibsons of Leith: the thread about the enterprising fish smokers who became pioneers of Scottish aviation

This thread was originally written and published in February 2023.

In a previous thread, we looked at the Edinburgh Aviation Craze of 1910, when a few local citizens dared to dream that they might fly in machines they had crafted from their own hands. One of those men was John Gibson, and this is his story. John was born in September 1856, the first child of Margaret Forrest and John Gibson of New Street, Fisherrow, the small harbour village just to the west of Musselburgh. John (senior) was a fish curer and town councillor, like his father before him, and the family lived in a house by the name of Gibson’s Land. The family moved to Liverpool in the 1860s, business at Fisherrow having been disrupted by the coming of the railways. John Junior went to sea as an apprentice aged 14, learning that trade across the globe on oceanic sailing ships.
In August 1875, when aged just 18, he found himself wrecked off Cape Horn after the on which he was serving had to be abandoned. The Albert Gallatin of Liverpool became uncontrollable after losing her rudder and was in danger of being wrecked on the rocky shore of the Ildefenso Islands to the south of Chile. The ship’s complement of 30 took to the boats; the first mate and 20 seamen in the larger and Captain Groves, his wife and two children, and five seamen including John in the smaller. The latter boat made it safely to Islas Hermite, where they spent 9 days, before setting off again in search of something from which to construct a sail. After 2 days fruitless rowing they landed on another island, where they were reduced to a diet of half a cracker and 3½ ounces of salt beef each per day and suffered badly from exposure. They were fortuitously rescued by the ship Syren of Boston after 18 days. The other 21 men were never seen again.
Islas Hermite, CC-by-SA 3.0, Jerzy Strzelecki
John Senior moved the family back to Scotland around this time, re-establishing his fish curing business in Leith, but his son fancied his chances and headed to Australia to prospect for Gold. Not striking it rich, he soon returned home and joined the family trade, dealing in smoked fish in Newhaven. In 1897 he set himself up as a dealer of machinery and soon took to repair work and it was not long before this extended to bicycles. He entered the cycle trade at 109 Leith Walk around 1905, this business soon took the name of the Caledonian Cycle Works. These premises had substantial workshops to the rear, under the Manderston Street railway arches, perfect space for Gibson to indulge in tinkering with bikes, cars and engines.
Plaque dedicated to John Gibson adjacent to his “Caledonian Cycle Works” at 109 Leith Walk, which now houses a Salvation Army shop. The date given for his birth does not match his birth certificate and as nice as it is to imagine the fact, he did not build Scotland’s first aircraft (although he did claim to!).Local newspaper adverts for the Caledonian Cycle Works in 1907
It’s not exactly clear why, but in early 1909 John Gibson decided to get himself into the aircraft industry by building his own machines. Perhaps he was inspired by those two other bicycle repair shop proprietors; Orville and Wilbur Wright. Or perhaps it was the contemporary adventures of Scotland’s other aviation pioneers, which had been plastered all over the newspapers. The Barnwell brothers of Stirling – Frank and Harold – had been experimenting with gliders and had even tried to fit an internal combustion engine to one in 1905. In 1908, Lt. Laurence D. L. Gibbs made short, powered hops in a curious, swept-wing, “automatic stability” biplane called the Dunne D.4 in much secrecy in Glen Tilt near Blair Atholl. In July 1909, the Barnwells made the first powered flight in Scotland. Closer to home for Gibson there was a financial incentive to budding aviators too; in September 1909, the directors of the Marine Gardens amusement park in Portobello had offered a £500 prize, good for 1 year, for the first flight across the Firth of Forth by a Briton in a British-built plane, so long as it started from Marine Gardens. It was noted in April 1910 that Mr Charles Hubbard, an engineer living at Viewforth, was experimenting with a Bleriot-type monoplane of his own construction on Portobello Golf Course and had made a number of powered hops before it crashed.
Suitably inspired, Gibson’s first forays into aeroplanes were quarter-scale models, c. 10 feet long and certainly showing the influence of the Wright Brothers: being biplanes controlled by warping the wings and by a canard (a leading control surface rather than a tail), being powered by two propellers driven by chains from a single engine and by landing on skis. They were built both to hone and refine Gibson’s techniques and design, but also as demonstration pieces to be put on public show. In total he built nineteen different models, and the design of his craft evolved over this time.
An early variant Gibson aeroplane, before the Farman type. This one may be that described as being shown at the Leith Flower Show in Victoria Park in August 1910A subsequent model, from a photo submitted to Flight magazine by John Gibson in February 1912. It is beginning to look more like a Farman-type, but still retains features of the earlier craft above such as the chain-driven propellers
The definitive model moved up to half-scale, 15½ feet long and 12 feet in span, and adopted the layout of Henry Farman, a French aviation pioneer and a type which was very popular in the UK at that time. Again a canard biplane, it had movable ailerons on the wing-tips for control, a single, 7-cylinder rotary engine and the refinement of wheels with rubber suspension added to the landing skis. This was built specifically to exhibit in London and Berlin in March and April of 1910 respectively and was sponsored by the North British Rubber Company to exhibit their rubberised aircraft fabric. The structure was of ash wood, braced by piano wires.
The Gibson Farman-type half-scale biplane, at the company’s workshops in Manderston Street
Even before half-sized Farman model was completed, Gibson had already moved on to the construction of a full-sized version of it – Caledonia No. 1. In July 1910 it was ready and The Scotsman reported it to be 30 feet long and 28 feet in span, with a loaded weight of 700 lbs. It was powered by a 3-cylinder, water-cooled engine of 30 hp, driving a 2-bladed propeller of 6 feet 8 inches at 1,100 rpm. The pilot sat on the lower wing, with the engine to his back and the radiators on either side. In contrast to the model, the vertical tails were mounted one above the other, rather than side-by-side. Construction was of silver spruce, with elm skids, and again it was covered in North British rubberised fabric. The aircraft could be disassembled for transport, and a photo of it exists in a field outside Edinburgh being put back together again. Gibson told the press that the only part of his machine that was not built in Scotland was its engine. He had intended to enter the machine into the Royal Aero Club’s inaugural Scottish flying meeting at Lanark Racecourse in August of that year, but the proprietors were wary of the public relations disasters experienced by other events as a result of amateur flyers who could not convince their homespun machines to take off and barred all but experienced pilots in proven aircraft. Gibson was disappointed to be excluded from the Lanark meet, but this was probably for the best as No. 1 refused to take off.
Gibson’s Caledonia No. 1, probably at Balerno. Photograph donated by John Gibson’s son G. T. Gibson to the National Museums of Scotland and on display at the East Fortune Museum of Flight
Undeterred, the machine was rebuilt as Caledonia No. 2, and in August it is reputed to have managed to make some short, controlled hops at Buteland Farm, outside Balerno, with Gibson’s 30 year old son – John G. Gibson (the G was for Gibson!) – at the controls. The main visual changes to No. 2 were the twin canards at the front and the curved supporting skids between them and the wheels (which protected the plane in the event of it nosing-over on take off and landing).
Caledonia No. 2, from photos submitted by John Gibson in August 1910, before it had managed a controlled flight. His son, John G., is at the controls.
Gibson undertook some of the flying himself, but as injured in a crash and broke his leg. Thereafter he deferred most of the flight testing to his son – John G. There are mentions online of testing being undertaken on Leith Links, but I can find no references to substantiate this, and as far as I’m aware Buteland Farm was used as their test ground. The Gibsons now had a working aircraft and began soliciting for orders, charging £450 for a complete machine. Full-page spread adverts were placed in the Edinburgh and Leith post office directories:
Gibson’s Aeroplanes advert from 1910-11, from the Edinburgh & Leith Post Office Directory.
Planes, Tails, Ailerons, supplied on receipt of measurements and other details on very short notice.
Best materials only used. Your orders solicited for Scottish-built Planes.
Spare parts or complete machines.
Wood Spars cut any length, straight-grained and free from knots.
Aeroplane Fabric, all grades, at factory prices.
We make Aluminium castings from customer’s patterns or drawings. Wood patterns made to order.
We undertake Aeroplane repairs.
Advert for Gibson’s Aeroplanes, 1910-11
Nine more machines were built by the company in the next few years, most for sale to private customers. In September 1911, Gibson reported to the press that one of his machines – Caledonia No. 11 – had accidentally but successfully performed a “somersault” in the air when being flown at Cramond by Gordon T. Cooper, the son of the secretary of the Edinburgh Aeronautical Association. In November of that year, one of the Gibson machines was included in the display of the Scottish Aeronautical Society at the National Exhibition, at Kelvingrove in Glasgow.
An American Farman biplane in flight in 1910, with a passenger clinging on to a strut next to the pilot.
Of the 11 full-size machines built by the Gibsons, four were written off in crashes, one was destroyed in a fire when on display at an exhibition in Brussels and another met the same fate in the Manderston Street workshop. Progress seems then to have stalled, this is perhaps because John G. had graduated from Edinburgh University as a prize-winner and passed an entry exam to the Indian Civil Service, which gained him a prestigious appointment in London with the HM Office of Works. A larger machine was designed in 1913 and was said to be under construction the following year when the outbreak of war saw it being cancelled. This event saw John G. join the Royal Engineers, and he was twice wounded during the conflict. Post-war he took a civil service job attached to the Air Ministry.
Wooden propeller from a Gibson aeroplane at the National Museums of Scotland Museum of Flight at East Fortune. Given the date, and the size, this may have been fitted to the Farman-type half scale model.
During the war, the Caledonian Cycles business was relocated to Dalry Road and the Leith Walk premises and its workshops became the Caledonian Motor Works, with additional workshop premises being taken on Sloan Street and Jameson Place nearby. Business became focussed on providing bodies for lorries and post-war the company would become a principal agent in Scotland for Leyland lorries and buses, with premises taken in King Street, Aberdeen to serve the north-east of Scotland. Later they would become an agent for Morris Commercial Vehicles.
John Gibson (senior) died aged 79, at his home at 19 Pilrig Street in Leith on August 7th 1935. The Scottish newspapers mourned his passing and noted a surprising further string to his bow; he was an acknowledged authority on Egyptology and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities. John G.’s younger brother – George Thomson Gibson – seems to have largely taken over the running of the company. George was a capable engineer – taking out his first patent for improvements to motorcycle frame joints in 1918. In the 1950s he took out a series of patents for improvements to refuse vehicles and these would become something of a company speciality.
1957 patent by George T. Gibson for a tipping refuse lorry
Another line of business was “Gibson Towers”, which they designed and built for themselves; mobile platforms for working at height. Still based in Leith, a pleasing throwback to their aviation heritage was the continued use of “Aero, Edinburgh” as the telegram address.
A 1956 advert for Gibson Towers
George T. died in Edinburgh in 1960 aged 69. John G. died in 1970, aged 80. The company continued for a while after the death of the Gibson brothers, being closed and wound-up in 1975.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#aircraft #aviation #balerno #engineering #featured #fisherrow
Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] · 2022-10-07 · 13:03 UTC

Leith’s first streetlamps: the thread about that time the Russian Navy made the town dark for a week

This thread was originally written and published in August 2019

I spent the evening trawling through old engravings of Leith, and think I’ve found what I was looking for. The oldest picture (that I can find) showing street lamps in Leith! These five oil lamps are shown in the vicinity of the King’s Wark on the Shore, in a 1790 print by Dominic Serres.
Leith Pier and Harbour, Dominic Serres, 1790 © Edinburgh City Libraries
This search was stimulated by a conversation which enlightened me with a curious tale that involved the Leith streetlamps in days of yore. It got me thinking, what were the earliest streetlamps? According to “Leith Through Time” by Jack Gillon and Fraser Parkinson, there is a description of Leith Walk having 40 lamps in 1799 after its upgrade to a road for carriages following the North Bridge being opened and the primary horse and carriage route moving from the Easter Road to Leith Walk.
The Edinburgh World Heritage foundation commissioned an excellent report on the old Edinburgh streetlamps. Although it is principally concerned with the World Heritage area of the Old and New Towns, we can at least get the an idea of the particulars of what early lamps in Leith would have been like from it. A contemporary colour image of a London lamp lighter is shown with his assistant in 1808. The lamp is a glass globe, with a ventilated, wind-proofed cowl. Suspended in the globe is the lamp itself, a small glass dish of oil with a floating disc, with basic lenses from crown glass “bullseyes”. The lamplighter is passing the assistant the oil dish to refill from his jug.
Lamplighter and assistant, 1808, from “Costume of Great Britain” by W. H. Pyne. © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum
Here’s a similar Georgian lamp frame on Leith Walk today, the crosspiece under the holder for the globe was for the leerie (lamplighter) to prop his ladder up on. When you see these old lamp frames with a ring to hold a glass lamp globe and no source up the centre for gas or electricity, you can be sure these are for old oil lamps. These lamps burned oil, specifically what was known as “train oil”. Which is odd as trains as we think of them now weren’t a thing in the late 18th century; that’s because it’s a corruption of the Dutch traan, a word for fish oil (levertraan in Dutch is cod liver oil, in German it is lebertran). However this is no oil from a fish, specifically it’s oil from a whale!
Leith walk oil lamp frame
Leerie, leerie, light the lamps, Lang legs and short shanks. Tak’ a stick and break his back, And send him through the Nor’gate!
An old Scottish childrens’ rhyme, recorded by Robert Chambers in 1826
An 1820 minute of Edinburgh’s lighting committee explains; “…the Contractor shall furnish the lamps with a sufficient quantity of the best Greenland whale oil and two wicks of sixteen threads of the best Oxford cotton“. The best oil was Grade 1, from the top of the cask. Edinburgh and Leith had a ready local source of such oil from the Leith whale fleet, which was active around the late 18th and early 19th century, but apparently the city sourced it’s municipal lighting oil from Hull.
The city’s lamp contractor was Smith & Company on George Street. The lamps were to be “trimmed daily and the globes to be cleaned at least three times in the week.” Even the finest train oil gave off soot; one of the early lighthouse keepers’ tasks was to polish the soot off of the reflector of the oil lamp (see below). The lamps were to be filled to burn until 3AM, at which point they would burn out and extinguish themselves, although the commission recognised “let the same quantity of oil be put into 2 two lamps and both equally trimmed by the most expert and experienced lamplighters, the one will continue burning from half an hour to an hour longer than the other“

If the name Smith and the association with Georgian lamps is ringing a little bell, that is because Smith was Thomas Smith, the adoptive father of Robert Stevenson – the patriarch of that great Lighthouse-building and lamp and lens-making dynasty. Smith himself was also a builder of some of the first Scottish lighthouses as the chief engineer to the Northern Lighthouse Board and was an early pioneer of lighthouse lamp and lens improvements.

Coincidentally, the Smiths and Stevensons lived at 15 Baxter’s Place, which is the top of the route of Leith Walk, with their works a short walk away at Greenside. So it is perhaps no coincidence this fashionable new stretch of the city got some of his finest street lamps so early. But the reason for this entire thread is less about the lamps themselves, but more because of the curious tale of the week in the winter of 1799 when the Leith street lamps kept going out and leaving the Walk “ever and anon into a more or less eclipsed condition“.

In 1799, Russian warships anchored in Leith Roads off of Inchkeith, part of a squadron from the Baltic Fleet under Vice Admiral Pyotr Khanykov. Britain and Russia were at this time allies in the War of the Second Coalition against revolutionary France and Spain, and the Royal Navy’s North Sea Squadron under Admiral Duncan was co-operating with the Russians on escorting convoys in the North Sea.

The Russian fleet was in a poor state compared to the Royal Navy, and frequently put in to port to repair and seek medical attention; there was an agreement at the time that sick sailors could be brought into Edinburgh for treatment by the Royal Infirmary. The Russian 66 gun man-of-war Iona* under Captain Piavzov arrived in Leith Roads on 19th November from Texel following the failed Anglo-Russian invasion of the Frissian Islands. The newspapers noted she was not fit for sea and she proceeded to put a significant part of her crew ashore with fever and other ailments and buried her dead on Inchkeith.
(* = the contemporary newspaper reference says Jonas, but I am going to assume this was a typo or translation error, as no such ship existed in Russian service, and in Russian I am told that Iona and Jonah are one and the same)
Anglo-Russian naval cooperation, 1799-1807, a painting by Thomas Buttersworth, 1799. © National Maritime Museum
There appears to have been little in the way of contact or hospitality between the Russians and locals; a contemporary account describes a party rowing out from Leith to the Iona only to be completely ignored by the officers and men of the ship and coming away with a very negative opinion about Russian naval efficiency, decorum and cleanliness. The Anglo-Russian naval cooperation agreement was faltering at this time and Russia would shortly quit the alliance, but before leaving, the Iona allowed parties of men ashore into Edinburgh on the pretext of sight-seeing. Possibly they had more carnal reasons for wanting to be on land…
For the better part of a week that December, the street lamps of Leith Walk would mysteriously go out each night, even though they were cleaned, checked and the oil levels trimmed daily sufficient that they should burn until dawn. It was finally discovered by a night watchman that the Russian sailors staggering home down the Walk from the drinking dens of Edinburgh were climbing the lamp posts, removing and extinguishing lamps and drinking the contents of train oil. Why they should go to this effort is potentially revealed by the reference of a late-Georgian cookbook which tells us that the sailors in question were Kamtschadales. What we would now refer to as Kamchadals; these are the inhabitants of Kamchatka in the far east of Russia, descendants of the indigenous peoples of those parts. To them the train oil was a home comfort; just imagine these sailors, some 10,000 miles sailing from home, utterly homesick, in poor health and morale coming ashore and finding that the street lamps of Leith Walk were full of what they considered to be a fine delicacy. Of course they couldn’t but help themselves!

The thing about unpressurised oil lamps though is that they are a rubbish source of light. The Commissioners, on inspecting their lights, found “the great proportion giving light so very feebly“, so it was hardly surprising that when gas lamps came along there was a rapid switch. Gas (town gas, from coal) arrived in Edinburgh in 1818 when the New Street gas works was opened by the Edinburgh Gas Light Company. You can still find some of their covers embedded in Edinburgh pavements. Leith got its gasworks in 1837, on the corner of Baltic and Constitution Streets. Like New Street, it was the arrival of the railway bringing in coal straight from the Lothian coalfield that had made this possible and not just economical but profitable
Edinburgh Gas Light Co. road cover. A version exists with the letters re-arranged for the later Edinburgh & Leith Gas Commissioners.
So next time you’re strolling along some of the Georgian bits of Leith, like Ferry Road, you might look up and think of the time the Russian sailors drank all the lamp oil and left the place in darkness.
Ferry Road oil lamp holder
And if you’re wanting to go and find even more Georgian oil lamp holders in Leith (and who wouldn’t?) someone’s already identified and catalogued the remaining lot of them in this handy Flickr album.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/historic_streetlights_leith/albums/72157629667895362
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret

#inchkeith #leithroads #leithwalk #lighting #naval #streetlamps
Deadline @[email protected] · 2026-05-06 · 15:00 UTC

Andy Serkis Narrating Animated Short ‘Pigeons’ From Director Amos Sussigan; Film To Premiere At Animayo Fest
#Festivals #News #AmosSussigan #AndySerkis #Pigeons
https://deadline.com/2026/05/andy-serkis-pigeons-from-amos-sussigan-anamayo-1236882681/

#festivals #news #amossussigan #andyserkis #pigeons
Tog Hackerspace @[email protected] · 2026-01-20 · 15:52 UTC

Andy got on the air for the first time last night 📻
Amateur radio is a deadly hobby, you learn loads, meet great people, and that first contact feels like magic.
Big thanks to South Dublin Radio for hosting the 2m net and being so welcoming and encouraging.
#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #2m #VHF #TOGHackerspace #Makers

#hamradio #amateurradio #2m #vhf #toghackerspace #makers
Tog Hackerspace @[email protected] · 2026-01-20 · 15:52 UTC

Andy got on the air for the first time last night 📻
Amateur radio is a deadly hobby, you learn loads, meet great people, and that first contact feels like magic.
Big thanks to South Dublin Radio for hosting the 2m net and being so welcoming and encouraging.
#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #2m #VHF #TOGHackerspace #Makers

#hamradio #amateurradio #2m #vhf #toghackerspace #makers
Tog Hackerspace @[email protected] · 2026-01-20 · 15:52 UTC

Andy got on the air for the first time last night 📻
Amateur radio is a deadly hobby, you learn loads, meet great people, and that first contact feels like magic.
Big thanks to South Dublin Radio for hosting the 2m net and being so welcoming and encouraging.
#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #2m #VHF #TOGHackerspace #Makers

#hamradio #amateurradio #2m #vhf #toghackerspace #makers
Tog Hackerspace @[email protected] · 2026-01-20 · 15:52 UTC

Andy got on the air for the first time last night 📻
Amateur radio is a deadly hobby, you learn loads, meet great people, and that first contact feels like magic.
Big thanks to South Dublin Radio for hosting the 2m net and being so welcoming and encouraging.
#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #2m #VHF #TOGHackerspace #Makers

#makers #toghackerspace #vhf #2m #amateurradio #hamradio
Tog Hackerspace @[email protected] · 2026-01-20 · 15:52 UTC

Andy got on the air for the first time last night 📻
Amateur radio is a deadly hobby, you learn loads, meet great people, and that first contact feels like magic.
Big thanks to South Dublin Radio for hosting the 2m net and being so welcoming and encouraging.
#HamRadio #AmateurRadio #2m #VHF #TOGHackerspace #Makers

#hamradio #amateurradio #2m #vhf #toghackerspace #makers