#royalnavy — Public Fediverse posts

𝗪𝗜𝗞𝗜𝗣𝗘𝗗𝗜𝗔'𝗦 𝗙𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗨𝗥𝗘𝗗 𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗟𝗘

✧ Thomas Hardy (Royal Navy officer, died 1732) ✧

Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy was a British Royal Navy officer and politician. Having joined the navy sometime before 1688, Hardy was supported in his career by George Churchill, whom he served as first lieutenant during the Battle of Barfleur in 1692. Promoted to capt...

#royalnavy #navy #channelislands #england #hmspembroke #wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hardy_(Royal_Navy_officer%2C_died_1732)

https://www.europesays.com/iran/289943/ Britain’s £1,000,000,000 Type 45 Destroyers Lose All Electrical Power When the Sea Is Warmer Than About 28 Degrees Celsius. The Persian Gulf Is Warmer Than That. #destroyer #Military #NATO #Navy #PersianGulf #RoyalNavy #Type45 #UK

Des considérations juridiques compliquent la protection de l’espace aérien irlandais par les forces françaises et britanniques

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.opex360.com/2026/08/29/des-considerations-juridiques-compliquent-la-protection-de-lespace-aerien-irlandais-par-les-forces-francaises-et-britanniques/

Tuesday, July 28, 2026

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026/07/tuesday-july-28-2026/

Manchester Monday 29th June 2026.

https://mancavgeek.co.uk/2026/06/29/manchester-monday-29th-june-2026/

Monday, June 15, 2026

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026/06/monday-june-15-2026/

Fairey Seafox https://www.destinationsjourney.com/historical-military-photographs/fairey-seafox/ #Aeroplane, #AirSeaRescue, #Aircraft, #Airplane, #Aviation, #Biplane, #FaireySeafox, #FloatPlane, #Floatplane, #RAF, #RescuePlane, #RN, #RoyalAirForce, #RoyalNavy, #Seafox, #Seaplane, #SecondWorldWar, #WorldWarTwo, #WW2, #WWII

La disponibilité des F-35B britanniques est affectée par des problèmes de corrosion

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://www.opex360.com/2026/05/16/la-disponibilite-des-f-35b-britanniques-est-affectee-par-des-problemes-de-corrosion/

British Battleship HMS Malaya https://www.destinationsjourney.com/historical-military-photographs/british-battleship-hms-malaya/ #SecondWorldWar #battleship #HMSMalaya #MaritmeHistory #NavalHistory #RoyalNavy #WorldWarTwo

Manchester Monday 16th February 2026.

https://mancavgeek.co.uk/2026/02/16/manchester-monday-16th-february-2026/

Investigation also reveals previously undisclosed contracts between Palantir & AWE #Nuclear Security Technologies, agency that underpins Britain’s #nuclear deterrence programme

https://www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-technologies-uk-government-contracts-size-nuclear-deterrent-atomic-peter-thiel-louis-mosley

#corruption #USAggression #USThreats #RoyalNavy #UnitedKingdom #VassalState #outsourcing #privacy #Military #CapitalismFail

[3/3]

Manchester Monday 12th January 2026.

https://mancavgeek.co.uk/2026/01/12/manchester-monday-12th-january-2026/

#OTD 11 November 1918

The #WW1 #Armistice isn't always mentioned in the log-books of #RoyalNavy ships.
HMS Rinaldo, at anchor off Simonstown, South Africa, did, though.

1.30pm: Guns fired from batteries denoting signing of armistice. Dressed ship overall

The inset shows part of the actual log-book page.

#NavalHistory #ArmisticeDay #History

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 ignominious end of HMS Caledonia: the thread about how the Navy’s longest ship ended up as scrap metal on the Forth seabed

Q. What was the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW2?

A. As any respectable naval anorak knows, it was the 47,000t, 860ft long battleship HMS Hood, the “Mighty Hood“, pride of the fleet and largest warship afloat. Right? Or… was it the Bismarck?

No, the largest ship in the Royal Navy at the outbreak of WW2 was the 56,500t, 956-ft long training ship HMS Caledonia; until 1936 the Cunard-White Star liner RMS Majestic, which until 1922 had been the Hamburg-Amerika liner SS Bismarck. Until 1935, the largest ship in the world

The Bismarck was the 3rd and largest of three Hamburg-Amerika liners built immediately prior to WW1; the others were the Vaterland and Imperator. They were ordered to reclaim dominance and German national pride in the Transatlantic liner stakes from the British Cunard and White Star liners. They were to do this by being both the largest and grandest liners afloat. Bismarck was the last of the trio but before she was laid down, the Hamburg-Amerika line found out that the new Cunard liner Aquitania was to be longer than her, so they hastily rejigged the design to add an extra 6 feet on. They needn’t had bothered, they had made been misinformed and Aquitania actually ended up being 50ft shorter than Bismarck.

It was too late to change the design however and it was too late for her sister Imperator, which had been given the most embarrassingly awful nose job to lengthen her by the vainglorious addition of a massive bronze eagle figurehead which was meant to make her 1ft longer than Aquitania. Fortunately for her appearance this partially fell off during Atlantic storms within a year, and was removed.

Bismarck was launched in June 1914 by a granddaughter of the Iron Chancellor, but this ceremony was jinxed when she fluffed the swinging of the champagne bottle and it only broke on the second attempt: none other than Kaiser Wilhelm II stepped in to give it his best swing. The outbreak of war found her without a purpose, and construction ground to a halt beyond maintenance work. During the war she was stripped of valuable components, wiring and piping and all her brass and copper. The incomplete hulk was ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Versailles as reparations for the loss of the White Star liner Britannic (sister of Titanic), which had struck a German mine and sunk in 1916 while serving as a hospital ship. This was the largest ship lost in the war, but although she sank in just 55 minutes, all but 30 souls on board were saved. Her sister Imperator went to Cunard as a replacement for the Lusitania, the ill-fated liner whose sinking had outraged America and helped drag that nation into the war against Germany.

White Star sent representatives and shipyard engineers from Harland & Wolff in Belfast to Hamburg to supervise completion of their new possession. The whole ship needed re-wiring, and a mysterious fire that damaged her during completion and which the British put down to sabotage by the German workers was probably an electrical fault: this would be a recurrent theme. She completed in March 1922 and White Star officers were sent to supervise her trials by officers and men of Hamburg-Amerika line. This was marred by briefly running aground, but after a week she was accepted and handed over. Her German name was painted out and replaced with Majestic.

A White Star crew arrived and sailed her to Southampton, during which time they repainted her funnels into company colours. She arrived exactly 10 years to the day that the Titanic had departed on her ill-fated maiden voyage. Not only the largest in the world, she was arguably the most opulent, designed by the French architect Charles Mewès. Her German builders had trunked the boiler uptakes around the ships sides (rather than through the centre), to allow for huge, uninterrupted interior spaces, and spared no expense on the specification

Despite being a foreigner in a time when ocean liners were a symbol of national prestige, she was made White Star flagship and was the pride of the fleet. Her first official duties were to be inspected by King George V and Queen Mary, before heading for New York. She settled down to a glamorous 1920s career on the Atlantic, but one that was always marred by the occasional spontaneous fire in her electrical system, and growing cracks in her decks (which grew to 100ft long) as a result of the lengthening job.

The Depression hit the Transatlantic liners hard, already struggling from a downturn in migrating passengers, and in White Star’s case, poor corporate management. The Majestic frequently found herself on “booze cruises” from a very dry and thirsty Prohibition-era USA to help pay her huge running costs. But the cracks grew bigger, the electrical fires got more frequent and the finances grew ever worse. Cunard and White Star line merged in 1934 in a government-sponsored deal. The new company had too many liners and the older ones began to be disposed of; Majestic survived the initial chop, but her card was marked.

With the new company flagship Queen Mary under construction, Cunard-White Star made to dispose of the sister ship Berengaria, which was older and more prone to fires, but the larger Majestic had higher running costs so in 1936 was taken out of service instead.

She quietly sailed her last voyage in February that year and disappeared from the schedules without any announcement on her future. In May she was bought by Thomas Ward of Inverkeithing for £115k (c. £6.6m in 2023), the scrapyard where many a liner and battleship ended its days.

Majestic was taken into dock at Southampton to have her funnels and masts lowered to allow her to sneak beneath the Forth Bridge, but there was a snag – the minor matter of fine legal print of the Treaty of Versailles. Bismarck had been handed over as a prize of war as compensation to White Star, but the terms did not allow the new owner to sell her. Instead, the Royal Navy stepped in and took possession, and “gave” Wards 24 old destroyers of equivalent scrap value in return. Everyone was happy. The lawyers were happy. Cunard-White Star got paid by Wards, Wards got the scrap they had paid for and the Royal Navy got what had been – until 6 months previous – the largest ship in the world, for the price of only a few old rusty relics.

The great liner was now taken in for conversion to an enormous training ship, with capacity for 1500 trainee boys and 500 officer apprentices. Her luxurious fittings – apart from the swimming pool – were stripped out, and the vast interior converted to spartan classrooms. Where once her passengers slept in the most luxurious cabins afloat, the new occupants would sling hammocks from the roof beams in time-honoured Royal Navy tradition. In April 1937 she made her last sea voyage, to Rosyth on the Firth of Forth.

On arrival, she commissioned as HMS Caledonia, named after the Victorian training ship that had once served on the Forth under that name. Her job was to train the boys and young men who would fill the ranks of the expanding Royal Navy in the run up to the inevitable war. By the end of the year there were 1,000 trainees aboard.

The new Caledonia only had an expected lifespan of 4 years, she was to plug the gaps until permanent shore facilities could take over; but she didn’t even make this. On the outbreak of war there was a panic that the Luftwaffe would target her for a revenge sinking. This was not without reason and the first air raids over the United Kingdom during the war soon followed over the Forth with the Royal Navy and Rosyth being the target. And so the trainee boys onboard were packed off to safety in the Isle of Man, the officer apprentices were sent ashore at Rosyth, and the great ship was floated out into the Forth and pumped full of water so she would settle on the sea bed at low tide (therefore couldn’t be “sunk”), to await her fate, or another use.

However the proud old ship had other ideas. Just 26 days after war was declared and a full 17 days before the Luftwaffe arrived over the Forth, she set herself on fire and burnt out, settling on to the bed of the Firth. Her shonky electrical system had the last laugh. With the country now at war with Germany, the niceties of previous treaties could be overlooked, and she was sold to Wards of Inverkeithing – again, for mining as a strategic reserve of scrap iron. She was demolished in situ from 1940-43.

In July 1943, what remained of the hull was patched up and floated around the corner to Inverkeithing, for beaching and final break-up by Wards. This was completed in 1944, her name transferred to a shore station at Oban.

After the war, the name was relocated back to Rosyth, where it was a shore training establishment until 1985. It was rehabilitated again at Rosyth in 1996, where it remains to this day, the Navy’s HQ in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The HMS Caledonia which was once the liner RMS Majestic remains the longest ship to have ever commissioned into the Royal Navy, a full 24ft longer than the modern Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers. With her loss in 1939, the battleship HMS Hood would regain her crown as the largest ship in the Navy. In a sardonic twist of fate, Hood would be sunk in May 1941 by a German ship named Bismarck – with great loss of life.

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.

Excellent sunshade whilst rehydrating earlier…

#hmsalliance #royalnavy #submarine #submarinemuseum #museum #gosport #character

HMS Malaya
New name(s) found and added to this crew list

@battle-of-jutland-crew-lists-project

#battleofjutland #genealogy #greatwar #ww1 #history #worldwar1 #familyhistory #Skagerrakschlacht #royalnavy #ancestorian
#HMSMalaya

Please follow the link to view the crew list for this ship.

https://battleofjutlandcrewlists.miraheze.org/wiki/HMS_Malaya_Crew_List

HMS Barham
One new name found and added to this crew list

‪@RN-in-WW1‬

#battleofjutland #genealogy #greatwar #ww1 #wikitree #history #worldwar1 #familyhistory #Skagerrakschlacht #royalnavy #ancestorian
#HMSBarham

Please follow the link to view the crew list for this ship.

https://battleofjutlandcrewlists.miraheze.org/wiki/HMS_Barham_Crew_List

HMS Fury: the thread about the short life of the first Royal Navy warship built in Leith

This Leith local history thread is brought to you by chance of a couple of typos in a book, which meant I couldn’t find what I was looking for but instead found an altogether more interesting tale of late 18th century shipbuilding in Leith and naval affairs. The typo referred to the building of the first “ship of the line” in Scotland in Leith in 1750, a ship named Fury. However none of this stacked up, as the first HMS Fury wasn’t built until much later and wasn’t a ship of the line.

In the Royal Navy, a ship of the line meant a specific sort of ship – a 1st, 2nd or 3rd rate to be precise – and something much, much larger than I thought would have been getting built in Leith at this time. So I was pretty excited to think that Leith had built what at the time would have been one of the largest sorts of warships it was possible to build, especially as early as 1750.

Although Newhaven, just along the coast, had built the biggest ship in the Christian World in the 16th century, this was a one off. By the mid 18th century Leith was a busy shipbuilding centre, but it built vessels of only 20-40 tons displacement usually, no larger than 70. All this took place in North Leith, at the time a separate place from South Leith. Indeed shipbuilding was the primary industry of North Leith and almost the whole river bank between the Abbot’s Bridge (now near Quayside St.) and the Sandport (now under the Custom House) was taken up by Carpenter’s Yards, carpenters being the shipbuilders’ incorporation .

North Leith built two to four hundred tons of shipping a year. Most yards generally built two or three ships per year, and there were usually 5 yards in operation. Most of the timber, particularly the “crookit” wood for the ribs came in from Norway, but exotic and Scottish timber was also used. The Carpenter James Jamison died in 1749, and a younger man, John Sime (or Syme) takes over. At the same time he marries the widow of James Beattie, only a few months after the latter’s death and acquires that shipyard too. John had a son, John, by his first marriage, and together John Sime and Son begin to corner the Leith shipbuilding industry. Sime rebuilds a large tenement near his yard, builds himself a house, has a smithie and a square of houses for workers.

Sime also buys over the burnt out remains of one of the first glasshouses (glass works) in North Leith and turns that over to shipbuilding when the latter business relocates to Salamander Street. In 1751, Sime successfully petitions the Edinburgh council for the “tack” (the tenancy) of the shore at the Sandport, the ancient sandy beach of North Leith long used by the fishermen and for small scale boat building . In 1770 the Simes build the first drydock in Leith . It was not 1720 as some sources say, therefore not the first in Scotland, as that honour goes to James Watt’s dock in Port Glasgow.

This dock is still there, by the way, it’s just filled in and you just have to look for the outline of the coping stones in the open grass area and on the quayside.

And look closely at the back of the tenement, you’ll see the tell-tale “Sandport Street Notch”, which allowed room for a docked ship’s bowsprit mast to penetrate the envelope of the much later Victorian building.

Anyway, moving on. By the later part of the 18th c., John Sime and Son had cornered almost the entire local industry, taking over the lease of the 2nd dry dock and having half the shipbuilding land in North Leith. Indeed other Carpenters complain of them acting as a monopoly. In August 1777, the burgeoning Simes get their best order yet, an order from none other than the Royal Navy for a warship. This would be the first (and only) warship built in Leith (and I think in Scotland) for the Navy in the 18th century. This ship is to be HMS Fury, a 16 gun ship sloop of the Swan class. These were typical small warships of the time for every sort of role apart from joining the line in major battles and with the American Revolutionary War raging far across the sea, the Navy was desperate for such vessels .

Even though it was small, at 300 tons burthen displacement, it was by far and away the largest thing built in Leith up to that time and the Simes had to build a special new construction platform for it on the Sandport as their existing yards were too small. This can be seen on Wood’s plan. Remarkably, the noted and prolific Scottish landscape illustrator of this time – John Clerk of Eldin – happened to sketch this yard in the late 18th or early 19th century, before the Custom House was built. Shipyards were really just open ground at this time, the huts would have been for stores or perhaps a smithy.

We know almost exactly what Fury would have looked like, as the plans for the class survive and it’s become one of the most popular model shipbuilding kits of this sort of vessel.

And here is a model of HMS Fly of this type from an auction sale. The ships were noted at the time for being particularly handsome and well embellished with decorations. They were built with 16 gun ports, but usually shipped 14 x 6 pounder main guns when built.

And here are the period plans from the Admiralty archives and a model of the Kingfisher under construction (in reality she wouldn’t have had the guns at this time).

The Fury took about 18 months to go from laying down to launching, the longest of any of the 21 Swan-class ordered in 1775-1779, probably the result of Sime’s inexperience in building such large ships to naval standards. It is evident that the Admiralty were frustrated by the slow progress as there are letters between them and their Overseer in Leith – Mr Coleman – about delays to the launch. But launch she did, on the 5th March 1779. Alas, tragedy stuck, and after moving only 4 feet she “burst the ways because the dog shores were not knocked away in time” The dog shores are those timber braces seen in Jeff’s model above. A carpenter was killed in this calamity and she came to rest, upright and undamaged, but marooned above all but the spring high tide. And there she sat until March 19th when the state of the tide allowed her to be floated out.

Back before launch, in February, the Admiralty had ordered her to be fitted out for Channel Service (against the French, who were waging a maritime war on Britain at this time in support of the American Revolutionaries). Her captain was appointed, Alexander Agnew of the Hazard. There’s a good chance this portrait in the Royal Museum of Greenwich shows a younger Agnew when he was a Lieutenant onboard HMS Pallas. The 45 year old Agnew had progressed relatively well in the Navy up to this point, although without major acclaim.

Agnew proceeds to Leith to take charge of his new command when it was in the final stages of fitting out and there’s a flurry of correspondence in the archives from him arranging the more important crew positions. e.g. David Lesslie – Sailmaker, William Long (surgeon of the cutter Nimble), Alexander Robertson – master.

From what the correspondence suggests, the Admiralty are clearly frustrated. They probably just want their badly needed new ship ready and launched as quickly as possible and nothing more to do with her troublesome Scottish builders. There are further dark omens for Fury however, as Sime senior passes away around this time and there are issues in fitting her out. There are “no gang boards for the gunnels“, the boats have no oars, she has not been rigged and Agnew is ordered to find a contractor to do this. The overseer at Leith complains that for lack of a carpenter the ship cannot be provisioned and will remain there at the government’s expense. Finally, James Patton rigs the ship and in June or July the Fury is able to leave Leith and head off on service. On July 13th 1779, Fury shows up in Whitby Roads with the armed tender HMS Advice, and they impress (i.e. press gang) the entire crew of the recently arrived whaler, Adamant.

At the end of July, Fury is back in Leith as she is reported leaving with the tenders HMS Africa and HMS Swan with 300 impressed men destined for the new 74 gun ship of the line HMS Edgar. Impressment was the horrible practice by which the Navy filled its lower decks, but some men were meant to have immunity. In 1780, John Sime, Fury‘s builder, successfully sued Captain the Hon. Charles Napier, for impressing his apprentices and taking them to London.

Fury now heads for the Nore, the Royal Navy’s command in the Thames Estuary but within months is back in Leith Roads in a hurry, hot on the heels of the American swashbuckler John Paul Jones, in the USS Bonhomme Richard, who was rumoured to have just invaded Newcastle upon Tyne.

That panic over, in January 1780 she arrives at Sheerness on the Thames with the “Beaver’s Prize” (no giggling at the back) to be fitted out for Carronades – a particularly short and heavy cannon – developed by the Carron company further up the Forth – perfect for giving small ships a hefty punch. Fury now joined a small squadron under Commander Matthew Squire of the “Ariadne“, along with Trotten’s HMS Queen and Raines’ HMS London and they went pirate hunting in the channel. On April 30th, the pirates (three French privateers) were sighted off Flamborough Head, where the pesky John Paul Jones had caused the senior service some embarrassment the previous year by refusing to allow them to beat him in battle.

This would be a chance to right a few wrongs, however it all now went a bit wrong again. When Commander Squire gave the order to engage the privateers only Trotten in the Queen joined in. For whatever reason, Agnew in the Fury and Raines in the London refused. In doing so, Agnew and Raines broke two of the golden rules of the Royal Navy. Firstly, follow orders from your superior and secondly and more importantly, never ever never fail to aggressively engage the enemy.

As a result of Agnew and Raines’ failure, the privateers were able to escape. A court martial was convened on board the frigate HMS Santa Margarita at the Nore under Vice Admiral Robert Roddham. Roddham honourably acquitted Commander Squire as “spirited, great, and highly to be recommended“, and threw the book at Agnew and Raines. Agnew and Raines were found guilty of “ignoring orders and failing to do their utmost” and sentenced to be broke, i.e. kicked out of the Navy dishonourably.

Agnew was a man of independent wealth and standing from a landed family of army officers, but it is likely he ended his days as something of a social pariah for his crimes. As for the Fury she now had a spell of better luck under her new captain, Commander Thomas Totty (I said, no giggling at the back) and in July takes the French privateer Union Americaine and profits from the prize. The newspaper at the time report that Fury was in company with the other Royal Navy ships Imphigenia and Monkey Cutter (oh, come on!) Totty would go on to become a very respected and senior officer, praised by none other than Horatio Nelson in a letter between them “For believe me, my dear Sir, that with the very highest respect for your character, I feel myself your most obliged and affectionate servant.”

In January 1782, Fury was taken over by Commander Thomas Wells and set sail under him for the West Indies. At the Leeward Islands the following year, Wells is promoted to full Captain and a bigger ship and Fury is taken over by Commander William Sidney Smith.

Smith had enjoyed a rapid rise through the ranks, being commended by Admiral Rodney at the battle of Cape St. Vincent and being promoted for his efforts beyond his age. After further meritorious conduct at the Battles of the Chesapeake and the Saintes 1782, he was given the Fury as his first command. Smith performed well in the Fury and was soon promoted full Captain and upwards to the frigate Alcmene. Later in a glittering career, Smith’s service at the Siege of Acre in command of the Royal Navy forces was instrumental in preventing Napoleon’s victory. Napoleon soon abandoned his Egyptian campaign and later said of Smith “That man made me miss my destiny“.

As for the Fury she served a further year in the West Indies, under Commanders William Bentinck and then William Smith. She is noted to have taken the French ship Polacre in this period and returned to England in November 1784 and was “paid off“, i.e. taken out of service. She would never put to sea again, and in 1787 the Admiralty ordered her broken up, which started at Woolwich in April of that year.

While most of her class were also paid off at this time as the result of the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary wars in 1783, and such a big Navy being too expensive to maintain during peacetime, she was gotten rid of unduly quickly so one wonders if she was in a particularly poor condition. The Navy was shortly at war again however and as soon as 1790 a new Fury was ordered, again a 16 gun sloop. But this time she was ordered from the Dockyard in Portsmouth, Leith (or Scotland) would not build another ship for the Royal Navy in the 18th century. One wonders if the frustration of the length of time it took to build Fury and the numerous mistakes made in her launching and fitting out put the Admiralty off Scottish shipbuilding altogether! indeed until the 20th century, Leith would only builds 2 other warships for the Royal Navy, the 12 gun sloop Earnest and the 12 gun brig Woodlark both of 1805. The unlucky Woodlark was wrecked off Calais under command of the inexperienced Thomas Innes only a few months later.

Alexander Agnew died in obscurity in 1792 at the age of 58, somewhere unknown, having committed one of the ultimate sins for an officer and a gentleman.

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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.

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

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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.