#firthofforth — Public Fediverse posts

Taken this day, 2013 - ready to launch
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/8728784199

Taking out a skiff at Porty

#Portobello #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #PortobelloEdinburgh #boat #bateau #FirthOfForth #BlackAndWhitePhotography

Sunny South Queensferry and the Forth Rail Bridge.

#FirthOfForth #SQ #edinburgh #scotland #photography #bridge #trains

Sunday sailing

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/55130662816/in/photostream/lightbox/

Enjoying some yachting off the coast at #Portobello

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #Photography #Photographie #Sailing #Naviguer #FirthOfForth #Sea #Mer #boat #bateau #Ecosse #Scotland

Body found in search for missing Alison Gibbens who vanished four days ago

Alison Gibbens, 60, was last seen on North Gyle Avenue in Edinburgh at around 10.30am on Monday. 17:26,…
#Edinburgh #UnitedKingdom #UK #GB #Scotland #Headlines #News #Europe #EU #Britain #coastguard #FirthofForth #GreatBritain #MissingPeople #PoliceScotland #RNLI
https://www.europesays.com/uk/731422/

https://www.europesays.com/uk/731422/ Body found in search for missing Alison Gibbens who vanished four days ago #Britain #coastguard #Edinburgh #FirthOfForth #GreatBritain #MissingPeople #PoliceScotland #RNLI #Scotland #UK #UnitedKingdom

Taken this day, 2013, stormy weather
https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/10298112513/in/photostream/lightbox/

Grey skies and waves at Porty Beach

#Portobello #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #PortobelloeEdinburgh #PortobelloBeach #waves #vagues #FirthOfForth #beach #plage

Taken this day, 2019, ghost pirate ship in the haar off Porty https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/48457187057/

#Portobello #Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #ship #bateau #GhostShip #FirthOfForth

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The thread about the Forth Dam megaproject; why bridge the Firth when you can block it?

Here’s one for you that I bet you’ve probably never heard of: did you know that in 1928 there was a proposal to cross the Firth of Forth by building a dam across it? This will be a short thread, by nature of the dearth of information available, but hopefully a useful record of this bold initiative.

The scheme was the brainchild of Matthew Steele, a Bo’ness-born architect whose work focused on retail and housing, first in an Arts & Crafts and later in the Moderne style, and includes the Hippodrome cinema. In this endeavour he was joined by fellow Bo’nessite John Jeffrey; hotelier and burgh councillor.

This was a time before the Kincardine swing bridge was built (not completed until 1936) and there was much public debate about the best manner and location for a road vehicle crossing of the Forth downstream of Stirling. The Firth had of course been crossed way back in the 1890s by the rail bridge.

Jeffrey and Steele’s proposal was to throw a 7,300 foot long barrage (1.3 miles, 2.2km) across the Firth and lay a roadway along the top of it for vehicular traffic. It would run from just west of Port Edgar on the south shore to a point a quarter of a mile to the west of North Queensferry. You’ll be as totally thrilled as I was to find it to know that there’s a sketch plan!

You’ll notice that the project wasn’t just a dam: in order to maintain navigation along the Forth it was planned to cut a 2,500ft (762m) long channel between Inverkeithing harbour and St. Margaret’s Bay, complete with locks on the scale of the Panama Canal. This latter point was critical as Rosyth was the principal dockyard in Scotland of the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet and was on the upstream side of the dam. The channel would have to be allow passage by the fleet’s largest battleships such as HMS Hood, the 47,000 ton, 860ft long pride of the nation.

It was Steele’s contention that by building the foundations of the dam to the west of the Beamer Rock (where the modern Queensferry Crossing finds its footings) it would be easier and cheaper than forming the base for bridge piers. The promoters put forward a number of claimed benefits for their dam:

1. Firstly, it would bring thousands of construction jobs to the out-of-work miners of Bo’ness, Stirlingshire, West Lothian and Fife, many more so than would be required to build a bridge.
2. Secondly, a steel bridge would be built with steel that inevitably came from Lanarkshire and would not directly benefit the Forth coast, and would require specialised steel fabricators rather than the sort of work that would suit the skills of miners.
3. Thirdly, the dam would help the region find a convenient way to dispose of its surplus of ugly and often dangerous coal and shale bings, which would provide the perfect infill material.
4. Fourth, and dubiously, they proposed that a new level of the Forth would form a fresh water lake several feet about the natural high tide level thus ridding the estuary of its “hideous black mud-flats“. This, of course, would actually have been an ecological disaster as those mudflats are a rich and critical biome.
5. The elevated water level of the new Loch Forth would benefit shipbuilding in Bo’ness and Grangemouth it was claimed, as with deeper water they could launch larger ships, and the docks of these towns could support larger vessels without tidal restrictions.
6. The giant new lake, cut off from the roughness and vagaries of the sea, would be perfect for the landing of seaplanes, and military and civilian bases were proposed. (Alan Cobham had sent Leith aviation crazy in June 1928 by arriving at its docks in his flying boat.)
7. To top off the lengthy list of benefits of the Forth Dam, “the water… could be used to create hydro-electric power for all the Forth Valley” and would be a “big inducement in bringing new factories to West Lothian, Stirlingshire and parts of Fife“.

The roadway along the dam would drastically shorten the distance for vehicular traffic across the Firth and “fast water buses” were also proposed to work passenger transport: Jeffrey foresaw “his man-made lake becoming a highly popular water playground for the whole of Central Scotland“. He imagined it would be akin to the Swiss lakes – or more realistically the Clyde or Loch Lomond – and be served by pleasure steamers visiting picturesque new coastal villages.

The intrepid pair set about touting their scheme and trying to gain supporters, which started with a letter to The Scotsman on July 7th 1928 and proceeded onto the pages of the West Lothian Courier and Linlithgowshire Gazette. Locally, they found both vocal support and also incredulity. Jeffrey upped the ante – “When is this squandering of public money going to cease?” he demanded, in the Gazette in 1930, referring to the “millions” being spent on the Dole rather than progressing his scheme. But a lukewarm response was received when details of the scheme were sent to the Prince of Wales (heir to the throne and later Edward VIII), whose private secretary politely declined his patronage saying the Prince couldn’t possibly look into every crackpot scheme that crossed his desk. Instead, the secretary forwarded the scheme on to the Secretary of State for Scotland, Godfrey Collins, from whose intray it never appears to have resurfaced. Within a year or so, it was superseded by serious bridge schemes in the Queensferry area.

The war of course then intervened and the Forth wouldn’t get its downstream road bridge until 1964, but it did gets its car ferries between South and North Queensferry in 1934. You can read more about their amusing habits of running aground in this previous thread. Sixty years later, a smaller barrage scheme, but one that would have been environmentally destructive too, was put forward to infill Wardie Bay between Leith and Granton harbours. You can read more about that over on its own thread.

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.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

The thread about the Calton Hill Naval Telegraph and the Forth coast’s Napoleonic communication system

Edinburgh’s City Art Centre shared this wonderful 1797 painting by George Walker this morning (July 11th 2023), showing the east of the old city as viewed from the vicinity of St. Anthony’s Chapel in Holyrood Park. This was an extremely popular viewpoint for 18th and 19th century artists and there are any numbers of etchings, watercolours and prints of this vista, making it a good record of the changes in the city over this time period.

This image of course poses the question: “what on earth is that enormous mast on the Calton Hill?!“

Well then, what on earth is that enormous mast on the Calton Hill? The answer is that this was a telegraph. No, not an electric or wireless telegraph, but a naval flagstaff for communication with ships in Leith Roads during the period of the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The word telegraph of course long predates more modern uses and literally means “writing from a distance” and that’s exactly what a systems such as this could do; as and when daylight and the ambient visibility allowed, the mast could communicate by coded messages transmitted by hoisting various combinations of flags and marker balls up the staff.

The telegraph pole is clearly marked on John Ainslie’s 1804 map of the City:

And we can also very clearly see it in an advertising print for one of Robert Barker’s panoramas from 1806 that was exhibited in Leicester Square in London. His first panorama of this view, from 1792, does not show the mast in place.

An earlier print – also in the collection of the city – shows a similar scene to that of George Walker’s painting, however as the Bridewell – Robert Adam’s prison on the lower slopes of the Calton Hill – is missing from this scene it suggests that this is prior to 1795 and therefore that the mast pre-dates the installation of the Admiralty’s signal telegraph chain. The mast is absent in a plan of the city by James Watson and Thomas Brown dated 1793, suggesting it was erected between those dates. A chain of very similar telegraphs had been installed around the Channel Islands in 1792.

This Calton Hill signal post was at the western end of a telegraph chain that stretched between Edinburgh and St. Abbs Head, to forewarn of any French incursions into the Firth of Forth (bear in mind that in 1779, a small American squadron under John Paul Jones had tried just that) and allow the reporting of shipping traffic in and out of the Forth back to the Admiralty in Leith (formally the Commander-in-Chief at Leith and on the Coast of Scotland) . Interception and boarding parties could then be sent out to any unexpected or unknown vessels. This signal chain was apparently constructed in 1801, so would have been an addition to the pre-existing Calton Hill flagstaff. It is likely that the mast was first erected for communicating with ships anchored in the Leith Roads out in the Forth, at this time an important forming-up point for naval convoys.

With thanks to Chris Wright for his assistance in finding a copy of the relevant paper, I have plotted the Forth & East Coast flag telegraph chain onto a map (below). The 8 stations spanned 41 miles of coast from St. Abb’s Head in the east to Calton Hill in the west, for the Admiralty HQ in Leith. Messages that would otherwise take the best part of a day to carry could be transmitted (weather dependent) to and from Edinburgh and Leith in a matter of minutes.

Each station was manned by a lieutenant on half pay, a petty officer or midshipman plus as his deputy and two men. All to have been classed as “unfit for sea service”, meaning they were too old, young, or injured. The structures were hastily constructed and temporary, built largely from timber with canvas for roofing and little remains apart from perimeter walls to keep the sheep out or some levelled platforms for the signal staff and support guys. The wooden huts were painted with a mix of tar, ochre and sand. Life must have been dull, cold and uncomfortable.

For communication purposes, each telegraph was provided with 1 x large red signal flag (18 breadths x 7 yards size), 1 x large blue pennant (5 breaths x 50 yards size) and 4 x hollow canvas signalling balls, painted black (43″ diameter). A system of coded signals used combinations of the red flag, blue pennant and a certain number of balls. For instance the blue pennant plus 3 balls = “Enemy landing to the west“. The below diagram for the Port of Leith flag signals in the 1860s, shows how with just 3 flags and 2 balls, it was possible to unambiguously communicate the numbers 10 – 26 (and the halves in-between). Now make those depth numbers signals in a code book, and you’ve got yourself a telegraphic communication system.

Each station was provided with an inventory that included:

• 163 yards of roofing canvas
• A 30 foot flagstaff
• A 50 foot topmast for the staff
• 100 fathoms of 1.5 inch and 77 fathoms of 2.5 inch rope
• officer’s bath stove
• fire grate for the men’s quarters
• 6 chairs, 2 tables

Four chaldrons of coal (about 5.25 m3), £3 of candles and £1 of stationary were allowed per annum. It wasn’t until 1803 that the Admiralty made an allowance for 1 x cot bed (for the officer) and 3 x hammocks (for the men), and only upon written application. I have also inferred that the officer may not have lived permanently on site as he was given a travel allowance. The illustrations below, made by Royal Engineer Captain William Smith, show the telegraph station at Malin Head in Ireland in 1804. The flagstaffs and cabins would have been similar on the East Coast of Scotland.

Exceptions exist however. The stations at St. Abbs, Dowlaw and North Berwick seem to have been more substantially built from the local stone, perhaps due to their isolation or exposure? Good remains of the stone buildings remain on North Berwick Law above the town.

In case there was any doubt it was a military structure, rather than a shepherd’s bothy, one of the stones has been neatly inscribed with the cipher “G. R.”

And a section of flag staff (quite remarkably, if it’s original) remained in situ during the archaeological site survey in 2018!

I can find almost no mentions of the East Coast telegraph being used in the newspapers. The earliest is in the London Oracle on 26th October 1798, which records a scare that French warships were in the Forth when two friendly Russian warships did not give the correct signals and in consequence “the signal post on the Calton Hill was at work most part of the day“. A decade later in 1808 the Caledonian Mercury reported that the St. Abb’s Head station sent a message to Edinburgh that the damaged merchant ship Cygnet had drifted inshore there. An 1802 aquatint shows that the mast was still in place at that time:

Plans of the city include it up to 1809, but construction of the Nelson Monument from 1807 onwards soon made the flagstaff surplus to requirements – however the below illustration below by John Harden clearly shows the Monument in place where the flagstaff once stood but also shows the flagstaff standing to the east of it. This suggests that the staff was moved to an alternative location while the monument was still under construction.

The Monument was designed to effectively be a 160 foot tall flagstaff in its own right, to act as a signal station, with accommodation for the signallers, the officer in the tower itself and four injured seamen pensioners in the building at its base. It was intended that the duties of the occupants would include hoisting news of British naval victories and celebrating past triumphs on their anniversaries. For the latter purposes, flags bearing the names of these events were to have been provided.

The design of the monument by Robert Burn is said to be inspired by Nelson’s folding telescope. You have to admit that it was a big improvement on the obelisk style from an earlier draft by Alexander Nasmyth that had been rejected as too expensive.

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.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

A day of firsts; the thread about the start of the air war over Britain above the Firth of Forth

This thread was originally written and published in July 2023.

On September 3rd 1939, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, drawing the country into what would become the Second World War. This early period of the war is sometimes called the “Phoney War”, on account of the relatively limited military activity between France, Germany and Britain on the Western Front. However on Monday 16th October 1939, the air war over Britain commenced over the Firth of Forth as German bombers made their first air raid on the country of the war and the RAF squadrons defending Edinburgh went immediately to war.

603 (City of Edinburgh) Squadron – an auxiliary squadron defending its home city from RAF Turnhouse – claimed the first German aircraft to be shot down by an RAF fighter over British territory in WW2 on that very day. At about 14:45, Red Section under Flt. Lt. “Patsy” Gifford fatally damaged a Ju-88 bomber near Cockenzie. The German aircraft, from squadron KG30, crashed into the Forth 4 miles offshore. The Cockenzie fishing boat Dayspring, skippered by John Dickson, rescued the crew. They admitted that they were reluctant at first to do so, but they were sailors foremost and overcame their misgivings to help those in peril on the sea.

Rear gunner OGefr. Kramer had been killed before the plane crashed and was never found, but pilot OLt. Hans Storp and crewmen Hugo Rohnke and Hans Georg Heilscher were saved and sent to the military hospital at Edinburgh Castle, the first German military prisoners in Britain of WW2. The grateful Storp gave his gold ring to John Dickson in thanks for his life.

Earlier that morning, at 09:30, the “Chain Home” radar station at Drone Hill in Berwick shire had identified two enemy aircraft approaching over the North Sea. At 10:21, Flt. Lt. George Pinkerton of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron became the first RAF fighter pilot to attack a German aircraft over Britain when his Spitfire engaged and damaged a He-111 bomber over the Isle of May. This aircraft – one of two from squadron KG26 – had been on a reconnaissance flight to photograph the naval dockyard at Rosyth and was chased east out to sea where it evaded its pursuers, returning safely home. 602 Squadron had been redeployed eastwards to defend Edinburgh and the Forth and had been based out of RAF Drem in East Lothian for just 3 days.

A confused game of cat and mouse now commenced between the RAF and Luftwaffe all along the East Coast of Scotland for much of the morning and early afternoon as attempts were made to intercept sporadic German incursions. The radar sets failed to work properly and broke down, phantom raiders were reported by the public and the ground controllers got their calculations back to front and sent the defending fighters in the wrong directions.

That afternoon the weather was good – clear skies with only broken cloud. At 14:20, the Royal Observer Corps, trained ground spotters whose job was to identify and report enemy aircraft over land, confirmed the presence of Ju-88 bombers in East Lothian. These were 12 aircraft commanded by Haupt. Helmuth Pohle of squadron KG30 and had been sent on a mission to attack the Royal Navy at Rosyth, based on the reports from the morning reconnaissance flight that George Pinkerton and 602 Squadron had intercepted. Once again, those Spitfires were scrambled to meet the raiders. At 14:27, the anti aircraft battery at Dalmeny reported the bombers flying up the Forth. The attackers had been forbidden to attack the Dockyard itself for fear of civilian casualties, so aimed for the ships anchored in the Firth. While the gunners frantically phoned for permission to open fire, the bombs began to fall.

The first wave of attackers targeted the cruiser HMS Southampton. At 14:35, the 500kg bombs fell around the ship but missed; however two of her boats that had been anchored alongside, including the Admiral’s personal barge, were sunk. At 14:38 – three minutes after the start of the attack – the orders for the defenders to open fire were given and every anti-aircraft gun on land and on ships that could be brought to bare opened up. At the same time, the next wave of attackers, those led by OLt. Hans Storp, arrived. They approached from the south over Threipmuir Reservoir and commenced their bombing run.

By now, both 602 (City of Glasgow) and 603 (City of Edinburgh) squadrons were in the air. Yellow Section of 603 attacked Storp and put his port engine out of action. The plane limped towards East Lothian out to sea, in a futile attempt to escape, which was where Red Section under Patsy Gifford brought it down. The victorious 603 were now ordered to return to Turnhouse to re-arm and re-fuel, leaving the defence in the hands of 602 Squadron. Blue Section, under George Pinkerton, spotted the aircraft of Helmuth Pohle over Inverkeithing and gave chase through the broken cloud. Pinkerton and his wing-man Archie McKellar attacked, killing two of the German machine’s crew and incapacitating both its engines. It headed for the sea near Crail and ditched three miles off of Fife Ness. The time was somewhere between 14:45 and 14:55, the Observer Corps putting the crash at the latter time, but McKellar and Pinkerton are credited with gaining the “first kill” before Patsy Gifford in some chronologies.

The events of October 16th had not yet concluded however. About 25 minutes after Pohle’s machine crashed, another Ju-88 bomber appeared over the outer reaches of the Forth. It had escaped interception up to this point as the ground observers had initially thought it to be a friendly Bristol Blenheim (an easy mistake, as the two were somewhat similar and the Ju-88 was a brand new aircraft and almost totally unseen by British eyes this early in the war). It found the destroyer HMS Mohawk off of the fishing village of Elie & Earlsferry and attacked; dropping its bombs and firing its machine guns at the ship.

By the time it was chased off by one of 602 Squadron’s Spitfires, 13 men including First Lieutenant E. J. Shea had been killed. Her captain, Commander Richard Jolly, was fatally wounded but refused to abandon his post and brought his ship safely back to Rosyth before dying a few hours later. In total 16 men from the Mohawk would lose their lives that day.

The last of the raiders that day appeared in ones and twos across the Lothians around 16:00 and were chased across the Forth, RAF Turnhouse, Edinburgh, Leith and Portobello by the Spitfires of 603 Squadron, but to no avail. Minor injuries were caused across the city from broken glass as bullets fired in the sky came down to earth and painter Joe McLuskie, working on a house in Abercorn Terrace, Portobello, was hit in the stomach and had to undergo emergency surgery in Leith Hospital. The raid had also claimed its first animal victim of the air war over Britain when Lady, a spaniel belonging to Mrs Mercer of Alma Street in Inverkeithing, was struck by shrapnel from falling “friendly” anti-aircraft shells and had to be put down as a result. The noise of the bombs and guns had panicked the animal and it had run off into the street.

Off of Crail, a fishing boat hauled four ditched German airmen from the sea. Crewmen Kurt Seydel and August Schleicher were already dead, Kurt Naake was mortally wounded and would not survive, leaving pilot Helmuth Pohle – nursing a broken jaw – as the sole survivor. He was sent to the naval hospital in Port Edgar. The bodies of Seydel and Schleicher lay in state at St. Phillip’s Church in Portobello, their coffins draped in Swastika flags, and were buried with military honours observed by a respectful turnout of locals at Portobello Cemetery. The proceedings were led by Henry Steel, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and many men from both 602 and 603 Squadrons were in attendance with the pipe band of 603 providing a musical lament. The pair were re-interred in a German military cemetery in England after the war.

Both Patsy Gifford and George Pinkerton would receive the Distinguished Flying Cross award for their efforts that day. Gifford, a reservist who was in peacetime a lawyer and town councillor from Castle Douglas, was sent to command 3 Squadron RAF in November 1939. He was shot down and killed over Belgium in May 1940.

Gifford and Pinkerton both have claims to their “first”. However neither claimed either the first British or first RAF aerial victories of the war. On September 26th 1939, Lt. Cdr. Bruce S. McEwen of 803 Squadron Fleet Air Arm and flying from HMS Ark Royal (therefore a Royal Navy aviator and not in the RAF) shot down a German Do-18 flying boat over the North Sea off Norway, the first British aerial victory of the way. The below photo was taken by the destroyer HMS Somali when they rescued its crew.

Another Do-18 would become the first German aircraft brought down by an RAF aircraft flying from the British mainland, was claimed by a Lockheed Hudson patrol aircraft of 224 Squadron Coastal Command out of RAF Leuchars on 8th October. The Hudson, actually a modified American airliner and intended to be a bomber and reconnaissance aircraft, proved to have a surprising capability as a long range fighter in the early part of the war.

And two weeks after 602 Squadron’s Pinkerton and McKellar brought Helmuth Pohle’s war to a premature end off of Crail, Archie McKellar shot down an He-111 bomber of squadron KG26, flown by Uffz. Kurt Lehmkuhl over East Lothian. This was the first RAF victory that brought down a plane over land, the machine making a crash landing in the Lammermuir hills near Humbie.

Another He-111 was shot down by 602 Squadron out of RAF Drem on February 9th 1940, with Squadron Leader Douglas Farquar bringing it down in a field just outside North Berwick.

This was the first chance for British intelligence to get a close up look of such a machine in a flyable condition and it was therefore partially dismantled and towed away for onwards transport to the Boffins down south. The plane was put back together, repaired, and commissioned into the RAF as part of the “Rafwaffe” of captured machines. Here it is seen going down Dirleton Avenue in North Berwick to the bemusement of onlookers.

Remarkably, there’s a colour cine film of it going down Musselburgh High Street, exciting much local interest, on its way to RAF Turnhouse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwhXwLhWDEc

Hans Storp’s Ju-88 would suffer the misfortune of being the first pilot and aircraft to be shot down twice in the war, when in December 1939 a re-enactment of his last flight took place for the propaganda film “Squadron 992“. An RAF Bristol Blenheim (which the observers had confused with the German Ju-88 back in October) stood in for the German machine on this occasion. The Cockenzie fisherman John Dickson, his crew, and their boat the Dayspring reprised their roles from that day and played themselves for the cameras.

You can watch the film Squadron 992 on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycuXAtLyo4

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The “High and Dry Club”: the thread about 30 years of the Forth car ferries running aground again, and again (and again)

This thread was originally written and published in April 2023.

Talking about ferries running aground, you might think that kind of thing is unfortunate, so spare a thought for the brand new Firth of Forth car ferry Robert the Bruce which ran aground at South Queensferry on Saturday 24th March, after barely 3 weeks in service. The vessel was on its penultimate cross-Firth trip of the day and became stuck fast at South Queensferry at the Hawes pier. It was not until late on the Sunday that she was successfully refloated. “New Ferry Boat Stranded at South Queensferry” said the headline in the Scotsman.

Barely a week later, on April 5th, Robert the Bruce suffered the ignominy of grounding once more at South Queensferry, ending up sitting high and dry, perpendicular to the pier. “New Ferry Boat Grounded Again” said the headline in the Scotsman.

The hapless vessel was aground again 3 weeks later. It took 5 hours to get the passengers off. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to run aground once in a month may be regarded as a misfortune; to run aground twice in a month looks like carelessness. Three months later? You’ve guessed it. “Robert the Bruce” was aground again. This was getting to be rather common and the local paper hardly gave it a second mention, devoting only a single sentence to the mishap.

The ferry boat Robert the Bruce ran aground on Sunday, but was refloated at high tide without any apparent damage

Linlithgowshire Gazette, 6th July 1934

In all, in her first 4 months of service, Robert the Bruce would run aground four times. Her identical sister ship Queen Margaret managed to avoid this awkward habit entirely. For now…

The Forth car ferries were the brainchild of, were built by and were operated by the William Denny & Brothers shipyard in Dumbarton. Sir Maurice Denny had crossed the Forth in the old vessel Dundee one day and had thought to himself that a purpose-built car ferry (or pair of ferries) could provide a much more efficient service. As a captain of industry he had only to pick up the phone to the London and North Eastern Railway to set the wheels in motion. The LNER paid for the ferries and leased them back to Denny, who operated them. This arrangement meant that even if the ferries poached traffic away from the railway, the railway would still profit from them.

The design was innovative and Denny had high hopes it would catch on. The vessels had a large, open car deck, with small passenger cabins fore and aft. There were ramps on each side at each end for loading and unloading vehicles. The bridge sat high above the deck on a gantry in the middle of the ship to give a commanding view in all directions. Propulsion was by paddle wheels, an antiquated system on paper, but one which had certain advantages when manoeuvring at slow speed and which was brought up to date with each paddle being independently driven by an electric motor. This, coupled with rudders fore and aft, meant for superb manoeuvrability and the ability to change power and the direction of drive very rapidly. Diesel engines under the car deck drove the generators for the motors, and exhausted through a pair of slender funnels. This arrangement allowed the ferries complete roll-on, roll-off operation for rapid loading and unloading and the ability to move forwards or backwards at the same speed and no loss of handling.

Perhaps in sympathy with and to share in Robert‘s blushes, the older companion Dundee decided to get in on the action and ran aground at South Queensferry in 1939. Again, her passengers and cars were stuck aboard for hours, the Evening News printing an atmospheric night time photo of her with the ghostly outline of one of the piers of the Forth Bridge behind her.

The Forth ferries survived WW2 without further incidence but on 18th August 1947, perhaps as a late celebration of victory, one of them ran aground again in the mud off South Queensferry. This time however it was the Queen Margaret at fault, and Robert the Bruce redeemed herself by towing her off the mud.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/23666168@N04/37190198854

In 1949, the ancient Dundee was replaced by a new vessel, the Mary Queen of Scots, identical to Robert and Margaret except that post-war economies meant that the electric drive system for the paddles was replaced with a hydraulic one. To welcome the new member to the team, Robert the Bruce decided to show off as only she knew how, and on April 3rd 1950 she ran aground. Again. At South Queenferry. Again. This incident was on account of the mooring rope that should have been thrown to the pier landing short combined with a sudden gust of wind that blew her onto the mud before the engines, idle at the time, could respond.

Queen Margaret tried to repay the towing compliment from 1947 back and rescue her stricken sister however the tow rope broke and then the tide receded, making further rescue attempts on that tide impossible. Two hours service was wasted and Robert had to wait to be rescued on the next high tide.

Friday May 23rd 1952. Guess what happened. Go on. I’ll give you one guess… Wrong! It was actually Mary Queen of Scots which grounded this time. Strictly speaking she didn’t run aground, as she found herself stuck when the tide receded while she was both loading vehicles and taking on oil, the additional weight incurred settling her on the mud beneath her keel. Attempts by Robert the Bruce to get her off the mud at South Queensferry proved fruitless and again they had to wait for a high tide to free her

Never one to be outdone by her sisters, two months later Robert the Bruce managed to run aground 50 yards short of the pier at South Queensferry. Queen Margaret came to the rescue and tower her off the mud before the tide left her high and dry after a 20 minute struggle. It was almost a year before one of the ferries ran aground again. This time it was Mary Queen of Scots: caught by the combination of a westerly wind and an autumn equinox tide “which tends to empty the river” on August 27th 1953. She was left high and dry in the middle of the Firth for an hour and a half until a change in the tide allowed her to come unstuck. This left the passengers of a bus trip sorely disappointed; they had crossed on one ferry while their vehicle followed on the next (Mary Queen of Scots) and got stuck mid-stream. By the time the bus made it over, he found his passengers had given up and headed home to Edinburgh by alternative means.

In 1955, due to booming traffic, the three Forth ferries were joined by a fourth Forth ferry (try saying that in a hurry), when the slightly larger Sir William Wallace joined the fleet.

True to the established tradition, Robert the Bruce welcomed her by running aground! On March 12th 1955, in dense fog, she hit a mudbank some 500 yards short of the pier. This time it was an exceptional spring tide at fault. It took an hour and a half to free her.

The following year, it as Queen Margaret’s turn again and on December 2nd 1956? she was stuck at South Queensferry once more. It would take a whole 3 years in service for Sir William Wallace to join the “High and Dry Club”, which she first managed in February 1958. Again it was at the South Queensferry end and she had 40 cars on board when she got stuck. The passengers were rowed ashore and either bussed to Edinburgh, or waited 5 hours in the Hawes Inn for their cars. One hopes that the refreshments provided were only teas and coffees. She repeated the act at the end of September that year, getting within 20 feet of the pier at South Queensferry and then grounding on the mud. 50 passengers were taken ashore in the lifeboats. She became stuck at 740AM and it was not until a high tide at noon that she floated free.

Queen Margaret tried something new and rammed one of the piers of the Forth Bridge in February 1961 when the wind and tide conditions conspired against her and made controlled progress impossible. There was one last grounding hurrah for the Forth ferries, when this same vessel took to the Hawes Pier mud for 1 and a ¼ hours on the appropriate date of Friday 13th October 1961. It took the combined efforts of Sir William Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots to free her.

In the final decade of the ferries on the Forth, Sir William Wallace added an additional dimension to the difficulties of running the service; she was bigger than her sisters but had the same engines and same sized loading ramps, so was slower and took longer to load and unload. This made her a logistical pain in the bum for keeping to schedule and her smaller sisters frequently had to slow down when crossing against a tide or current to let her catch up. Her car deck was also slightly differently arranged and her master found out the hard way that if he packed them on tightly the same way as the other ships, then they became wedge in, couldn’t get onto the ramp and thus couldn’t get back off again! The solution was simple but inelegant – the ship sailed around to the other side of the pier and all the cars reversed off instead.

The owner-operators of the ferries went into liquidation in August 1963 and so the liquidators continued to run the service for a further 13 months until September 3th 1964 when the last sailed before the Forth Road Bridge was opened. Guests of honour on the last scheduled voyage were HM The Queen and HRH Prince Philip. Queen Margaret had clearly no sense of occasion and humour and refused to run aground with the royal party aboard.

As a postscript, I should note that nobody was harmed in any of these groundings, beyond the feelings of the ships’ masters. In actual fact, considering the intense scheduling of the route over 30 years hard work, in tricky waters, they actually had a pretty enviable safety record. In the late 1950s, all four ships ran an all-day service at 15 minute intervals, making 40,000 crossings a year, carrying 1,250,000 passengers, 600,000 cars and 200,000 commercial vehicles.

The Forth ferries were laid up at Burntisland after the end of their working lives and the three oldest ones were unceremoniously scrapped. The press were far more interested in the new Road Bridge to be interested in three old ships. The newest and largest, Sir William Wallace, spent a few years service at Islemeer in the Netherlands before being scrapped too in 1970. After 30 years of car ferry service, the scores on the doors for running aground were:

1. King Robert the Bruce, 7 times
2. Queen Margaret, 3 times
3. Joint, Sir William Wallace and Mary Queen of Scots, 2 times each
4. Dundee, 1 time

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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Reaching for the skies. Ish: the thread about the Edinburgh aviation craze of 1910

This thread was originally written and published in February 2023.

It was the year 1909 and aviation fever was sweeping Britain. In May of that year, John Moore-Brabazon made the first heavier-than-air flight, in Britain, by a British citizen; in June, Alliott Verdon Roe flew the first, fixed-wing aircraft of all-British manufacture. Come July, Frenchman Louis Blériot made the first flight across the English Channel and the Barnwell brothers – Harold and Frank – make the first powered flight in Scotland at Causewayhead in Stirling. To cap off a thrilling year, in November Moore-Brabazon made pigs fly when he strapped one into a basket and attached it to the wing of his aeroplane.

Inspired by the Barnwells, others in Scotland decided to get themselves involved. There were, declared The Scotsman, “a large number who are following the development of aviation with an educated, scientific interest“; Scotland was “forging ahead” in this field boasted the Daily Record. And at the epicentre was Edinburgh, with an entire four (count them!) different parties vying to get themselves off of the ground. To add incentive to local pioneers, in September 1909 the directors of the Marine Gardens amusement park in Portobello 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.

John Gibson, a cycle repair shop owner and engine-tinkerer of Leith, was the most prolific builder of flying machines in Edinburgh, running through a series of quarter and then half-scale models before moving on to full size machines of the Farman type. The flying experiment s of John Gibson and his son John Gibson Gibson were conducted at Buteland Farm outside Balerno and some short flights were managed. Machines made for paying customers also took successfully to the skies. The full story of these are covered in a separate thread.

Wilfrid Venour Foulis (1884-1951) was the son of Henrietta Fraser and James Foulis, a general practitioner, and grew up on Heriot Row in Edinburgh’s New Town. The family later moved to a villa at Barnton known as The Grove. A practical engineer, Wilfrid studied at the Heriot-Watt Technical College (as it was) before serving an engineering apprenticeship first in the foundry of Aciéries Tilleur & d‘Angleur in Liege, Belgium and then at the Hyde Park Locomotive Works in Glasgow. He then spent two years testing engines for Argyll Motors and then Arrol-Johnson Motors before going into the car business, based at Sunbury Mews off Belford Road. The 1910-11 Post Office directory lists him as a dealer in luxury French cars; Hotchkiss, Berlict and Delage.

He is described in a newspaper article as “young man of fine physique, standing over 6ft 3in” and as having “devoted a large part of his life to the study of aviation“. By 1909 he is referred to as “an aviator” who had built for himself a biplane that he tried – and failed – to fly near The Grove. In that year, he married Clara Millington Dow, a well known actress and operatic soprano, who had been trained by none other than the W. S. Gilbert of Gilbert & Sullivan. The couple announced to the newspapers that they would be settling down in Edinburgh after their honeymoon tour of South France, but back in Edinburgh, Wilfrid did not to settle down. Instead, he took himself off to Brooklands in England and learned to fly. On his return he began construction of a new flying machine; a Lane monoplane, a British adaptation of the Blériot monoplane

Foulis’ made a successful flight in this aircraft some time in early February 1910, but was extremely secretive about his project. The Daily Record wrote that he “will not divulge any particulars as to his machine… [and he] refuses to state where his flights take place“. The location was later gleaned by the Linlithgowshire Gazette as being West Briggs Farm, between Turnhouse and Kirkliston, west of Edinburgh. Coincidentally, this spot is now directly under the runway of Edinburgh Airport. The Gazette‘s reporter was watching when, on 26th March 1910 at 630PM, he made a number of high speed loops of the airfield (on the ground) and managed a number of hops off the ground to a height of three feet.

The distance from his business and workshop in Edinburgh to the flying strip limited flights to weekends or the very early morning or late evenings, and his ability to practice was not helped by the weather. However he persisted, trying 8 different propellers before settling on one that worked to his satisfaction. The experiments were not without incident; on two occasions the plane crashed and overturned. One early morning in late July, around 4AM, he made his “highest and most successful flight“.

The secretive Wilfrid found himself in court in November 1910, being sued by a man he had employed as an engineer to help him build the planes. It is from this court case that we learn most of the details about his flying experiments. Henry Funke was a motor mechanic in Foulis’ employ and alleged that the latter owed him £20 overtime, having spent all his spare time and Sundays assisting in the construction of the aircraft, sleeping in the workshop in a hammock, but had only been paid a flat weekly rate. Funke declared under oath that while the biplane had “failed entirely“, the monoplane had indeed taken to the skies. On one occasion they had taken it to Newton Stewart to make a public display but it was too wet to fly so they had to cancel: the bitterly disappointed crowd became angry and started throwing stones at the visitors, who had to hide from them. The court found in Funke’s favour and he was awarded £10.

Wilfrid continued his flying experiments after the court case, until a serious accident in early 1911 totally incapacitated him and he had to retire from flying and retreat to France for a number of years to recuperate. His aeroplane was advertised for sale from Edinburgh (for some reason, in the Belfast Telegraph, to Ireland!) in February 1911.

He was still in France, in convalescence, when war broke out in 1914 and he returned home to “sign up”. But he did not join the Royal Flying Corps, he instead entered the Army Supply Corps, where he would rise to the rank of Captain. Making use of his engineering and motoring background, he made a name for himself by converting a moulding machine into a tyre press for the repair of army lorry wheels, receiving “a mention in despatches” and promoted to the head of the 3rd Army Supply Corps’ repair shop. While in this position he invented the “Foulis Walking Stick Gun” and was sent back to Britain in December 1915 with it by none other than Field Marshall Haig (a fellow son of Edinburgh). He was seconded to the ministry of munitions to further this invention and took 9 back to the front for trials with the 2nd Army in 1916. Not one to stop inventing, he is also credited with the “Foulis Adaptor for Howitzers” and the “Foulis Safe Red Cartridge for Stokes Mortars“, although I am unsure of what any of these devices actually look like or did.

Wilfrid and Clara settled in England after the war but divorced in 1923. Their son, Michael Venour Primrose Foulis, joined the RAF in 1940 and served in the Mediterranean as a pilot, where he died in action in 1943. Wilfrid re-married in 1924, to Ida Brookes. In 1935 his career took a significantly different direction when he was appointed director of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, a position he held until his death in 1951 aged 67. He is buried in the family plot in the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh.

In April 1910, it was reported that Charles Hubbard, an English-born engineer and factory manager living at Viewforth, had built for himself a Blériot type monoplane of the sort in which Loius Blériot had recently managed his cross-Channel flight. The machine is described as being 28 feet long and with a wing span the same. It was constructed mainly from a bamboo framework with a propeller of butternut wood, and was powered by the unusual arrangement of two 5hp Rex motorcycle engines coupled together by a chain. Hubbard was in the process of constructing a 3 cylinder, 25hp Anzani engine and hoped to have his machine ready for the Royal Aero Club’s inaugural Scottish flying meeting at Lanark Racecourse in August of that year.

Hubbard deviated from the standard Blériot design, by having square wing-tips instead of rounded ones and in sitting himself on a hammock seat inside the framework of the fuselage, underneath the wing, rather than above it looking over the top surface. Testing was being carried out on Portobello Golf Course in the early mornings. On 25th April it was reported that he had managed to make a number of powered hops in it, although with only 10hp total engine output – less than the Wright Flyer of 1903 – it was unlikely he would actually have ever sustained flight. A serious crash required a period of recovery for Charles and the machine to be entirely rebuilt. By June the following year, the more powerful engine was ready and fitted, when Hubbard is photographed in it at Portobello.

No more is heard of Hubbard’s flying experiments after this time. He and his brother would later go into business in car sales, hire and repairs from the workshop in Viewforth where his flying machine had been built.

Henry (1882-1964) and Alfred (1891-1965) Alexander were the sons of Margaret Wilson and James Robert Alexander. The latter had found success in the boot and shoe trade, before expanding into piano sales. Obviously adept at spotting the next new thing, he then moved into the bicycle trade. The whole Alexander family were keen cyclists, and all four of “JR’s” sons had been high school cycling champions. Just as their father progressed the business on to motorcycles, Henry and Alfred graduated from cycle to motorcycle racing. The former had several district championships to his name and the latter had won 13 first prizes in the 14 races he had contended in 1910.

With a passion for speed, engineering and dangerous thrills, it was only natural that flight should interest them. They decided to build their own aeroplane, in their motorcycle tuning workshop on St. James’ Street, off St. James’ Square (the family business at this time was nearby in the district of Greenside). Their monoplane was exhibited at the Scottish Motor Exhibition at the Waverley Market in January and February 1910. It was of the Santos-Dumont type, named for its Brazilian inventor. This was a particularly lightweight aircraft, where the pilot sat slung beneath the wing, and the brothers constructed it from bicycle tubing and fitted it with a small 20hp engine of their own design and construction. It was 19 feet long, with a wing span of 20 feet, a fuselage 4 feet wide and an all-up weight of 240lb – about 25% less than a regular Santos-Dumont Demoiselle. It was their intention to be able to produce a low-cost flying machine for £225 (about £33k in 2023).

In early April, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that they had been secretly testing it on the ground at an undisclosed “sports enclosure” on the outskirts of Edinburgh, towing it there behind their car in the early mornings. Following extensive ground runs they had managed a 20 yard flight in the dusk of Monday April 4th. When interviewed by the reporter of the Daily Record, the brothers informed them that their intention was to overhaul and improve the engine before trying for the sky again. The description of the site, along with a grainy photo of it, identifies it as Myreside, the playing fields of the brothers’ old school, George Watson’s. They were limited to runs of only 150 yards by the confines of the grounds, surrounded by high walls.

The Alexanders, who proclaimed themselves “Scotland’s largest motorcycle dealers,” became the first and sole distributor for Ford vehicles in Scotland in 1911 and Henry, ever the adventurer and showman, hit on a publicity scheme to promote the new 20hp “Model T” and showcase its practicality and ruggedness: he would drive one up Ben Nevis! Taking a stock, 4 seat, touring model for his adventure, he spent a week on the mountain (on foot), scouting out potential routes, making notes of obstacles etc., finally picking on a start point at Inverlochy. The attempt began on the 9th May and the climb would take 5 days in all. Numerous times the car sank up to its axles in marshes, only to be pulled, coaxed and dug out. Where the path was too narrow, a gang of workmen widened it. Where streams were to be crossed, a portable ramp was used to bridge them. The snow on the summit was 12 feet deep in places, and Henry had to dash between patches of bare rock and boulders, building up enough speed to slither across the snow to the next clear patch.

Ford’s general manager in Britain had invited the press to view, photograph and film the descent; driving them to the foot of the mountain in a Convoy of Ford cars, and carrying their gear up by pony. In contrast to the climb, Henry’s return journey took only 2.5 hours (although split into two legs, with an overnight stop half-way down at 2,000ft altitude). A newsreel film of this remarkable journey can be seen at the British Film Institute website. Henry’s feat was used extensively by Alexander & Co. in their newspaper adverts.

In November 1912, Henry was fined 10s for failing to show a licence when requested and £1 (or 10 days imprisonment) on a charge of having driven in a negligent manner on a country road in Fife, resulting in the death of 3 sheep from a flock he hit. In September 1928 he repeated the feat of “motor mountaineering” on Ben Nevis, this time ascending on the bridle path on the western side in the new Model A. The car broken down a few hundred feet from the summit and required an axle to be replaced, probably the highest ever “roadside repair” undertaken in the UK. This ascent took 9h 20m on a route that had been prepared in advance.

Patrick Thomsons, one of Edinburgh’s premier department stores, cashed in on the enthusiasm for all things flying and took out large adverts in the local papers capitalising on the successes of the Alexanders and Foulis (Hubbard didn’t get a mention), inviting shoppers to land on their roof by aeroplane (“Ours is a big, broad, flat, asphalt roof. You can tell it from almost any height by the green and white P.T. flag. An ideal place for a bird-like descent, we should say. Leave your machine up top and take the elevator down”.

The Daily Record reported in April 1910 that an unknown machine, based at Swanston farm to the south of the city, had been flying high over the southern outskirts of the city on more than one night, with people seeing “a flying machine, brilliantly illuminated, which was at a considerable height from the ground“. On the 5th April, the “moving lights of the aeroplane were seen by several people over the Hunter’s Tryst“. Given the progress (or lack of) of the known aviators in the city at this time, and that there are no other corresponding news or magazine reports, it is likely that this was Scotland’s first Unidentified Flying Object caused by local hearsay, rumour and excitement. Despite the intense efforts, none of Edinburgh’s home-grown flyers enjoyed much success on their home-made machines. All seem to have been distinctly underpowered and hard to control, and made little more than short, high-speed hops at low altitude. It would take another man to bring success to the city’s pilots.

William Hugh Ewen (1879 – 1947) , usually known as W. H., was born in Shanghai to Selina Blakeway and William Ewen, who were Scottish missionaries. On returning to Scotland they lived in the Pilrig area of Leith before moving to Willowbrae, and W.H. studied music at Edinburgh University. After graduating, he worked as a printer’s clerk, served in the Territorial Army and was an organist in the United Free Church. Perhaps inspired by the well-reported exploits of the Alexanders, of Foulis and of Hubbard, in February 1911 he took himself to Hendon and was awarded Royal Aeronautical Society flying licence no. 63, making him the 6th Scot to be so accredited. He was something of a natural, he flew on his first attempt and graduated on his third.

In June of that year, Ewen relocated himself to Lanark Aerodrome, which had been built the previous summer a the Lanark Racecourse to host the Royal Aero Club’s inaugural Scottish flying meeting, and set himself up as a flight school, W. H. Ewen Aviation Co. Ltd., offering tuition (or just joyrides) on Blériot or Deperdussin monoplanes, for the princely sum of £75 (c. £11,300 in 2023) plus a refundable £15 deposit for damages to the machines!). And then on August 16th 1911, the news wires brought exciting news to Edinburgh; not only was Ewen going to fly through from Lanark, and not only was he going to spend a week giving demonstration flights from the Portobello Marine Gardens, he was going to also take up the now-expired challenge to fly an aeroplane across the Forth from there!

Ewen didn’t make things easy for himself; he was going to fly a brand new aeroplane – a French Deperdussin monoplane – which had never yet flown and had an engine of only 28hp (50hp was by this time a standard for longer distance flights). For the start of the aviation week the poor weather prevented him flying, but then on the morning of Wednesday 30th, the skies cleared and the winds dropped, and he made the decision to try for his pioneering flight across the Forth. At 6AM he took a practice flight, the first time he had flown the new machine, making a loop at 150ft altitude towards Leith, circling over Seafield, before climbing to 350ft and passing across Craigentinny Golf Course, Duddingston and Joppa, before being caught in an unfavourable wind and deciding to land in a field at Northfield Farm. Mr Graham, the farmer, towed the plane back to Marine Gardens on his horse and cart.

Just before 7PM, dressed in a suit of black oilskins, Ewen lined up the Deperdussin on the tiny 150 yard “flight strip” at the Marine Gardens sports field, started his engine, pointed his craft out to sea and opened the throttle. He only just cleared the boundary fence (which had been lowered to accommodate him) and then rose “gracefully” into the sky and headed Fifewards. Finding the wind stronger than expected, he carried on climbing until he reached an altitude of 1,000ft at which point the air was calm. By this time he was just to the east of the island of Inchkeith, and continued on his course until he crossed the Fife coast about a mile from Kinghorn. He now turned for Leith, and crossed back across the water – a period which he described as a “bad five minutes” on account of the turbulence, turning homewards for Portobello about 2 miles short of the port. Returning to the field where he had taken off, he made an attempt to land but aborted at the last moment when he was caught by a gust of wind. Deciding the landing there would be too difficult he instead put himself down nearby on Craigentinny Meadows. The whole flight had covered 12 miles and had lasted for 10 minutes

The wings were taken off and the Deperdussin was pushed back to a heroes welcome at Marine Gardens by the band of the 3rd Dragoon Guards who struck up “See the Conquering Hero Comes“. Asked to make a speech to the cheering crowd, W. H. expressed his pleasure at how the flight had gone and that he was “pleased that a Scotsman had been able to do something in the way of mechanical flight”.

At the end of the week, a celebratory function was thrown by the directors of the Marine Gardens in Ewen’s honour. The band struck up “Scotland the Brave” and he was presented with a commemorative silver bowl after which a concert was held. Asked once again to make a speech, he joked that what he did not think himself particularly brave or adventurous because in 2 or 3 years time, flying would be so normalised that everybody in attendance would have done it. “Flying” he said “was the safest means of travel, if one had the common sense to know when to stop.” A few weeks later, W.H. was again celebrated by the newspapers, this time for flying the Deperdussin from Lanark to Edinburgh, a distance of 32 miles, in 35 minutes. Navigating by following the Caledonian Railway from Carstairs, he put down at Gorgie Farm, where the Chesser and Hutchison housing estates would later be built. He was followed on this journey by the mechanics from the flying school at Lanark, chasing him on the ground by car.

Flushed with success, in early 1912 W.H. moved himself to Hendon to open a new branch of his flying school. Here he also became an agent for and constructor of British-built French Caudron biplanes. “Scotland’s Greatest Aviator, the Hero of a Hundred Flights” returned home that summer to fly at both Lanark and a second season at Marine Gardens. He had a narrow escape on 26th July when his machine failed to take off, ran up an embankment and fell, nose-first, into a 6 feet deep ditch.

After training some 350 pilots, Ewen sold his business, and it was renamed the British Caudron Co., it would later move to Alloa, the town on the north bank of the Forth, and construct an aeroplane factory there. At the age of 36, W.H. enlisted in the Army Ordnance Department in 1915 before being posted to the Royal Flying Corps. Transferring to the Royal Air Force on its formation in 1918, he retired at the rank of Major due to ill health in November that year and spent most of the rest of his life living in London, working as a composer and orchestrator of music. He died in Edinburgh in 1947.

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Last voyage of the battlecruiser “Moltke”: the thread about how a German warship almost destroyed the Forth Bridge

On a recent (2022) trip to Orkney we visited the excellent and newly refurbished Scapa Flow museum and I bought a fascinating book on the subject of the internment, scuttling and salvage of the German Hocheseeflotte – the Imperial German Navy’s “High Seas Fleet” , after WW1. (The author, Dan Van Der Vat, is very readable, being a journalist by trade.) So naturally I’ve managed to find an exciting and little known of local history angle to this.

The SMS Moltke (Seiner Majestät Schiff, His Majesty’s Ship) was a 25,000 ton battlecruiser of the Imperial German Navy. She was 612 feet long, 96.5 feet wide, could make 25.5 knots on the 51,000 horsepower produced by her engines and was armed with ten 11 inch guns in five turrets. Battlecruisers were the pride of contemporary fleets, as well armed as the main battleships but able to reach the sort of speeds usually reserved for smaller ships. Big, well armed and fast, Moltke was every bit the equal for her Royal Navy equivalents.

At the end of the war the Hocheseeflotte was still largely materially intact, but organisation and discipline was another matter. It was forced under the terms of Armistice by the Allies into a humiliating internment under the watchful eye of the Royal Navy. It had been hoped by the Germans that the fleet would be dispersed to neutral ports but instead it ended up imprisoned in the bleak confines of Scapa Flow, the principal wartime anchorage of the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet. Its remaining ships arrived at Scapa after a rendezvous with the Grand Fleet in the Firth of Forth, from where it was escorted into a miserable internment.

The German ships were disarmed and made incapable of war or even escape, but legally they remained the property of the German state. They were supplied by German provision ships sent by the German government from German ports. Although their crews were not officially prisoners, they were not allowed to leave the confines of their ships and no British personnel were allowed aboard apart from small official delegations pertaining to the administrative niceties of exile. As the signing of the Treaty of Versailles approached, the German Admiral in charge at Scapa – Ludwig Von Reuter – found himself in an impossible position.

Von Reuter was caught between the national honour of the Prussian officer class; his mutinous and non-compliant crews; British belligerence and overwhelming Allied political pressure. His fear, not without reasonable, was that the British would try and seize the German fleet on the signing of the treaty. He gathered around him a select circle of loyal officers and right under the nose of the watchful Royal Navy and his own suspicious and resentful sailors, managed to organise a mass scuttling of almost his entire fleet.

On 21st June 1919 the conspirators managed to scuttle fifteen of the sixteen battleships and battlecruisers, five of the eight fleet cruisers and thirty-two of the fifty destroyers at Scapa. The cream of the German Navy was turned into the half a million tons of scrap metal on the seabed in a matter of hours. Publicly the British were furious (the Royal Navy doubly so as it had been totally humiliated), but Von Reuter had actually done everyone involved a favour and simplified negotiations over the fate of the fleet – If the German Navy lay at the bottom of Scapa Flow then nobody could have it: not the British, the Germans, the French, the Americans or even the Italians.

Scapa Flow was now littered with over fifty German wrecks in various states of submersion, posing quite the navigation hazard – as demonstrated ably by the government whaler Ramna which got stuck fast on top of the capsized hull of the Moltke. The world soon moved on from the scuttling as shattered countries sought to begin rebuilding themselves post war.

Enterprising locals (often unofficially) stripped what they could access above waterline for scrap until an enterprising Shetland shipowner and councillor – J. W. Roberston – proved that you could salvage wrecks from underwater and brought a number of torpedo boats ashore for their scrap value. Enter now stage left the enterprising, irrepressible and energetic figure of Ernest Frank Guelph Cox. Cox was a self made engineer and metal dealer from the Midlands who had the vision to believe he could access and salvage the five hundred thousand tons of best German steel located at the bottom of Scapa Flow. Now that the price of scrap metal had started to rise after the immediate postwar slump, his backers believed that it would now be financially worthwhile.

Cox’s business partner in his firm – Cox & Danks – was his cousin, the capital behind the operation. Together they bought the rights to salvage the Hocheseeflotte from the Admiralty and set to work at Scapa in the mid 1920s. Cox had the foresight to hire Tom McKenzie, a Glaswegian naval salvage diver who would pretty much write the book on naval salvage diving.

Although all involved were practical, skilled and experienced men, they were starting from almost nothing and had to largely invent, improvise and improve all the required techniques for marine salvage on this scale. Overcoming setback after setback, they were driven along by Cox’s indefatigable determination and Danks’ deep pockets. They made rapid progress and the first torpedo boat – V70 – was raised after less than 2 months work in 1924. Moving on to the next boat and then the next one after that, they honed their techniques and were soon raising ships at a rapid rate. Within two years, all twenty six torpedo boats that Cox had the rights to take had been raised.

Cox now turned his attention to the big ships on the bottom, the battleships and battlecruisers. In May 1926 he started on the SMS Hindenburg, but even though she reached the surface the operation proved a disaster and she had to be quickly resunk. The precarious situation of the salvagers at Scapa was saved by the discovery of huge stocks of coal in the bunkers of SMS Seydlitz; it was found these could be accessed and “mined” from the surface and this free source of fuel tided the operations over. Cox now set his sights on the Moltke. The basic technique was relatively simple. Divers were sent down to plug the holes in the hull and it was pumped full of compressed air, displacing the water aboard. As it leaked and bubbled out through the holes that had been missed, these two were plugged. Eventually air could be pumped in quicker than it escaped and slowly the hull would start to float.

I say relatively, in practice it was tremendously difficult and verging on the impossible. They were working at – or beyond – the limits of contemporary diving skills and technology. Conditions were harsh and the environment of Scapa Flow was unforgiving as any British sailor ever sent there would attest, but Cox’ determination and McKenzie’s skill drove them forwards. The Germans had efficiently and effectively wrecked the watertight integrity of the ships’ inner bulkheads so before they could be raised in a controlled manner, divers had to go in and restore it by welding and plugging any gaps they could find. To make this possible, airlocks – like huge submarine chimneys – were built down into each compartment. From these, divers could access the innards and get to work under intense air pressure, working upside down on ships encased in marine slime, often in complete darkness.

Cox was a bit of a showman, always on site and always hands on. His men respected him and the press loved him. He made sure the latter were around whenever anything interesting was happening. The Scotsman filed almost weekly progress reports on the salvage of the Moltke.

• October 21, 1926. Compressed air pumping operations commence on the hull of the Moltke.
• December 10, 1926. Moltke is rising unevenly and the divers are forced to sink her in case she is caught by the winter gales.
• Feb. 15, 1927. Work restarts after winter storms, the first airlock is fitted and almost 100 men are at work on the Moltke.
• Feb. 24, 1927. The difficulties are described of working in a 15PSI atmosphere where cutting torches burn up the oxygen as fast as it can be pumped in
• May 30, 1927. Work resumes again after 2 months of gales. A disaster is narrowly avoided when the wrong valve is closed and compressed air rushes through the ship from stern to bow, blowing the 16 divers at work inside through the ship with it.
• June 13, 1927. Cox has the Pathé newsreel men on site to witness the triumph of the Moltke breaching the surface in a controlled manner and refloating after 8 years on the seabed.

But don’t just look at those grainy thumbnails, watch the whole clip on the Pathe website! Over the next four months the refloated Moltke was painstakingly winched towards Cox & Danks’ salvage base at Lyness on the island of Hoy, narrowly avoiding grounding on the island of Cava when one of her big 11 inch guns fouled the seabed and had to be cut free. They begin cutting her up in situ but it soon becomes obvious that the isolated shores of Scapa Flow were the wrong place to do this and made little economic sense. Cox therefore convinced the Admiralty to lease him the No. 3 Dry Dock at Rosyth Royal Dockyard, the largest and most modern in Scotland.

He then sold on the scrapping rights to the Alloa Shipbreaking Company, who would undertake the actual dismantling work at Rosyth, thus leaving him free to concentrate on the dark arts of salvage. But the problem still remained as to how to get the beached and upside-down hulk of Moltke 250 miles south to Rosyth. The only solution was to refloat it and tow it there – a hard enough task if it didn’t include having to transit the Pentland Firth with its infamous tidal currents, some of the fastest in the world. Undaunted, Cox set to work. The ship was lightened of thousands of tons of steel such as propellers and shafts, armour plate etc., and her hull was patched up with concrete where they had started to demolish it.

Refloated for the journey, two shelters were built on her “deck”, actually the upturned bottom; one with accommodation for the eight crew who would make the journey (including Cox himself), the other with enough pumps to keep her full of compressed air. Lifeboats were thoughtfully included too. By May 18th, Moltke was ready to go. Controversially at the time, both in Britain and in Germany, the three tugs that were chartered to take her on her final voyage were German, including the Seefalke – the most powerful in the world – the Posen and the Simson.

For good measure, on board was also one William Mowat, the coxswain of the Longhope Lifeboat, probably the only man in the world qualified to pilot the wallowing hulk out of Scapa and safely past Duncansby Head.

Despite Mowat’s presence, disaster was soon upon them when the weather got up. The three tugs could not make headway against the wind and current and Moltke started going backwards though the Pentland Firth, rolling by up to 13.5 degrees. She lost 6 feet of her precious freeboard as the compressed air bubbles within that kept her afloat leaked out due to the constant rocking and pitching motions. The pumps could not keep up and she was slowly sinking. Salvation came with the tides themselves, which inevitably turned and speedily ejected the battlecruiser and her three attendants out of the Firth.

After this literally rocky start, things calmed down and the pumps were able to refill the air bubbles and lift the hull back out of the sea again. With the tugs now making headway the close call was soon forgotten about and Cox the showman had the crew play a makeshift game of cricket on the deck for the press. I think he is the man umpiring at the back, in the pullover with his hands behind his back.

The rest of the journey to the Firth of Forth proceeded calmly and according to plan and by May 21st she was off Granton. The last manoeuvre required of the tugs was to get her safely under the Forth Bridge and into the Rosyth basin. And this is where things start to go wrong. Again.

This time it was down to petty officialdom. The Forth Pilot arrived from Granton and tried to take command. He was joined shortly afterwards by the Admiralty pilot from Rosyth. A standoff now ensued as the civil and military opposite numbers argued over who had the rights to pilot the Moltke up the Firth. Neither was willing to back down and the set to kept on going, as did the changing tide and currents of the Firth. Gradually, so to did Moltke herself, gently easing her way inevitably upstream. Before the situation could be resolved, they found themselves coming upon Inchgarvie island; the very rock on which the piers of the bridge was built. And the newsmen from Pathé were there to film it all!

One of tugs found itself grounded on Inchgarvie…

The Seefalke, attached at the back and in charge of providing steerage then drifted around the wrong side of the island and had to cut the tow. Moltke was now at the mercy of the currents, with two tugs lashed to her, one being dragged along the bottom, and with no ability to manoeuvre their charge.

Now totally out of control, Moltke spun through 90 degrees and drifted sideways down the Firth towards the bridge, dragging the helpless tugs along with her. All twenty three thousand or so tons of her was now heading broadside towards the central piers of the bridge, those which rose directly out of the water itself. All the while, trains rattled to and fro overhead with little idea what was unfolding below them.

If you watch the remarkable clip, you can see Moltke drifting beam-on towards the bridge as a train goes by overhead. Somebody must have been saying their prayers onboard though, as somehow the tugs lashed to Moltke‘s hull managed to position the 612 feet wide floating wrecking ball perfectly between the piers and Inchgarvie, narrowly avoiding disaster.

The Seefalke was now able to get a line across and bring the hulk under control, steering her gingerly towards the safety of Rosyth. The watching press were blissfully unaware how close disaster had been, the Scotsman reported “a wonderful piece of navigation and most successfully performed“. However, if you look closely at the footage, Moltke approaches the bridge stern first (with her 4 propeller supports leading the way) but passes through it bow-first (with the big notch cut out from initial breaking up leading). The big battlecruiser had done a 180 degree pirouette while passing under the bridge!

Moltke was edged finally towards the channel into No. 3 Dry Dock but Cox couldn’t yet breathe a sigh of relief; first he has to get the ship into the dock, as his contract stipulates he won’t get paid by the Alloa Shipbreaking Co. until she is in and the dock is drained.

But this last step will be no small feat – there is just a one day window on the highest spring tide to get the upside down hulk into dock. Ships usually go in the right way up of course, but the inverted Moltke is drawing 41 feet of water at her deepest, 25% more than she would otherwise, and the dock gate had a lip that reduces the depth of the water to only 38 feet! But this was Cox and he was undaunted – by an incredibly skilful act of pumping compressed air in at one end and letting it out at another, and then reversing the process, he was able to “hop” the deepest part of the ship over the dock lip and get her safely in with the gates shut.

But on the brink of final triumph, once again officialdom almost screwed everything up for Cox. With Moltke bobbing in the waters of the still flooded dock, the supervisor stepped in and disagreed about how to support the upside down ship on the dock floor. He had a point – ships didn’t normally go into dock with their pointy-bits facing down the way. There were all sorts of projections beneath the hull that might damage the critical national infrastructure that he was in charge of. Of course the Admiralty should have worked this all out with Cox before they signed over the use of the dock to him. A frantic phonecall to Whitehall couldn’t resolve things so Cox jumped straight on the first train south to thrash it out in person. Ironically to do so he first had to pass over the bridge he very nearly demolished only a few hours previously. In London an agreement was reached and he was back the next day, 28th May, to get his men to work shoring up the hull with baulks of timber.

Then dock was then slowly drained and the ship finally came to rest on the bottom. It was June 5th as the last of the water was pumped; Cox had finally won. He had raised a 23,000 ton ship from the seabed that had spent 8 years submerged – twice! -, beached it, refloated it, sailed it 250 miles through the treacherous Pentland Firth and squeezed it upside down into a dry dock into which it shouldn’t have fitted and all without demolishing one of the most important structures in the western world!

The Alloa men could now get to work and on September 13th 1928 set about cutting up the pride of the Hocheseeflotte into thousands of tons of valuable scrap metal.

Cox would go on to salvage every ship he could from the bottom of Scapa Flow giving up eight years later and £10,000 worse off than when he began. For all his drive and determination, his financial skills were somewhat lacking and his pioneering methods proved inefficient and just never paid back. Other Scottish businessmen, including those of Alloa Shipbreakers and salvage diver Tom Mckenzie, then formed Metal Industries Ltd to carry on were Cox left off. With more efficient, refined techniques and more sensible business practices, their venture would pay off in a big way.

The last Scapa ship raised by Metal Industries was SMS Derfflinger. Another war intervened in this venture and she spent WW2 beached and upside down, alongside the disarmed old battleship HMS Iron Duke, HQ ship at Scapa, which during WW1 had faced off against the Hocheseeflotte at the Battle of Jutland. The salvage men aboard Derfflinger would save the Iron Duke after she was nearly sunk in an air raid early in the war. Derfflinger was floated into a submersible dry dock and towed to Faslane after the war for scrapping.

One of Metal Industries’ many improvements on the salvage process was to rapidly sink the ship as soon as they had raised it, to crush and concertina the protruding superstructure up inside the hull, removing most of the underwater obstructions that plagued Cox. It is praiseworthy that the basic salvage techniques pioneered by Cox and McKenzie, and refined by Metal Industries, are still those that are in use today.

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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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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“.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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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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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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“.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!).

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.

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.

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.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.