Part 2: From Quaker Piety to Agricultural Improver

House of Ury

Part 1 concluded with the death of David Barclay, one-time favoured mercenary in the employ of Gustav Adolphus King of Sweden. David had survived battles of the Thirty Years War, had survived the turmoil of British-Irish civil wars and despite, or perhaps because of these dramas, became a man attached to the Quaker creed with a strong sense of pacifism.

His religious affiliation travelled from accepting the doctrine of the established Scotch Kirk to that of a dissenting sect with a strong sense of individual responsibility for knowing and being guided by an inner “light” believed to be divine in origin. This was a deep-seated commitment, not a matter of self-seeking opportunism but devotion to a cause which then faced persecution and prosecution. Nonetheless, David Barclay and many others stood by the new creed. Alexander Jaffray from Aberdeen, a contemporary and friend of David, wrote of the emotional and doctrinal struggles which accompanied the decision to follow a new way. For example Jaffray in his Diary for 1659 ruminated on his responsibilities for acts in the civil wars:

O! That I may be helped rightly , to consider, what great duty there is on me,

to be very earnest and serious with God in this case; I having so much both

private and public guiltiness to mourn for . . . [and on the Quakers’ idea of the “Light

within] I do verily find and believe, there is light appearing from and holden forth at this

time, by these despised people.

In 1677 Alexander’s passion for duty and the need to acknowledge his sinfulness was such that he walked the streets of Aberdeen with the upper part of his body being naked; for this act of piety he was arrested and violently dragged away to prison.

19th Century View of Aberdeen’s Tolbooth Prison, With Steeple

Devotion to Quakerism was evident in 1669 when David Barclay’s son Robert, author of the Apology, writing to his future wife Christian Mollinson not simply of his love but cast the emotion in terms which exemplified the profound role that a Godly presence had for Quakers. Their love was greater than that of lesser mortals:

a place of rest and quiteness, where the children of light and babes of the

household of faith have fellowship together, and embrace one another in

the pure love, which is mysterious, and hid from such as are led away by

the foolish loves and fond affections of this world.

It’s worth noting here that Robert’s high standing in Royal circles, and irrespective of his Quakerism, led him to be recommended to the post of governor of the province of New Jersey in North America. This he accepted on the understanding that there was no necessity for him to be present in the province which was agreed and an assistant governor was appointed. Lands in the so-called New World were gifted to Barclay the Quaker which raises the question of how did this moment of empire building affect indigenous populations and did the problem present itself to Robert?

Christian Mollinson Memorial Stone

On the death of David in 1686 Robert became the Laird of Ury, Sadly for his family this rising star of Quakerism had only a short time to put his stamp on the lairdship. He died in 1690 when the estate passed to his oldest son, also Robert. Such was the way of the family that until Ury was sold-on to the ironmaster Baird in the 1850s the family chose Robert as the name for eldest son. In other words there were five iterations, five lairds named Robert from 1686 until the mid 19^th century.

When the eighteen year old Robert II assumed the lairdship in 1690 he stepped into ownership of a feudal estate, giving him the privilege of having the rights of a Court of Barony. He and his successors were the superiors of tenants, able to try them for breaking legal contracts, make decisions on disputes between tenants, control sub-tenants; fine those found guilty of infractions of the law; he could also prohibit private commercial enterprise within the estate and evict individuals and families as he saw fit if they were guilty of a sufficiently troubling offence. The Court was held in Ury House with, at least in theory, the laird attending and deciding the fates of those brought before him. Robert Barclay II took his role of feudal superior seriously and stood judge in many of the cases brought forward in Ury House.

Given the turbulence of the period of David Barclay’s lairdship its unsurprising that he appears to have only occasionally active in his estate duties Baron of Ury. Those he presided over give some sense of the feudal relations of the period for example, tenants were duty bound to give ready service to the estate’s smiddie (blacksmith) in other words there were relations of mutual obligation with the smith himself expected to furnish tenants with good and sufficient service. Moreover, tenants had to fulfil obligations due to the laird such as providing peats for Ury House and the laird in turn supplied food for men and horses arriving at the laird’s home. Moving on to the time of Robert II the pattern of feudal proprietorship repeats. In 1692 the laird confiscated firearms found on men poaching on his land he also fined them. Similarly fines were imposed in 1699 on men taking salmon and other game as well as seizing their leisters (fishing spears). More serious for the perpetrators was the case brought before Robert in 1698 when Helene Buchan, her mother and her sister were charged with theft of vegetables and two ewes. Insufficient evidence was brought forward for a guilty verdict nonetheless, laird Robert with his advisory panel ruled that the women be evicted from the lands of Ury; given twenty four hours to flit on pain of failure to so do the women were to be arrested and put into the theefs hole in Stonehyve, the common prison.

By 1721 the laird’s son was overseeing the court. He, Robert III, presumably with the backing of his father, began to pay attention to the to the productivity of the estate in the sense that he tried to stop land being exhausted by bad agricultural practice. Fines of 100 pounds Scots were threatened. This continued to the 1730s. In 1735, with father and son present, tenants were warned against doing greatt damnage to the proper mosses and muirs of the said barony. The Barclay family restricted the digging and taking of peats from the estate. Of course rather than being what we might now call good ecological practice it was protection of a source of peats for the house of Ury. Tenants and sub-tenants were lower down the feeding chain. Although having said this the sense of a common, if not equal, community did stand for something. Areas across the country including within estates were there for use by all but not as free-for-all. These areas were known as the commonty, governed by rules and regulations which in theory ensured a fair use of land across a defined community. In 1738 sub-tenant Alexander Buchan was brought before Robert Barclay younger, charged with digging ground on the commonty without permission. He, Alexander, was fined 6 pounds Scots but more seriously he was told to,

flitt, red, and remove himself, his wife, bairns, family, servants, goods and

gear furth and from the occupation of his said possession, and that

within forty eight hours after the term of Whitsunday next to come.

This gave the unfortunate family from mid January until Easter to find alternative accommodation. Into the 19^th century most of these commonties were lost as landlords claimed them and made them private property.

Map of Ury Estate 18th Century

Robert Barclay II died March 1747, in a world which had radically changed in the hundred years since his grandfather David’s return to Scotland. War and social turmoil were ever-present across Europe and Britain. It was only one year since supporters of Charles Edward Stuart had suffered a devastating, bloody and final defeat at Culloden. This marked the culmination of the success of the Protestant Ascendancy of 1688. Although David Barclay had lived to see the arrival of William and Mary to the throne of Britain what he did not live to see was absorption of the Scottish Parliament into a larger British Parliament, the relative stability which emerged as the new state not only eventually dealt a death blow to a recalcitrant clan system but began to develop an economy increasingly extended and defended by a burgeoning merchant marine and Royal Navy. Not that Britain stood aloof from confrontations with commercial and dynastic competitors. The Dutch, the Spanish and the French all challenged but none were able to finally stop the rise of Britain.

Prior to 1760 when Robert IV became Laird of Ury the running of the estate and the general business around Ury House would have been as familiar to the 17^th century David Barclay as it was to his great, great grandson. But times were changing and Robert IV was intent on sweeping away some of the more feudal restraints which had hitherto characterised economic life at Ury. Agricultural improvement was his goal. Which of course could be a gain for the landlord and a loss for tenants and others within the estate. To all intents and purposes improvement was the introduction of agricultural practices intended to raise the productivity of land and make farming and forestry financial successes. Market opportunities grew along with the gradual increase in population and urbanisation of Scotland.

In 1810 when George Robertson reported on agriculture in Kincardineshire he praised the endeavours of the farming laird, describing Robert Barclay IV as the man who exerted himself for the improvement of the country; the man whose labours in agriculture were the most strenuous and well conducted of his contemporaries. To the end of improving the estate’s market position he took into his hands running farms in the vicinity of Ury House which required ending tacks (leases) to existing tenants which in turn probably had a knock-on impact to sub-tenants who were dependent upon the goodwill of the hitherto sitting farmer. Driven by the enthusiasm for increasing the capital value of his land Robert toured Norfolk to witness the radical practices in the English county. Identifying some 900 acres of his farmland as suitable for improvement and a further 3000 which could be turned to forestry he began draining land, clearing a boulder-strewn landscape and where appropriate enclosing ground (using ditches and thorn hedging as barriers to contain livestock) with the intention of renting some of the land to men willing to exploit increased new market opportunities. Initially he was dissatisfied with local labour employed to work on the improvements and so he imported men from Norfolk to instruct his workforce on how and why the new ways of farming were introduced. Robert IV seems to have had a fiery temperament as he was said to be not above occasionally using violence to impress upon his unskilled labourers the need to do things as instructed, as George Robertson reported His discipline was severe . . . he would admit of no slovenly practice, when the the men were found wanting they had work beat into them. Land value increased, cop rotation etc. brought the estate and its proprietor into what was to become the agricultural revolution of the later 18^th century.

Wheeled Ploughs of 18th Century

Robert IV died in 1797. Apparently he was still a man of Quaker faith. Summing up the works of the improver George Robertson concluded:

The fame of his improvements spread far; and the light thence diffused has

beamed in a thousand directions over the face of the whole land.

But this was a light so different from that felt his forebears, theirs was an inner power, divine in origin and little connected to the making of money. Peter Radford in his biography of Robert V records that irrespective of the improvements made and the subsequent rise in rental value of the estate the late landowner had bequeathed a property deeply in debt which required a careful control of resources by guardians appointed to oversee the business of the Ury until Robert V came of age.

When Mr Borodin aka Prince Peter Kropotkin Came To Aberdeen – Part 1

Peter Kropotkin

Tall with a bushy beard and a distinct Russian accent, this was the man who stood before an attentive audience at the Christian Institute in Aberdeen. It was March 1889. The theme of his talk was “What Geography Ought To Be”. Under the auspices of the Aberdeen branch of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society this was a highly respectable forum evident in the lecture being chaired by David Stewart of Banchory, manager of what was claimed to be the largest combworks in the world, a staunch Conservative and a future Lord Provost of Aberdeen. A close friend described the speaker as “an incomparable agitator . . . he becomes all passion when he mounts the platform . . . he trembles with emotion”.

The speaker was Prince Peter Kropotkin, one-time secretary to the Russian Geographical Society, famed for his explorations in Siberia and Manchuria in the 1860s and with an impeccable family background. Born into the Russian aristocracy in I842 he was brought up to admire and follow the moral and social codes of the privileged elite which ruled the country. His father’s estate was worked by 1200 serfs, women, men and children without even the freedom of wage labourers. “Owned” by their master this feudal condition was only abolished in the 1860s. For the first twenty years of his life Kropotkin could see at first hand the sometimes very brutal treatment of individual serfs and grasped the larger injustices of the system not to mention the sheer waste of human energies of serfdom.

Into the his mid-twenties Kropotkin followed the path expected of sons of the nobility: first educated by private tutors then on to military service and training which stressed the need for hierarchy, privilege and the supremacy of the Tsar. However, this structured social world did not preclude emerging critics such as Alexander Herzen who went into exile to escape being imprisoned for questioning and thus threatening the pyramid of privilege. Tsarist secret police did all they could to suppress voices of dissent. Many men and women sent into harsh exile in Siberia, some were executed, all were potential outlaws.

But revolutionary and critical works, nonetheless, circulated underground and by the late 1850s the young Kropotkin, in military service, was seeking and reading Herzen. The prince was enraptured by the writing of the exiled Russian: “the beauty of the style . . . the breadth of his ideas, and his deep love of Russia took possession of me” he wrote in his evocative memoirs; this motivated him to “edit my first revolutionary paper” But we should not think that he was then advocating wholesale overturning of the Tsarist regime rather it was as he himself said constitutional change he desired, proposing significant alterations to the state bureaucracy and a loosening of the hierarchy. Nonetheless the teenage prince was on dangerous ground, evident in the fact that the “paper” which he circulated were three handwritten copies of his views which he secretly passed to fellow military students. For all the brevity and to say the least limited circulation of his “paper” if caught he faced the prospect of exile to Siberia.

Artist’s Impression of Arrest of Russian Nihilist

Kropotkin remained in military service until 1867 when he entered university much against the wishes of his family and expectations of his army colleagues. It was in military service that he had undertaken work in Siberia as well as explorations including travelling to Manchuria. His years in Siberia had opened his eyes to the creative potential of the Russian peasantry. Rural labour and communal work was something to be praised. As a consequence “I lost in Siberia whatever faith in state discipline I had cherished before I was prepared to become an anarchist”. University life offered him new opportunities, with higher education, some freedom from reactionary authority and the possibility of meeting liberal scholars. Henceforward he put his faith in what he called “the constructive work of the masses” which apart from the organisational strengths of peasants in rural communes had been spectacularly demonstrated in the Paris Commune of 1871 and the self-organisation of Communards. Beyond this Kropotkin became convinced that the loose federal organisation of Swiss Jura watchmakers provided a model of how society might be free of the dictatorial control of centralised states.

In this period the European socialist movement was widening its spread and deepening its critique of capitalism with three main strands emerging: a reformist strand which was finding strong expression in the British trade union movement, this was in contrast to the two revolutionary wings usually characterised as struggles between Marxism and Anarchism, personified in the critiques made by Karl Marx on one side and Michael Bakunin the other. Kropotkin moved towards the anarchist side.

In 1872 the Prince travelled to Switzerland where he immersed himself in discussions with members of the International Working Men’s Association, he clarified his thinking on revolution and decided to return to Russia to propagandise for the overthrow of the Tsarist regime. This put him on the path to imprisonment and exile. “Agitate, organise” became his watchwords. Literally he lived amongst urban workers and peasants, dressing as they did and doing all he could to avoid the regime’s spies. Travelling and propagandising under the name of Borodin he dodged the police until 1874 when almost inevitably he was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter-Paul fortress of St Petersburg. For two years, without being brought to trial, he suffered the deprivations of Tsar Alexander II’s reactionary policies. In 1876 he had the good-fortune to be moved to an “immense show prison” where conditions were better, nonetheless, he fell critically ill with scurvy resulting in him being sent to a military hospital. Recovery was slow with the constant threat of being returned to the more closely watched prison. As he gained strength so he looked to escape. Daring and dangerous describes it best. Conspiring with comrades he decided straight out the front door of the hospital was easiest. Chased by armed soldiers Kropotkin dashed to a waiting carriage which took him to relative safety just off the city’s Nevsky Prospekt. Having become an outlaw and faced with the threat of recapture and many years of probable imprisonment the Prince had no option but to go into exile: first it was on to Sweden, then by steamer to England. Unlike the Britain of the 21^st century that of the later 19^th century offered refuge for revolutionaries, as Kropotkin wrote on seeing the steamer which was to take him from Sweden, “Under which flag does she sail? . . . Then I saw floating above the stern the union jack, the flag under which so many refugees . . . have found an asylum. I greeted that flag from the depth of my heart”.

Marx and Bakunin

Now in exile, with the Tsarist sate ever watchful hoping to get their hands on the anarchist, Kropotkin’s revolutionary propaganda centred on European workers. For periods he lived in Scotland, England, Belgium, France and Switzerland. By 1881 he was back in England but was alienated from the politics of Britain, as he put it there was “no atmosphere to breathe in”; in other words the country did not, as far he could see, have an appetite for insurgent politics so he took himself off to France in 1882 saying “Better a French prison” than the apparently quiet world of British labour. As it happened the 1880s proved to be a period of great class struggle in Britain with strikes and the growth of militancy amongst previously disorganised unskilled workers, women and men.

But Kropotkin could not know this hence he was off to France where there was a very active anarchist movement including those who favoured terrorist action as propaganda by the deed. And, almost needless to say, having recently unleashed a “carnival of blood” against the Communards of 1871 the French state was ever-keen to lock up anarchists and remove “foreigners” who posed a threat to property and so Kropotkin found himself in that French prison he’d earlier seen as his possible fate. This particular episode was linked to the prosecution of anarchist workers in Lyon, accused of planting explosives. Kropotkin was rounded up and along with others faced trial. They were found guilty of belonging to the International Working Men’s Association and the Russian with three others was sentenced to five years incarceration. This was 1883. For three years he languished in the system gaining his freedom in 1886 following agitation by French supporters.

Paris Commune

On release he crossed the Channel to Britain. It was in this period that Kropotkin made his way to give a talk in Aberdeen. With his charm, mastery of the English language and rhetorical and intellectual skills the Russian anarchist was well-able to address not only groups of socialist inclined workers, men and women attracted to anarcho-communism but equally acceptable to more middle-class audiences. Hence it was he addressed the Aberdeen branch of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society on the subject “What Geography Ought To Be”.

March 1889 and Kropotkin faced the respectable Aberdeen audience and in his own way he nudged them towards a very liberal and nonetheless scientific view of the discipline of geography. He understood that the work of the geographer was a political exercise, making clear that the science was particularly important for British citizens this because their country was then “the greatest colonising Power the world ever knew, and whose sons have added new realms to civilisation while developing and extending” the wider conventions and social values of Europe. Geography, he said, was the science of first importance as it encompassed and in some sense unified other sciences primarily geology, climatology and the geographical spread of plants, animals extending to understanding the diversity of human societies dispersed across the globe, in other words anthropology. And, drawing on his anarchist principles, he proposed that what we might now call a holistic approach to geography would lay the basis for understanding that there was “the greatest likeness between the masses of the toilers of the soil and the workers in all nationalities”.

Unlike arch imperialists who often saw indigenous conquered peoples as “savages” living in societies lacking in rational legitimacy Kropotkin thought otherwise recognising that the Victorian world of individualised private property was an alien concept to many societies. He maintained that communal property demanded very different codes of behaviour which were as legitimate as any promulgated by imperialist nations. Being a man of his time and having implicit commitment to the truths of science Kropotkin had little doubt that social progress was built into the very fabric of the human world and it was “the duty of the geographer to show that every nationality was doing its own part in the development of humanity and was laying its own foundation stone for the benefit of mankind”.

Civilising the World

At the lecture a member of the audience suggested that the Russian should look at the practice of Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon’s College where theoretical and practical sessions brought students to a wider understanding of the subjects studied. The anarchist paid close attention to this suggestion as evidenced in 1890, writing for the serial publication The Nineteenth Century he waxed lyrical on what was taught at the Aberdeen school. His topic for discussion was “Brain Work and Manual Work” the core of which argued the necessity for these two expressions of labour to come together for achieving a richer understanding of the world. Kropotkin argued that in their daily lives and with practical skills the so-called uneducated masses generated solutions to problems as a matter of course but sadly were seldom given credit for their creative abilities; at the same time more often than not they were excluded from the more abstract sciences which were left to specialists who in their turn were more usually ignorant of the crafts and organisations of rural and urban workers, This, he said impoverished both sides and as result hindered the progress of society; bring them together and things could only get better. He found this in place at the Aberdeen school, “There I found the system . . . had been applied with full success”, scientific education combined with workshop training across a number of trades: it was evident that the Gordon’s College industrial department was not a mere “copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I should permit myself to suggest that if Aberdeen made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale in the Aberdeen daily schools.”

It’s a moot point whether the anarchist’s evaluation of the educational strengths of the city’s schools is deserving, more certain is that the horrors and dangers of industrial work (for example those of the matchmaking industry which were exposed by the strike of 1888) brought forward the idea of rejecting the factory system as at all beneficial to humankind and unsustainable under socialism. Kropotkin as I’ve said favoured the craft organisation of Swiss watch makers and similarly the ardent socialist William Morris combined his Arts & Crafts aesthetic in the visionary notion that work might be organised along something like a guild structure with creative production for all, an escape from the tyranny of the factory clock and serial production. Morris and Kropotkin became friends during the anarchist’s exile in Britain. In his utopian novel News from Nowhere Morris gave voice to notions which would have found favour with the anarcho-communist such as “The wares which we make are made because they are needed, men make for their neighbours’ use . . . not for a vague market of which they know nothing, and over which they have no control . . . no inferior goods are made”.

The Ideal Of Intellectual and Manual Labour Combined

Part 18 1888 Brain Fever, Strike-Breaking and Aberdeen’s Colonial Investments

Mercury docked at Port Chalmers on 3^rd August 1888: as was reported, “47 days from Mauritius. She encountered a heavy south-east gale on the 23 ult, which carried away part of the bulwarks on each side, smashed a boat and did other damage. The gale lasted three days. The Mercury brings 11,051 packages of sugar for Dunedin and 11,322 packages for Nelson”.

Port Chalmers Courtesy State Library of South Australia

With this battering at the end of passage from Mauritius it is no surprise to find Captain Thomas once again speculating that now might be the time to be getting rid of the schooner. Aware that James Elsmie was not as taken by the notion of selling the ageing vessel Thomas informed the Aberdonian that there had been enquires but told prospective buyers that nothing could be done without Elsmie’s approval. With the physical dangers, anxieties and the seemingly constant toil of running the schooner not to mention the struggles to find charters David Thomas’s preference for sale of the vessel is easily understood. James Elsmie’s more comfortable working environment at his office on Regent Quay was quite another thing. Running the ship even in a declining market seems to have been very acceptable to the senior partner. David Thomas did his best to nudge Elsmie towards disposal, especially attractive at Dunedin D.T. said as “they have still a liking for the Mercury here”.

Thomas emphasised his own physical vulnerability, that he was prone to illness which made for a hard life at sea: “Now sir I am sorry to say I have been very unwell for the past 2 or 3 weeks. First I think a severe cold and afterward Brain Fever [perhaps high temperature?]. I am now getting better but still very unwell but hope to get over it. The weather here is cold wet and disagreeable. It has been rain and fog all the time since we arrived”. This was written less than a week after arrival at Port Chalmers. Over the next five days, with no improvement in the weather, resulting in problems of unloading sugar David found time to speak to potential buyers. As much as Dunedin’s shipping agents might have had a liking for the schooner it’s clear, to the captain’s irritation, that as the world-over, when it came to dealing the New Zealanders were looking for a bargain. They might have expressed sympathy for the Thomas’s troubles but buying the ship was a separate matter. When Thomas wrote to Elsmie on 13^th August he reiterated the possibility of finding a buyer, however, he said (and this was not likely to encourage his fellow shareholder in Aberdeen) that, “I have been bothered with enquiries about selling. They seem to think we have just run out to give her away for anything they like to offer. I have not asked anyone their idea about price neither have I said anything but some think their ideas is far below the mark. I have told them I expect a letter from you in a few days and give them an answer as I would say nothing until I got your letter”. Nothing here to suggest a good deal could be made and although there is little doubt that David Thomas would have kept a weather eye out for a purchaser nothing acceptable seems to have come forward and the captain on 16^th September responded to a negative letter from Elsmie: “think by the reading you do not care about selling so refused all offers. I think their ideas would be about £1200”.

We can imagine how gruelling and disappointing the affair must have been but this was just one moment in the busy life of a captain which was made that bit harder by his physical and his mental condition. So unwell did he feel that when James Elsmie proposed finding freight for North America David Thomas recoiled, writing “I am some afraid to try that as I don’t think I could stand the passage as I feel I am breaking down. I am some better than I was but still far from well and I wish we were getting to a little warmer weather”. The captain must have been discombobulated not only by what he considered sky-high harbour dues but also the irritation of being told that the cargo of sugar for Dunedin was short, that 152 packages had been damaged by sea water and 25 bags were empty! Regardless, the schooner sailed for Nelson at the end of August. Putting sugar ashore the next thing was to fix a new charter which Thomas did. This was to carry coals from Whanganui, 90 miles north of Auckland to Albany, western Australia.

With extensive worked coal deposits in Australia’s New South Wales the obvious question is why take coals from New Zealand’s north island to a land with its own Newcastle? The answer as the broker John H. Cook explained was simple: “This charter was possible only through extensive strike now onward at the Newcastle N.S.W. coalmines”. In other words Mercury was to play a small part in helping to break a strike. The price offered at 27shillings and sixpence per ton gives a fair indication of how industrial action in one place can generate profitable business in another.

Broker’s Letter referring to Miners’ Strike

I am almost certain that the irony of the situation was lost on the captain. The forces of competition which were driving the sailing merchant fleet into deeper and deeper economic crisis were, in their own way, those which gave Mercury momentary advantage. The economic and social imperatives which led to a three month strike by miners in New South Wales hinged upon attempts by mine owners to, at one and the same moment, limit competition between companies and yet gain an advantage. Somewhat like Aberdeen’s granite merchants who formed a self-protection association as a way of fending-off competition colliery owners in the 1880s came together to set prices at which coal might be sold. Forming a cartel was seen as a way of sharing market demand. Of course as different collieries had different productive rates and consequently differing rates of profit this attempt to harness the inherent nature of capitalist production was bound to stumble.

Again like the Granite City’s stone merchants the cartel was weakened as individual producers broke regulations and sought advantage by undercutting the price at which coal was sold. The miners had no say in the matter although it does seem, and this was the case in Aberdeen’s granite trade, that control of prices and the reduction in competition across the region was a good thing for labour. We can well see the sense this made but workers and their representatives failed to grasp the necessary dynamic of the economy.

Nordenfeldt gun Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

For some four years following the formation of the cartel in 1881 business thrived, profits accumulated and labour was in great demand. Struggles broke out over wages, safety and the length of the working day. Since the 1860s the miners had shown themselves to be militant with a growing sense of trade union identity. By the mid 1880s the area had joined with the Amalgamated Miners’ Association to form a more cohesive and stronger fighting force. It was in this guise that the general strike of 1888 erupted with Lambton Colliery at the centre of events. There miners had demanded more favourable piece rates to compensate the high volume of stone found in the workings; the prevalence of stone meant lower wages. Management refused to entertain any change to the rate and in response the miners’ association threatened a general strike. Whether the mine owners counted on the large pool of miners in the region (immigration from the United Kingdom had swelled the potential labour force) whether they had counted on this undermining solidarity across the industry is uncertain. And as it happened, if owners had sought disunity they found only solidarity. Men came out in August 1888 and conflict lasted three months. Miners and their families found they not only confronted the rage of owners but also the police, the Governor of New South Wales and the military who were called in to protect the interests of business. Starting at a relative low level thirty police officers protected six strike breakers when they entered Lambton pit. By the 20^th September, when only four blacklegs could be found, a mixed force of 173 police and military were holding off pickets who threatened the strike breakers. And raising the stakes even higher the forces of the Australian state intimidated miners by mounting a Nordfeldt field gun on a colliery rail truck. This multi-barrelled “deadly weapon” could in skilled hands fire up to one thousand rounds a minute. It was primarily a show of force, shock and awe. Miners reacted with anger. Arrests were made and men were charged with making “great riot and disturbance, to the terror and alarm of Her Majesty’s subjects”. Which implies that the strikers and their families were not included amongst Her Majesty’s subjects irrespective of the fact that source of much of the wealth of New South Wales came from their skills and labour. But such is the way of the world of capital and labour. The strike ended on 24^th November 1888. (See https://lachlanwetherall.com/category/coal-mining/new-lambton-colliery/

Armed Militia at Lambton Pit

In a final note on the Scottish connection to the dispute, the company owning Lambton Colliery was the Scottish Australia Mining Company which had its origins in the Aberdeen Scottish Australian Investment Company, founded in 1840 with a capital of £100,000. Scotsmen and women on the make you might say. Australia was the land of opportunity albeit one which threatened traditional ways of life of indigenous peoples and which in part was founded on forced labour from transported criminals.

Within a year of its foundation the investment company had appointed two men to oversee and extend the opportunities in Australia. These men were Robert Archibald Alison Morehead, appointed Manager and his assistant Sub-Manager Matthew Young. 1840-41 was an opportune time for the Aberdeen company to find investment. Agricultural depression had hit the country which meant property and stock market prices were favourable to buyers. Morehead and Young guided investment, purchasing mortgages and making investments in land and trade in wool. By the mid 1840s their attention had turned to mining as a a potential source of profit. Copper and coal was the main interest although there were suggestions that gold might be found. Thirteen years since founding the investment company owned upward of 12,000 acres in what was described as “the most improving localities of the Colony known to contain coal”. Investment had realised “regular and remunerating profits”. The copper bearing property was at Burra Burra, in New South Wales. Being an Aberdeen business it comes as no surprise that the company called the main mine “Bon-Accord”, the city’s motto. And to hammer home the north east of Scotland connection some 40 acres of land was acquired in the small township of Aberdeen which had been founded in the 1830s north west of Newcastle.

Scottish Australian Investment Company Prospectus 1840

Industrialisation which consumed ever greater volumes of minerals made investment an attractive prospect for those with capital. Aberdeen’s Scottish Australian Investment Company benefited but in the process the north east connection was undermined as ownership of the company flowed to investors resident outside not only Aberdeen but also the country. By 1853 it was claimed that ⅔ of stock was held by English investors. With the move towards a portfolio of business extending beyond simply property ownership to the exploitation of minerals the company decided that Aberdeen was unable to fully exploit commercial possibilities as it was, in the words of William Henry Dickson, said to be “very difficult to find a board there possessing the necessary qualifications for conducting the affairs of the company”. Before the year was out the business moved its registered office to Gresham Street in London. In parallel with this move to the south shareholders debated how best to exploit mines. The outcome of this was the decision to form companies with the narrow focus on mining coal and copper rather than have this side of the business subsumed within the general trading of the company. As it transpired the Bon-Accord copper workings were a disappointment, apparently never yielding quantities anticipated this despite abutting a highly productive and profitable mine at Burra Burra. Concentrated operations were undertaken 1846-49 and 1858-62 but to little avail. As final slap in the face to the expectations of shareholders the end of the mine was brought on by the decline of operations at Burra Burra, specifically when the pumps which drained workings were stopped. Bon-Accord flooded.

More successful was the monies invested in coal particularly development of the Lambton Colliery which became the focal point of the strike of 1888. Well beyond the days when the Investment Company was based in Aberdeen Lambton was opened in 1863 owned under the title of Scottish Australian Mining Company, an outgrowth of the original business. Echoing the belief in free-trade espoused by the senior manager Robert Archibald Alison Morehead, Thomas Croudace who was responsible for the colliery claimed the mine’s success was a result of competition. Indeed, the principal of free trade was, said Croudace, a good with universal application: “All the advantages of civilisation they were now enjoying were the results of competition”. Thomas Croudace was antagonistic to the companies which sought to impose a price cartel across the New South Wales coal industry which played no small part in the run up to the strike of 1888.

Lambton Colliery

All the advantages of civilisation, as Thomas Croudace put it, had of course its losers but in the coal manager’s world were perhaps seen as unfortunate victims but a necessary consequence of progress. To be regretted, if possible might be mitigated but in the end the dynamism of economic competition left some cultural practices out of step with and a impediment to progress so were bound to be swept away. A big loser in this move to “civilise” Australia were indigenous peoples who found land being privatised, absolute ownership being taken into the hands of either individual proprietors or as in the case of Scottish Australian Investment Company owned by an array of shareholders many thousands of miles from Australia. Traditional hunting and pastoral rights were lost. In the process associated cultural activities were undermined. The Ngadjuri peoples for example lost “freedoms” previously enjoyed (if that’s the word). True, the “uncivilised” could to some extent be absorbed into the new economy. Ngadjuri as early as the 1840s were working as shepherds, were employed as shearers, were labouring and they might well have been content but must necessarily have gradually lost the elements which created their distinctive culture. More immediate and deadly were the diseases which the colonisers brought with them: such as scarlatina, measles and smallpox which devastated the Ngadjuri.

We can reasonably assume that the investors who met in Aberdeen’s Royal Hotel in October 1840 were all imbued with some sense of the Christian spirit but with little sense of the profound effects which their commitment to financial enterprise was to have on distant peoples just as they could have no notion of the destructive implications of the massive exploitation of coal resources were to have on later generations. But for good and ill the dynamism of the capitalist economy consumes both natural resources and peoples.

Corroborree by Walter Preston

Part 15 Repaired, Onto Grangemouth, in the Firth of Forth and Scotch Beef 1886

Dunkirk Slipway

Berthed in Dunkirk David Thomas set about dealing with consequences of the collision including the hassle of clearing his name. He resented the claim that lack of seamanship on his part was in any way responsible for the collision with the Dragut. Rejecting the notion that the schooner had “not been properly navigated” he placed blame with the master of the steamer, “I alwise understood the ship to windward must keep out of the ship to leeward. They speak as if they had a right to run over anything that may chance to be in the way . . . it was their ship that was not properly navigated”. Thankfully for Thomas it did not take long for the French company to admit liability.

Over the month of December 1885 the master of Mercury was kept busy and apart from miscalculating the size of the bowsprit which needed rectifying the work went smoothly if not always to the complete satisfaction of David. The vessel was put on to Dunkirk’s gridiron ( a form of dry dock) and it was arranged for a new figurehead and various sails to be got from Aberdeen. A new cutwater was made, fore part of of ship’s stem, which Thomas believed would be as strong as the original fitting if not as aesthetically pleasing. Captain Thomas found that greenheart timber was not available locally which he favoured and had to make do with what he termed French oak. Greeenheart was preferred because of its density, durability and resistance to timber borers such as the Teredo worm. Some caulking was done at Dunkirk but this the captain kept to a minimum as he had a very poor opinion of local workmanship and preferred to get the job done on the other side of the channel.

It appears that once again Thomas came up against the business ethics of his partner James Elsmie. From brief remarks made in the correspondence it seems that the seaman thought there was some way of claiming “salvage” following grounding of the vessel when under tow. He quickly put this right and wrote to Aberdeen “you do not approve of what I have done we must let the matter drop” and “I can only say I am sorry for what I did before asking your advice for I know you would not allow me to do anything that was not altogether straight”. Thomas was on firmer ground when it came to running of the ship and spoke of the difficulties he was having with the crew. Once more he was finding that being tied up for any length of time seamen and drink became a problem. He had paid off some men but the remaining ones were difficult : “I shall have to pay off the rest of the crew as I can get nothing out of them now with drink. It is hard after being so long with little doing and now when there is work to be done they are useless. I am much deceived by Anderson I fear he will turn out a bad character as for Davidson he is quite useless when he begins with drink. Their manners come hard on me now when there is so many things to be done.” This was written on 27^th December; two days later we find some degree of discipline had been restored, enough for 77 tons of straw to be loaded and the vessel made ready to sail for Grangemouth where it arrived on 11th January 1886 “after stormy passage”.

Mercury remained in Scotland until the end of February as final repairs were made, new sails arrived, crew was signed-on and a suitable charter was found. The refit included installation of the new figurehead made by Mr Allan (James?) of Aberdeen who came through to Grangemouth to fit the carving which Thomas said “will look better than I expected”.

Firth of Forth

As regards the crew, men from Aberdeen who were trusted as reliable these he did not call to the ship until well into February. “our sailors will be getting tired at home” he wrote, “but there is no use of them coming through here until we have something to do”. Oddly he favoured Mr Galashan again becoming a crewman. This was the mate he described as “stupid” and all but useless (see part 8). Nonetheless, he was now happy to invite him aboard, Thomas, was willing “to keep the berth open” for the fellow seaman. In the event Galashan did not join the ship as he was unwell. One John Wood signed on as 1^st Mate. After a visit to Leith to enlist final crewmen the schooner was ready to sail on 18^th February. With the usual coming and going David Thomas had contracted to carry 568 tons of coals to Buenos Aires: “The crew is all on board I think we have a good lot”. Also on board albeit only until the ship sailed was Margaret Thomas, remaining on Mercury when it temporarily shifted to anchor in the Firth of Forth, this to save on harbour dues; the wind which was easterly was unsuitable for making for open water. Mrs Thomas left the vessel on 19^th February.

Four days later little progress had been made. Conditions remained unfavourable, highlighting the inherent weakness of sailing vessels. At one point Mercury was in the Firth lying off Limekilns, east of Grangemouth. A tired and frustrated captain told the office in Aberdeen, “I am sorry to say we had a very tiresome week since we left on Saturday morning. S.E. Winds very thick and dirty weather. We have been about St Abbs Head. I feel these 3 days more fatiguing than at any time I have felt before at sea”. Captain Thomas’s fatigue was made worse by the ship “making some more water than usual. I will look around the bows to see if I can find anything as I think it is mostly above water”. And this was with the prospect of the long crossing to Argentina. The peregrinations of the ship had taken it to the south east of the Firth only to head north west to lie off Limekilns.

Conditions improved and passage from Grangemouth to Buenos Aires was made with continuing anxiety over the leak at the stem. Thomas in his mid 50s, no doubt feeling his age (at Grangemouth he’d been plagued with a bad back) must have been daunted by the prospect of inspecting the problem as the ship crossed the Atlantic. But it needed doing and this was the captain’s responsibility. So not a restful crossing: “alwise make a lot of water, it is not all at the leaf of the stem. I have been into the water several times trying to get something into it but we were alwise jumping too much and could do nothing with it. We will get it made right now. The whole thing has made me near crazy”. This was written from Buenos Aires where he had arrived in the roads on 3^rd May 1886. The ship did make it without mishap, clearly, and damage done was mostly to David Thomas’s peace of mind. Needless to say his unease was heightened when it came to finding a charter as “there is no appearance of any improvement in freights . . . so I suppose I must leave this time in ballast”. But first he had to discharge coals at Barracas a short passage which had its own small misfortune, two sails split causing a 24 hour stoppage for repairs.

We can well imagine that when it came to final unloading of coals the anger felt by Thomas when he discovered the cargo was some thirteen tons light of the contracted freight, “there is nothing but cheating in all things now” he said; and then he was hit by additional cargo dues which he claims were not mentioned by the consignee and was not in the signed charter, this he said “is a new dodge”. All this ate into the profits of the ship. Despite his baneful cry that it would be necessary to sail in ballast from South America the great pessimist did sign a contract with Antonio Maria Delfino of Buenos Aires with orders “to proceed to Zarate and there secure on board a full & complete cargo of maize in bags”. Signed on 24^th May. Passage for the maize required a tow by steam boat to the Parana River.

William M’Combie

Maize was the product Aberdeen built Mercury was to carry but this was not the only agricultural commodity traded from Argentina. And it was not the only one which had a connection to North East Scotland. Aberdeenshire played a formative role in establishing the famous herds of the Pampas which were raised to feed the burgeoning and increasingly better-off populations of Europe and Britain. Key in this process was importation of the Aberdeen-Angus breed of cattle: naturally polled (without horns) dominantly black and renowned for the quality of its beef. Through selective breeding William M’Combie of Tillyfour on Donside was one of a number of farmers who contributed to establishing the Aberdeen-Angus as the butcher’s and the consumer’s first choice of meat for the table. M’Combie described the ideal animal found in his breed : “even from end to end as an egg . . beef from the lug [ear] to the heel”. The British market did not favour the staple Argentinian cattle as the beef was said to be “lean tough meat”. What consumers wanted was the “marbled” and more succulent product associated with the Aberdeen-Angus.

In 1879, a year before William M’Combie died, Don Carlos Guerrero of Argentina came to Britain to purchase the beginnings of a quality herd. And so the South American visited agricultural shows to view and buy some prize specimens of the breed. When he left before the end of the year he’d purchased two heifers, Aunt Lee and Cinderella, and the bull Virtuoso. These animals came from pedigree herds raised by John Hannay the Earl of Fife’s factor, and Colonel Ferguson of Pitfour. From the small rolling parks of North East Scotland it was off to vast rich grasslands of the Pampas to be herded by Gauchos. Don Carlos like those landowners who were to follow his example required not only pedigree beasts to establish a herd but an efficient, reliable and profitable means of carrying the product, beef, to customers many thousands of miles distant: refrigeration was the key.

As early as the 1860s a freezing works had been built in Australia intended to meet the British demand for beef and mutton which unsurprisingly threatened to undermine the “home nation’s” livestock industry, this by undercutting British farming prices. It all sounds so familiar. Improved technologies and techniques of chilling and freezing made it possible for carcasses to be carried profitably although, initially with little experience in the practice of refrigeration and the occasional failures of chilling plant, it was not unknown for cargoes to arrive with beef and mutton in various stages of decay. In 1877 the French vessel Frigorifique (Refrigerated) demonstrated what might be done when it carried a chilled cargo from the River Plate to Rouen albeit with loss of some of the cargo The following year the Paraguay sailed from Buenos Aires, bound for Le Havre with 5,500 carcasses, arriving in good condition at the French port. A clear signal that Argentinian merchants expected the trade to be profitable was construction in 1883 of shore-based refrigeration works at Campana and Barracas, founded by the River Plate Fresh Meat Company and S. G. Sansinena & Co.

Frozen Meat Works

Aberdeen’s local newspaper the Evening Express was reporting to its reader that by the end of 1884 over 54,000 frozen meat carcasses had been imported to Britain from Argentina. It was, however concerned that customers were being “bamboozled” by unscrupulous butchers who were selling South American beef and mutton “under false pretences that it is the genuine article drawn from the stock of the British breeder”; a fear which apparently would not have been applicable to the pedigree herd Don Carlos was raising. Regardless of any fraud going on imported frozen meat was cheaper than the British equivalent putting it on the menu for the burgeoning working class populations across the country thus encouraging Argentinian livestock farmers, refrigeration companies and shipping firms to increase investment to exploit the new market.

And so the North East of Scotland made its own contribution to this trade. William M’Combie’s Aberdeen-Angus breeding programme was a moment in the growth of a global frozen food market which at one and the same time widened and improved the diets of urban populations and became part of the problematic which is Climate Change.

As for David Thomas and the Mercury, fresh meat in port was the luxury to be savoured otherwise it might be salted-cured beef on a long voyage. The closest the vessel got to refrigeration was when it hit freezing conditions in the North Atlantic. Before this digression of Aberdeen-Angus and frozen carcasses we had left the merchantman preparing to take on maize at Zarate, as it happened just north of Campana where Sansinena & Co. were chilling beef. At Zarate Thomas’s temperature was about to rise as he confronted the consequences of drunken sailors.

Refrigerated Merchantman, S.S. Rangatira

Part 14 Collision At Sea And Colonising Capers 1885

1921 Advert for Shipping Company Owner of Dragut

Eerily, with an apparent sense of foresight, the captain made sure that all the paperwork pertaining to business in Buenos Aires was in order before he sailed from Plymouth, making for Dunkirk. Of course he could not really have known what the future held in store for his ship, but he did promptly post his accounts to James Elsmie telling the boss in Aberdeen, telling him, “I enclose my account for Buenos Ayres in case anything should happen from here up”. Not that the letter carries any sense of foreboding, in fact unlike so much of David Thomas’s correspondence it is uncharacteristically positive, praising “lads” (apprentices) sailing on Mercury. They, he wrote, “wanted nothing [cash at Plymouth]. So far they are very good and Harry is very good considering it’s his first voyage. He is the best Steersman I have and he will be a smart chap if he follow up the sea”. This was dated 6^th November 1885. No matter how good a steersman young Harry was it’s unlikely he had the knowledge and experience to cope with what was soon to be on the horizon.

Five days later it was all change. Mercury was in Newhaven, about 160 nautical miles east of Plymouth. A brief telegram to James Elsmie carried the news that his schooner had collided with another vessel at sea:

“Run into by French steamer coming in – we know the name of the steamer lost bowsprit

jibboom headgear cutwater stem broken wire instructions”.

On 11^th November:

“Vessel in port I consider she is safe [to] tow Dunkirk Survey held tomorrow Have insisted steamers agent meet my surveyors bill Will protect our interests No tug here capable of towing have asked Watkins London his charges If detained here will you come”.

The eleventh was a day for a number of telegrams to wing their way to Aberdeen. Following the above, one told his home office that he thought the vessel could be discharged and repaired in Newhaven despite Thomas also observing “so far as I see no dock or slip”.

Before the day was out David Thomas heard from surveyors that they did not consider the ship safe to tow to Dunkirk, “stem badly split down to fourteen foot mark”.

There followed a telegram from the broker in Dunkirk to Elsmie, “If Mercury can be towed here think advisable for benefit of all concerned” that was if surveyor gave the ok.

Collision at Sea Telegram

What with sending off telegrams, arranging the survey and contacting broker in Dunkirk the captain was kept busy. And he still had to give the Aberdeen office a full story of the collision. This was also done on the 11^th .

“The collision occurred about midnight on Monday night with the French Steamer

Dragut’ of Marseilles, Capt. Sylvestre, belonging to the Great Transatlantic Co.

which vessel towed me off. At the time of the collision we were on the starboard

tack, wind east heading about north north east, sailing about three knots, our

lights burning brightly, so were the steamers which we saw fully half an hour

before the collision, but it appeared that he had not seen us, until we called out

to him when he ported his helm & struck us on the starboard bow. He took all

our headgear away, and split the stem down to the water’s edge, but the vessel

has made no extra water since the collision, the weather being fine & water

smooth.”

Captain Thomas emphasised that responsibility for the collision lay entirely with the master of Dragut and that he expected James Elsmie to contact the vessel’s owners at St Nazaire.

Thomas received the survey report also on 11^th November. It confirmed what his seamanship had identified as major damage. The surveyors, one a master mariner the other a shipbuilder, gave the Mercury‘s captain the bad news that with the stem split to water line it would be necessary to strip timber back to ascertain full extent of the damage before approval for a tow to Dunkirk could be given.

Over the next five days Thomas busied himself with making the ship sufficiently seaworthy to cross the Channel. First there was removing timber facing from the stem to gauge damage: cleared by the surveyor. Where timber had been split a temporary repair was made, nothing more than a sheet of lead nailed across the gap. On top of this he dealt with the French company’s London agent who, not surprisingly, would not acknowledge liability. Moreover, the agent asked that Elsmie & Son refrain from detaining the Dragut by taking a writ against the ship. Resolution of this was reached by Thomas travelling to London, meeting with lawyers for both parties and agreeing that vessels could leave port. A positive result made more acceptable by the fact that David’s wife Margaret had met with her husband at Newhaven and additionally clearance had been given by the insurance underwriters for the ship to be towed to Dunkirk.

Towed by William Watkins & Co steam tug Ben Nevis it was off on 16^th for Dunkirk. “The wind” wrote Thomas, “is easterly, fresh, weather being clear I think we shall have a fine night. Glass very high”. Fate had it otherwise. Writing from Dunkirk on the 19^th David told how the short passage had not been without mishap: “we caught the ground two or three miles to the westward of this port and remained fast for 2 ½ hours. We had a miserable time in towing up blowing heavy the whole time”. The captain did then have the satisfaction of beginning to discharge the cargo of maize – “looks fully better than expected” – at the French port. A week later he gave a wee bit more detail, “there was no pilot on board. I was preparing to let go anchor. At the time we were on the north bank of the channel about 3 miles from Dunkirk. Light steam boat about 100 fathoms ahead or rather on my port bow. Dunkirk light is new and and very powerful which deceived me and master of the steamer. There was no pilots at sea that night.”

Meanwhile Dragut had made for its home port of St Nazaire. Following Mercury‘s passages across the globe it has been unmistakable how significant the trading links of European states were in the emergence and progress of world commerce. The early history of the French vessel captures a particular moment in the extension of French power. Built by Scott & Co of Greenock for Campagnie Generale Transatlantique of Paris, one of a trio of vessels ordered by the important shipping company, Dragut was commissioned to run mails, general cargo and passengers between Marseilles and the colony of Algeria. Registered at 550 tons the steam ship was launched in May 1880. This was the era when European powers were stretching their imperial arms and coming to accommodations on some sharing of global power and designating spheres of influence.

Congress of Berlin 1878

Two years prior to the launch of Dragut representatives of these nations had met in Berlin to come to agreement on who would have influence where, central to this was Russian imperial power, control in the Balkans and the the rights of the Ottoman Empire. The latter was a declining force in world politics irrespective of the very long and important role it had played in European and eastern politics. Where this concerns Dragut is that with its North African Algerian colony France was more than willing to undermine Ottoman influence over the neighbouring Tunisia. To this end the French cajoled and threatened the Sadok Bey ruler of the country forcing him to come into line with the decisions of the 1878 Congress of Berlin. He was pressured into signing the Treaty of Ksar Said/Bardo in May 1881. Needless to say such a blatant power grab did not please many Tunisians and within a month of signing a revolt had broken out in Sfax (Ṣafāqis); an ideal pretext for the French to stamp their authority on the territory. Gunboats were sent, the city was bombarded and “order” (a new order) was re-established. Tunisia became a French Protectorate which was said to have been “silently approved” by Britain and Germany.

Enter Dragut. The vessel became an instrument in the process of colonisation. this by taking “refugees” off the ironclad Alma which had been one of six vessels reducing part of the city of Sfax to rubble. The refugees were probably Europeans displaced by shelling of the quarter they occupied in Sfax, More directly, the Scottish built Dragut aided French power by carrying troops to Al Qayrawan/Kairouan in September of 1881, on this occasion refusing to take civilian passengers as the vessel had been contracted to carry only military personnel. In this way the French merchant vessel played its own particular role in the creation of a web of power and commercial relations which in one way or another remains with us today.

As a passing note on the ironies of history. The steamer Dragut for the next fifty years of its life at sea passed through the hands of various owners. In 1931 it had been renamed Hilal and was owned by a Turkish company. In March of that year on passage to Istanbul with a cargo of coals the vessel was wrecked in the Black Sea, in the domain of the power which the Dragut had helped contain and repress, albeit that by 1931 with the creation of the Republic of Turkey the Ottoman Empire had passed into history.

Meanwhile, Mercury was in Dunkirk and Thomas had to deal with repairs and the reluctance of Dragut‘s owners to acknowledge liability.

Sadok Bey Ruler of Tunis

Part 13 Aberdeen the Granite City, Mercury Refit and Captain Thomas in Sea Boots 1885

Aberdeen Receipts

We left Mercury and what remained of her crew unloading glass and fertiliser at the quayside in Dundee, about to make the short passage north to Aberdeen. New Year breaking with still no sign of an upturn in the world-wide trade for the schooner.

Doom and gloom was widespread. One correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette bemoaned the state of shipbuilding. On a visit to yards on the River Tyne in late 1884 the journalist glimpsed an industry in depression. The famous Palmer’s yard was “closed but clean swept” with the “long slipways down which stately hulls used to glide . . . dry and covered in”. Smaller yards he found much the same. At the sharp end of the merchant marine, ships seeking charters, the slump was equally in evidence: “Right up the river the boats lay at their moorings”. For all the state of trade it is perhaps remarkable that Captain Thomas still found business and managed to keep his vessel at sea.

Aberdeen Free Press greeted the new year of 1885 with the message to readers: “Perhaps with the beginning of another year we may see the beginning of reviving times, and the prospect of some improvement on the rather sombre experiences of the year about to expire”. Not that everybody was full of doom and gloom. Aberdeen’s granite industry, for example, was of international importance. From the 1760s granite paving had found a ready market across Britain with Aberdeen’s harbour busy with the bustle of loading stone for export. By the 1880s Aberdeen was established as the Granite City. The industry had been mechanised although fine cutting and sculpting of the hard stone remained a highly skilled manual craft. At the time Mercury was battling to make the port of Dundee the skilled stone cutters of the granite industry had the opportunity to admire their work in the completion of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Industrial Museum. The new building, it was reported, “is designed in Italian architecture of the fifteenth century, and has all the grace of detail and simplicity of outline, and even of the softness and beauty of colour of Italian architecture”. Sadly, as this monument to skills of granite workers was being completed Alexander Macdonald of Kepplestone near Rubislaw quarry died, on 27^th December 1884. Alexander Macdonald was son of the man who in the 1830s introduced steam-powered machinery to drive the granite industry forward. The son became a prominent figure in the industry and did much to promote the appreciation of fine arts in Aberdeen.

Alexander Macdonald, second from right, and Friends

Despite the emergence of competition from outside Aberdeen, including internationally, the city still managed to be pre-eminent in granite manufacture. In the 1880s many hundreds of men were employed in the stone-yards and the granite quarries of North East Scotland. Competition did eventually press upon the stone trade resulting in first relative decline and in time all but death of the industry. Mercury‘s pattern of trade, with coals more often than not being loaded for freighting overseas, was not such that it was likely ever to be taken granite from the city to another port. It would have been a pleasure to find the ship carrying worked stone from Aberdeen but nothing in the extant business papers suggest this was ever done. Coincidentally, in early 1885 the South Bridge Granite Works in Aberdeen’s Holburn area cut a nine foot high stone which was exported to Bahia in Brazil, in memory of John Ligertwood Paterson, who for some forty years had a medical practice at Pernambuco. Graced with a fine representation of the architectural crown which sits atop the university in Old Aberdeen the memorial displays the talents of granite cutters as well marble sculptors. John Ligertwood Paterson came from rural Midmar near Aberdeen, he died December 1882.

I

Granite Polishing circa 1900

And so there was Thomas, berthed in Dundee, Christmas 1884; three of his crew deserted and the captain worrying that more might go. With a brief visit to Aberdeen it was back to the Mercury preparing the ship for passage to his adopted city. He sailed north and on the 28^th December was being taken across the bar by a local pilot. This was to be a lengthy visit to Aberdeen as Thomas got his wish of having a refit done by local men, “I alwise think the work is better done” in Aberdeen he said.

From the end of December 1884 until late March 1885 it was weeks at home for David Thomas with the ship in dry dock having its hull re-sheathed in copper. The major supplier of sheathing was Nevill Druce & Co of Llanelly, Wales. As “Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History” notes this company despite increasing competition remained an important supplier of this material (https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Nevill,_Druce_and_Co). Thirteen cases of sheathing were supplied comprising just over 1000 sheets of copper of differing weights with 8 bags of composition nails. Refit of Mercury was undertaken by the original builder, John Duthie & Sons. No doubt Mercury and similar vessels built at the yard were of high quality but the firm found itself at a disadvantage locally and nationally as it seems to have relied upon the older technologies of wooden built ships and was late in constructing its first composite, iron and wood, sailing ship in 1869 by which time other yards were beginning to manufacture steam-powered iron vessels. Having centred production on sailing ships Duthie’s had no engine building workshops, By the 1880s, according to website “Aberdeen Built Ships” the company had shifted most of its business to meeting the demands of the new expansive trawling industry of the city. Nonetheless, in 1885 when Mercury required re-sheathing in copper it’s safe to assume the old skills of wooden shipbuilding were expected to be found in Duthie’s yard. Certainly the refit was good enough to satisfy Lloyd’s Register who issued a certificate of seaworthiness on the 14^th March 1885. When the bill came for the refit Thomas seemed to have been stoical about the charge of about £360 and regardless of how good a job was made he was pessimistic as to recouping the outlay. Wearily he told James Elsmie the cost was “quite enough for the times and fear you will not get it back again”. As we shall shortly see the coming passage across the Atlantic resulted in some anxiety on the captain’s part as to whether the sheathing of the hull was as good as it might have been,

Account for Copper Sheathing

Refit completed it was off south in ballast to Newcastle with the intention of loading coals. Brokers offered charters for Corfu and Brazil but David finally signed to accept some 570 tons to Buenos Aires. The previous year the ship had been to the Portuguese colony to the north. Now it was on to Argentina colonised by Spain in the early 16^th century. James Elsmie was not pleased with the contract which in turn annoyed David. He, David Thomas, snapped back to the disgruntled senior partner “I am sorry the charter does not meet your views, we cannot get things as we like in these times”. Thomas had earlier told Elsmie that he was asking for a charter rate of 28 shillings per ton but the charter was signed at 24 shillings which presumably exasperated the Aberdonian. Having discharged his ballast and waiting for the opportunity to go under “the drops” to take on coals the vessels was tied to a buoy in the River Tyne which made it awkward for the captain’s coming-and-going in Newcastle but eventually the ship took on coals and was ready for the trans-Atlantic crossing on the 12^th April 1885. David Thomas’s natural pessimism was not helped when, in expectation that Sunderland rather than Newcastle was the place to find cheap provisions, he discovered to his cost that a better deal could have been made in the latter city. Incidentally, Captain Thomas makes no mention of many ships tied up on the Tyne.

It turned out to be one of his more difficult crossings. Seventy eight days of toil: “we have got here at last all well. A miserable long passage no kinds of wind for getting along and now we have been here 3 days and no communication with the shore bad weather so by all appearance long detention”. A week later, on 9^th July, he further explained:

“We had a miserable time in getting out no kind of winds for getting along. Never exceeded 2 or 3 knots from Finester to the equator. In the Bay [Biscay] we had a few days of bad weather from S.W. . . This is a miserable place no getting along without Sea Boots.” The captain’s negativity extended to local labour who, it seemed to him, lacked a firm commitment to work at a pace Thomas was concerned to as fast a turn around as possible, have the ship ready for the next passage. He said “people don’t care whether they work or not”. Making matters worse and undoubtedly with some hesitancy after his insistence that the ship’s refit had to be undertaken in Aberdeen, he told his Aberdeen friend “We are not quite so tight as we were before the repairs hope they have not missed some small place”. In other words the ship was taking some water. Not enough, however, to prevent it sailing. Miserable for the captain and the crew it might have been but not every body was so negative about the South American port in mid-winter. The Mulhall brothers who founded the Buenos Aires Standard wrote “In these roads [anchorages] the winter is preferable to summer, because the common winds are S.W. to N.W. which leaves a smooth river and easy communication”.

Buenos Aires early 19th century

With the coals unloaded Mercury was made ready to take on maize in bags, the ship’s next cargo. Tied up at the quayside at La Boca experiencing frost much like a Scottish winter, it was late July, David Thomas passed on his best wishes to James Elsmie and his sisters who, it seemed, were having a more leisurely time “taking the waters” at some English resort. Thomas took the waters of the Atlantic on 7^th September making for Falmouth for orders.

As Robert Burns wrote “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley”. Being at the mercy of the man-made forces of supply and demand gave the captain a hard time. In much the same way when Nature turned against him with contrary winds it was a case of using what was available and making for an alternative port. And so it was not Falmouth but Plymouth Mercury reached on the 4^th November 1885. As the captain reported “we were taken with northerly wind yesterday so could not fetch Falmouth”. Orders were for Mercury to cross the Channel to discharge maize at Dunkirk. This worried him as he found the cargo was “heating” a circumstance he put down to the soil that the maize had been grown in rather than storage conditions. The wind which had carried the schooner to Plymouth he now found against him for leaving the Devon port. Little did he realise that soon his ship would be in a collision at sea, more costly and dangerous than lying in anchorage at Plymouth.

Aberdeen Art Gallery 1880s

Part 12 Sailing down to Rio and the Sweet Taste of Slavery 1884

Discharging Cargo by Lighter at Rio

Arriving in Rio on the 14^th January 1884 David Thomas, because of the much earlier colonisation of South America by European “adventurers” in the 15^th century, came to a nation which had gradually become an integral part of the chain of commodity exchange. Unlike the business of the Aberdeen built schooner the intention of the Spanish and Portuguese was, apart from bringing Christianity to indigenous peoples, seeking wealth, particularly silver and gold, taken by force: this looting, tribute and cultural imperialism brought parts of the continent into the European orbit.

David Thomas’s world of trade was quite different from that of “conquistadors”. The charters that he and his fellow merchant captains entered into were contractual agreements governed by the restraints of property, the movement of commodity prices, supply and demand, in other words, the competitive relations of capitalism.

January 1884, close on four hundred years since the arrival of Europeans in the so-called New World and many years before the impact of the recent nightmare of Brazilian President Bolsanaro overseeing the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the Covid-19 epidemic, David Thomas in his modest vessel once again faced the necessity of filling his holds with something that would turn a profit. Conquistador he was not.

Before sailing from London Thomas had seen to replacing chain plates, fore-staysail, jib and main gaff-sail as well as loading 550 tons of cement in barrels. Provisions taken on for the lengthy passage included port, brandy, whisky and lime juice. Nine new men had been signed on as crew with bonuses ranging from £1-19 shillings to £5-19 shillings awarded to John Meakin, the man replacing Galashan as Mate. Finding a second in command took 2 days of the captain’s time with potential candidates asking £8 or £9 monthly wages. John Meakin agreed to sign on at £6 with the rest of the crew at £3.

There had been various offers made for return charters from South America, such as carrying sugar and phosphate, but the master decided better deals could be made on the other side of the Atlantic. Thus prepared, Mercury left London on the 3^rd December 1883. Forty three days later the ship arrived at Rio where the captain found “there is a little sickness here now but I can only hope we may keep clear of it”. His vessel, like others, could not tie up at the quayside having to stand-off for quarantine reasons. Nonetheless, by the end of January the 3667 barrels of cement had been discharged and having secured a charter to take 361 tons of sugar from Bahia to New York Mercury was made ready by loading 260 tons of ballast.

Bonus paid to Mate John Meakin

It was all very well having ballast aboard what he lacked was a full compliment of a crew. In early February 2 men deserted the ship and David was saying of his sailors: “a rough lot some has already gone and I think they will all go before we are finished discharging”. By the 15^th of the month he told James Elsmie “I have much trouble with the crew” and at he beginning of March he wrote to Aberdeen that “I had to go on board in a hurry as there was trouble on board almost amounting to murder. Capt. Pearson of Newcastle came on board with me and stopped overnight”. There was no murder and the captain managed to discipline his men sufficient to sail for Bahia which was fourteen days from Rio. As said in a previous chapter having men in port was the moment of weakness in a chain of command whereas at sea the need for an efficient and safe running of a vessel could and did act as a self-disciplining force in the management of men. Not that crewmen necessarily felt any less animosity working for a ship and master simply the realities of a passage demanded seamanship and some degree of discipline. David Thomas recognised this but also knew that once in port men could just as easily resort to desertion: “this fortnight at sea has straightened them out but they are a bad treacherous lot”. Hoping to ease the situation, remove what he saw as troublesome elements the captain discharged the cook and the bosun, writing that “he had no trouble since. I hope to finish the voyage in peace”. Peace in the crew was not reflected in the conditions at anchor off Bahia: “the weather is very disagreeable here heat rain and musketoes [sic] so there is very little peace”. Eventually loaded with 361 tons of sugar the ship sailed for New York arriving there on 18^th March 1884. Some damage was found in his cargo of sugar; ninety one of the 8000 bags loaded had to be replaced at the ship’s expense. Yet more frustration and a small drain on profits.

Brazil’s sugar industry was another example of the global reach of Europe as merchants and monarchs looked further and further afield for precious metals and raw materials. Brazilian sugar plantations, led by Portuguese power, emerged in the early 16^th century, beginning with a mixture of wage and slave labour. Attempting to develop indigenous peoples as the pool of potential workers the colonisers found that locals with their knowledge of the region, family and tribal ties and very different patterns work and leisure refused to be disciplined. So slave labour from Africa became the staple. Tens of thousands of Africans were taken by traders and shipped to South America with an estimated 60,000 in Brazil before the mid 17^th century. The country became one of the key users of African slaves and saw its sugar industry rise to become an attractive commodity for European investment, especially Dutch capital. As is the way with global competition new producers entered the market in sugar and the Brazilian industry went into relative decline; this decline was also apparent in its share of the local economy and the country’s exports, falling from 30% in 1810 to 10% by the 1880s, with coffee supplanting the sweet stuff as leading export.

One of the firms which supplied plantation machinery in 19th and 20th centuries was William McKinnon of Aberdeen

This was the historical background to the sugar David Thomas loaded in March 1884. As anxious as he might have been about the viability of the charter he would no doubt have been happy at the thought that he did not face the hazards that earlier merchantmen had confronted: between 1589-1591 some 69 ships with cargoes of sugar valued at over £100,000 had been seized by English privateers. Traders countered this danger by travelling in convoy. Thomas finding ninety ones bags of sugar damaged was little compared to capture by privateers although economic cycles and business swings could just as effectively end the career of a merchant ship.

David Thomas’s letters home from New York are full of the oh-so familiar stories of difficult times with the now customary acceptance of a charter of “refined petroleum”, 13000 cases, destined for Port Said, Egypt. Passage to the Mediterranean was chosen as the captain was determined to then make for a home port with the intention of going into dry dock to overhaul the ship’s hull and its copper.

Mercury sailed from New York on the 4^th June 1884, arriving at Port Said on 24^th July where the captain immediately set about finding a charter home. His preference was to take barley from Cyprus, hoping his “oil people” in the Egyptian port could assist. In the event there was nothing doing from Cyprus but there was barley from Gaza, that land at present, and since 1967, under the military and economic domination of Israel. With Palestinian peoples subject to blockade, oppression and when it suits the Israeli state bombing. As the late Mike Marqusee wrote “it’s the Palestinians, not Israelis, who are besieged, isolated and vulnerable”. Indeed, the words of Captain Thomas as he contemplated the depressed state of trading from Gaza could be said to capture a sense of the present day nightmare for Palestinians: “it is hard times we have come to at last and I doubt better prospect of a change for the better in our time”.

David Thomas had no worries about attack from the air by aircraft built and supplied by the USA, no the merchantman was only bothered by his choice of mate, John Meakin. With barley loaded and sailing with orders to be given at Falmouth he regretted the fact that he was not entering the English port as he was desperate to get rid of his second in command. No reason is given. Thomas was stuck with him at least until making the port of Antwerp as he’d been directed at Falmouth. Antwerp was reached on 1^st November, the cargo of 520 tons discharged and two cargoes of glass loaded, one for Dundee and the other for Aberdeen as well as phosphate for the former town.

Ruminating on the sorry state of trade for wooden sailing ships David turned his thoughts to the larger condition of the merchant marine and recognising that the collapse in charter rates for his vessel was born of the tonnage of ships chasing business, especially the number of iron ships available. He was drawn to the subject by his intention to have the ship and cargo insured for the relatively short passage from Belgium to Scotland “as it would be hard now to loose all should anything happen after so long being full insured”. It seems underwriters were showing little enthusiasm and generosity for insuring wooden vessels: as he said,

“I am sorry for all concerned that the wood ships are so little thought of but I think underwriters on Mercury has not had much to complain of as yet. I know the whole leaning of shippers is for iron but the whole trouble is is the amount of tonnage afloat, perhaps before long some owners [will] see they have overdone the thing.”

But to keep the vessel worthy of insurance it had to maintained to a standard acceptable to Lloyd’s surveyors. To this end the the captain had been putting out feelers, looking for builders who could do decent work at prices which were not crippling. John Westacott of Appledore in Devon for example offered to re-class the ship at a reasonable price. But Thomas was determined to make it to Aberdeen rather than sail for Devon which he said was too distant and in winter season “may be long in getting round” and perhaps more importantly the east coast in his opinion gave better work.

Leaving the Belgium port on the 8^th December it was another twelve days before the schooner arrived safely in Dundee. A distance of just over 400 nautical miles making a daily average of 35 miles per day. Foul weather had made for a hard passage. Thomas gave a brief description of the passage across, capturing a sense of the buffeting and the way in which sailing vessels could be captive of the weather. He wrote that having left Antwerp, sailed north east to Flushing which took two days; he arrived there on the 10^th December, “that night blew a gale from west had to go outside [to open water for safety] . . . I could not get inshore again. Alwise blowing gales from the westward we have been in off Buchan Ness and south again to near Flamborough Head alwise from 50 to 100 miles off. On Thursday night off Girdleness so far as we could see it when the wind went north-west and fetched in” to Dundee on 20^th.

Mercury was to lie in the Scottish port, south of Aberdeen for Christmas. Wagons were scarce at quayside so discharging was slow, compounded by customs personnel not normally working on the 25^th and asking “too much for extra work” on a holiday. In other words more delay. This was bad enough, made worse when three of his sailors deserted. There was, however, the compensation for the captain that he could, and did, take a steamer from Dundee to Aberdeen and presumably spent some time with family and friends over Christmas.

Busy scene at quayside at Antwerp

Part 11 Ever Given, Teredo Worm, the Glint of Copper, the Smell of Camphor 1883

Ever Given in Suez Canal

Although the use of mechanical handling equipment, on the quayside as well as on vessels, steadily progressed through the 19^th and into the 20^th century it’s still probably true to say that the loading and unloading of cargo remained tiresome, dangerous and slow procedure. Ships could be tied up for weeks, an expensive business as crewmen were still be on contract and provisions needed buying and wages paid. And as we have seen with the Mercury delay in port gave opportunity for men jumping ship.

With mixed cargoes, some items in casks, some in boxes, others in sacks stowage was demanding and time consuming as was the subsequent sorting when commodities were passed to receiving brokers or merchants. When David Thomas contemplated taking on thousands of casks of paraffin he could only have dreamed of tanker vessels specially designed at the end of the 19^th century to carry oil. And even more radical was the containerised revolution which began in the 1950s, a technological change which eventually undermined the traditional ports of the merchant marine, having a massive impact on dock labour as well as speeding the movement of commodities at loading, discharging and distribution. One thing that has gone with the introduction of containerisation is a prolonged period of being at the quayside. Captain Thomas would marvel at the turn around times now assigned to modern box carriers.

Nonetheless, as radical as containerisation was, the men of the 19^th century merchant marine had in common with the 21^st century sea-going traders the knowledge that the lifeblood of national economies was carried here, there and everywhere by their ships criss-crossing the worlds oceans. The scale and speed is different but like the massive Ever Given which blocked the Suez Canal in March 2021 the tiny Mercury was looking to find a charter, offering a service, driven by the need to be a safe and secure carrier in an increasingly competitive market.

And here he was once again, Captain Thomas in southern waters, carrying 546 tons of coals to Hong Kong. This was not an exceptional period in the ship’s working life. As such it’s an example of the time a master might need to load, sail, discharge and once again be ready for another passage.

Mercury arrived in ballast at Australia on 8 March 1883. Coals were loaded and it was then off to Hong Kong arriving there on the 1^st of May, having been blessed with fine weather on the passage. Thomas speedily chartered to take a cargo to Le Havre and London. This was fixed by the 9^th of the month with 20 days allowed for loading. So all things being equal the ship should have sailed for home about 30^th of May. Unsurprisingly this was not to be. On the due date there was still about 40 tons of cargo to be loaded. An extension was allowed to the 4^th June which was met and Mercury sailed on the following day. It was off on the long passage to Europe where the schooner arrived at the French port on 17^th October 1883. Two hundred and twenty four days of loading, discharging and travel. Not speeding round the globe but an essential part of the chain of commerce, connecting producers, manufacturers, merchants and final end consumers in the vast web which was the capitalist global market.

Far East with indication of colonialism

As I said in part 10 the charter offered and accepted of coals from Newcastle to Hong Kong was “miserable” but what could the captain do? Nothing else was forthcoming which left no real choice other than lying up, in hope of a better deal. Lying up entailed more expense. Money was only made by actual trading. Any profits realised could drain away as expenses mounted, particularly difficult when it resulted from the terms of a charter which had been agreed. This was what confronted David Thomas in Hong Kong when, having unloaded coals, he had the chance of chartering a consignment of camphor to Europe. On the passage from Australia to Hong Kong the ship had shown signs of not being as watertight as the master wished and the charter party expected. Thomas found the surveyors “very particular”, they, like the captain, thought the copper on the hull was suspect.

He explained to James Elsmie that he “was frightened for worms as we made water since leaving Newcastle”. The only thing he could do was go into dry dock and have the hull inspected: “we got the leak at the forefoot [where the stem joins the keel] the seam was quite open . . . No appearance of worms and we are now quite tight again”.

Teredo Worm in timber

The worm which was causing David so much concern was the Teredo. Not actually a worm this mollusc, Teredo navalis, is immensely destructive to timber. In the 1870s the scientist E. H. von Baumhauer described the creature’s wood-boring as “analogous to that of a file, by means of the thousands of cutting teeth with which its valves are armed”. In an expanding commercial trade, with evermore timber ships and harbours with many wooden piles, the Teredo threatened to disrupt commerce, naval defences not to mention the threat to the lives of seamen.

Experiments showed that the mollusc resisted many chemical and material barriers to stop the destruction of timber. Britain’s navy found that sheathing a hull in copper was most effective this, however, was an expensive business. In the 1790s, for example, to sheathe a 1200 ton vessel cost and extra £800 on a final bill of £15000 . As for merchant ships this was a cost only to be borne where sufficient profit could be guaranteed. The historian J. R. Harris notes that amongst the earliest to adopt the expensive copper were slave traders whose evil profitable business was in warmer waters where the worm was believed to thrive. As the tentacles of global trade extended wider and deeper so the need to protect valuable investments grew. Metal sheathing was gradually adopted across the ocean-going merchant fleet and when it was found an alloy of 60% copper and 40% zinc was as effective but cheaper than straight copper this was more widely adopted.

With the hull inspected and passed by the surveyor Mercury was ready to take on board the cargo of camphor. David Thomas was glad to be busy again and pleased that his wife was coping with the delay: “Mrs Thomas stands it wonderfully considering all drawbacks”. Thomas was aware that camphor was problematic freight as the odour could be overpowering, unpleasant as the captain said. The charter negotiated was for a full cargo of 555 tons mostly camphor.

Copper sheathed hull of Cutty Sark

Camphor was extracted from a species of Laurel known in Japanese as Kusonoki. The two main sources for this Eastern product were Japan and Formosa (Taiwan) with Hong Kong as the chief port from which it was exported; mostly to Europe. Manufacture was destructive of the majestic trees, mature wood was converted to chips from which camphor was extracted by a process of distillation. It was estimated that 50 pounds weight of timber would yield one pound of camphor. For the product to be a sustainable crop systematic re-planting was necessary but as it took many years for a tree to mature sufficiently to provide a crop this meant that small producers would not tie up their capital in the long wait for future profits. A lack of stringent controls meant deforestation and destruction of ecosystems. Paradoxically the camphor laurel was introduced as an ornamental tree to Australia in 1822, not as an economic resource. Much like the introduction of rabbits this proved to be such a success for the tree that it naturally spread and became a threat to indigenous species of trees resulting in this particular laurel now being designated a weed in Queensland.

The pungent commodity was widely used in medicines; it was said to have properties which made it useful for relieving rheumatism and many other complaints of the human frame such as sprains, toothache, gastric problems, gangrene and was claimed to be good in the treatment of smallpox. Despite its widespread use as a medicine camphor was recognised as a poison so that any preparation taken internally had to be applied with some caution, At the time David Thomas was loading camphor Aberdonians could buy it from John Fearnside, chemist in the city’s Green. Camphor balls were sold for treating chapped hands. For the house proud there was Camphorated Furniture Polish to bring out the best in wood – and, it was claimed, was deadly to moths. Chamelon Oil was advertised as good for human ailments with the bonus of being “the best veterinary medicine known”.

It was with some 500 tons of this sought-after commodity that Mercury arrived at Le Havre on the 17^th October, having taken about 20 weeks to make the passage from Hong Kong. Of the 5000 packages of camphor in the holds only 325 were for discharging in the French port. Easy enough if loaded such that they were immediately to hand. As per usual packages were marked to indicate where the consignment was bound but as these seemed to have been loaded with no thought of fast, efficient unloading Thomas had to organise double handling – the camphor was taken to the quayside, identified, sorted and items bound for the French market separated with the rest returned to the ship. A slow procedure made even slower when it rained for camphor could not be allowed to get wet. “It is terribly trying beside the expense” Thomas wrote. Unsurprisingly as efficacious as camphor might be as a liniment there was no relief for the captain and crew from the all but overpowering stench in the confined spaces beneath deck: “it is bad being in the hold all day among the camphor. Sometimes we cannot stand it in the cabin”. The “we” here includes Margaret Thomas who was still with the vessel.

Camphor distillation

In terms of the time spent at sea from Hong Kong, as unpleasant as it was sorting through the camphor at Le Havre, this was done relatively quickly; Mercury left the French port on 25^th October and arrived at Westminster Docks, London, two days later where the schooner was to remain until the 3^rd December. With time on his hands in the Port of London the captain took the opportunity to visit Aberdeen, presumably with his wife as companion. The primary purpose of the visit seems to have been speaking to James Elsmie about trade and the condition of the ship especially the tightness of the copper sheathe. The outcome of this meeting was that no major work was required, it was safe to continue another year. The Welshman did take the precaution of having the hull above the copper line treated with paint laced with arsenic, thought to be an inhibitor of the Teredo Worm.

To his great relief arrival at a home port meant completion of the contract between himself and the mate James Galashan who had been with the ship since July 1881, over two years of the captain’s unease at the seamanship skills of the second in command. Expecting Galashan to give the owner Elsmie his own account of the troubles between master and mate David Thomas wrote to Aberdeen: “I am glad we [mate and ship] are at last parted. I suppose there will be heavy complaints to be made but I suppose I must stand it all. I never thought that anyone could be so stupid and easy as he has been”. It seems unlikely that the discharged mate travelled with the captain back to Aberdeen by train!

With 1883 ending the Mercury was made ready to sail to South America.

David Thomas letter 24 October 1883

Part 10 Typhus in Aberdeen, and a Son as Bandleader 1883

Bill of Exchange Boston October 1882

Thousands of miles from their children and friends in Aberdeen Margaret and David Thomas were well away from the threat of epidemic which began to be spoken of in October 1882. In terms of the Covid 19 pandemic of recent times the danger to the people of Aberdeen was small beer although not for the few persons who succumbed to typhus in Aberdeen.

While Margaret and David Thomas were arranging to leave Boston (September) for New Zealand Aberdeen’s medical officer of health, Dr Simpson, confidently reported that an earlier outbreak of typhus fever had been “stamped out” with the caveat that the outbreak should “serve as a warning that there are in the city the materials and conditions necessary to render the poison [typhus] active . . . overcrowding, want of ventilation, accompanied by uncleanly habits . . . the chief fostering nurses of this most avoidable of avoidable diseases”. Dr Simpson’s fears were soon realised when in October a house at number 10 Sugarhouse Lane was shut-up, the tenants were removed either to the infirmary for treatment if showing signs of the disease or put into quarantine at the recently opened Cunninghar-hill Fever Hospital near the city’s Links. Sugarhouse lane, named for the trade of the sweet slave-driven commodity, was in the harbour district, a short distance from the office of George Elsmie & Son at Regent Quay. It is safe to assume that the shipowner’s premises were far more salubrious than those affected by the typhus outbreak.

Charity and enforcement of regulations were the remedies used to keep the epidemic under control. Aberdeen Ladies’ Sanitary Association, for example, over the twelve months of 1882 and January 1883 distributed 1400 packages of soap, 470 of washing powders as well as brushes for whitewashing walls. In addition, the charity organised cleaning of some properties. As for enforcement, we have seen this included removing tenants from properties with quarantine and hospitalisation and houses could be deemed unfit for habitation and shut-down.

G. W. Wilson Bird’s Eye View of Aberdeen 1847

Like so many epidemics those on the lower rungs of the social ladder tended to suffer most and this was so with the typhus outbreak between October 1882 through to February 1883. Not many died but of the 16 cases hospitalised from Sugarhouse Lane one quarter succumbed to the lice-borne infection. Dr Simpson was well-aware that diseases such as scarlet fever and whooping cough claimed many more lives than the typhus epidemic but failed to register panic amongst the public. This the doctor put down to a stoicism where catching particular diseases associated with childhood was just part and parcel of the struggles of growing up.

There is no reference to the epidemic in the extant correspondence of David Thomas but it is almost certain that James Elsmie in Aberdeen would have been aware of the outbreak while confident his home was well away from the heart of the town with its very poor insanitary properties housing families in dirty and cramped conditions. The Ladies’ Sanitary Association estimated the average occupancy in infected areas was three persons per room. Both David Thomas and James Elsmie lived to the west of the city centre, beyond the great arch of Union Bridge which had early in the 19^th century opened the way to expansion beyond the old town and in the process created healthier living spaces which attracted owners and tenants with financial means. Thomas was then living at 2 Crimon Place, just off the very desirable properties of Golden Square, and Elsmie stayed with his sisters at 22 Bon-Accord Terrace, an up-market location with fine granite buildings on the south side of Union Street. There was no guarantee against infection but both households could be reasonably confident that typhus would be largely contained in older properties.

Lelean Typhus Sack Disinfector Wellcome Collection Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) early 20th century

Just as a footnote to this outbreak of typhus there was then an ongoing local debate, led by city ratepayers and Town Councillors, as to what, if any, city improvements might be undertaken. This included such things as laying out new streets and clearance of properties which were said to be not only hazards to health but were a disgrace to one of the leading commercial centres in Scotland. However, as “Fairplay”, a letter writer to the local press pointed out, it was all very well for promoters of city improvements but they did not have to deal with the real day to day problems of the less well-off, especially where improvement meant sweeping away slum housing without an equitable policy of finding suitable new rental properties. What improvement meant in this context was greater crowding as poorer people were crammed into fewer properties. Just such a situation had hit the city wrote Fairplay when a great swathe of railway line was pushed south through the Denburn to the station at Guild Street. This example of improvement had certainly made travel north and south of the city easier and in a similar fashion improvements proposed in 1882-83 would clean the city of slum properties but this was not a win-win situation, for some it was zero sum; loss came with improvement, surely a sentiment close to echoing the thoughts of David Thomas as he enthusiastically greeted the speedy arrival of his wife in Boston on board a fast steamship; the very devil that contributed to the decline of sailing vessels.

David and Margaret Thomas had left their now grown-up family at home in Aberdeen and although there is no apparent concern as to the spread of typhus they did have some concern over the future of their eldest son, David. Little is spelled out in the correspondence but there is anxiety about the future of the twenty six year old who sometime in late 1882 was about to leave the firm Marr & Co. where he had held the post of Manager. David junior had chosen not to follow his father to sea. Given Captain Thomas’s pessimism it seem unlikely that he would have encouraged his son to become a seaman. Instead young David opted for a more genteel occupation in the retail music business.

Marr & Co. was perhaps Aberdeen’s leader in this trade. With sumptuous premises at 218 Union Street the company held a Royal Warrant and styled its shop the Royal Music Saloon. It sold a range of musical instruments, made by its own craftsmen who also repaired instruments, and sheet music as well as providing musical tuition. And, of course, it employed a number of tuners. Marr & Co. built up a reputation for hiring only those who were familiar with the business, knowledgeable of music and with, where required, highly developed playing skills. John Marr founded the business and like other local businesses gained royal patronage when Queen Victoria and Albert acquired Balmoral. The founder, apart from his piano-making skills, was also described as a “most cultured instrumentalist”.

David sets out on business February 1883

When David Thomas junior left the company he held the position of manager which implies the young man had been a trusted and capable employee. David’s intention was to set out in business on his own account and by February 1883 he had secured premises at 22 Union Place, not as prestigious a location as Marr’s Royal Music Saloon but still at the “good” west end of Union Street, well away from the hustle and bustle of the town centre and reasonably placed to attract customers from a local middle class-white collar clientele.

While he could not offer the splendours of Marr David did describe himself as a man with “an intimate knowledge of the Music Trade in all its Branches and assured customers that his “Music Warerooms” were well worth a visit. The son’s confidence was not shared by the parents who were troubled by the rental of the rooms on Union Place. But the deed was done and mother Margaret and father David went along with the venture deciding the son “cannot lose much as the rent is low”. Any misgivings they had were eased knowing that their friend James Elsmie, a man with business experience, was there to watch over and advise the young man. With both father and mother in far-off New Zealand there was little they themselves could do and so they voiced their thanks to Elsmie in Aberdeen:

“we are both thankful to you for taking so much [care] of David and hope you will continue to do for him what you think is best. I have had no letters from him yet perhaps he has put off writing thinking to settle for something. As I am not writing him by this mail please let him [know] of our safe arrival”.

From a search of Aberdeen’s Street Directories I have managed to glean a little information as to the progress of David’s music business. It is apparent, for whatever reason, from the grander enterprise of buying, selling, repairing and tuning instruments as well as trading in sheet music the budding entrepreneur moved towards a more modest business – as a music seller, then a teacher of music and finally he is described as a pianist-master of Thomas’s Band. Whether this progress was a consequence of competition in the trade I cannot say. It might be fine parallel with the narrowing competitive fortunes of his father, an example of the economic underpinnings of the wider capitalist economy. On the other hand it might simply have been David junior seeing the force of competition deciding that his skills and preferences were for the more limited world of performer and teacher. In other words, choosing more limited and pleasing business.

As regards the success of Thomas’s Band, this seems to have gone well for there are extensive reports of their engagements in Aberdeen and across the North East of Scotland. The band played dance music for Parish Church events, annual dinners for workers at local businesses, entertainment for Annual Flower Shows and on as well as grander occasions in venues such as Gordon and Cluny Castles. So, in the end perhaps there was no need for the parents of the talented pianist to be so concerned for his future. Given the dangers of a seaman’s life it might be truer to say that David junior had greater need for worry over the safety of his father and his mother sailing on Mercury.

The ship arrived at Wellington on the 10^th February 1883 after “a long passage very light winds” which had wearied Margaret Thomas. Having met with brokers David Thomas senior concluded that he “may as well have kept nearer home as the big ships and steam is getting all to do.” Unsurprisingly he set sail for Newcastle, New South Wales where 546 tons of coals were loaded for Hong Kong.

Provisions receipt Wellington February 1883 with Scotch and Irish Whiskies to ease the stress of business?

Part 9 North to Newfoundland, Brazil Wood and Mrs Thomas at Boston 1882

Telegram Mercury Well and at St Johns

It’s hard to imagine a content Captain Thomas, at least while commanding his seagoing vessel. Whether his baleful moods were cleared from his brow when ashore with his family we shall not know. As the greater part of his life with Mercury was spent at sea or in some port away from his family in Aberdeen we can surmise that in his home, with a break from business struggles some degree of respite was found. He did, as we have already seen, have the possibility of having his wife Margaret with him on some of his passages across the world’s oceans.

St Johns Newfoundland

When he arrived at New York on 24^th March 1882 once again faced with the probability of a long delay in finding suitable business so he took a notion to invite his wife to join him in the USA “as I seem not to be in a hurry back”. This invitation was with the expectation of taking a “southern trip”, that is, heading for New Zealand. Not that David Thomas saw a passage to New Zealand as a big money earner rather, because he had found no shorter passage at a reasonable rates then the trip to Dunedin was for the best, especially if he could have his wife as companion. Within the space of a few paragraphs of this letter it was all change. He added a postscript telling James Elsmie to ignore the request,”please keep Mrs Thomas at home . . . the Southern trip has fell through”. For him this must have been a sense of back to the grind especially when it became clear that it was going to be a short trip north in what could be trying icy waters. St Johns, Newfoundland was his port of call, with a cargo of pork and flour.

As for the passage from St Johns, “Perhaps we may get fish to the Brazils” or failing that Thomas thought he might head to Cape Breton for coals to supply either New York or Montreal. Brazil had become an important importer of cured fish from Newfoundland filling something of a gap made by a decline in business with Europe. Mercury sailed from New York on 12^th April Thomas passing his letter to the pilot for forwarding to Aberdeen. The news was, said the captain, that the passage north would not be easy, “I believe there is a good deal of ice yet but trust to get in safe”. Less than a fortnight later he arrived “after a severe battle with the ice. “I have never suffered so much as I have these last six days with cold and fatigue”. Before April was out it was clear things were difficult “with no prospect of anything here”. In desperation Thomas thought of travelling in ballast to Cardiff as his thought of taking coals at Cape Breton were dashed with the season’s trade not yet ready.

Vessel Star of Peru in Ice off Alaska

In talks with a broker the question of selling Mercury was raised. Whether the captain was carried away at the prospect of being free of the vessel and its trade is uncertain what we can say is that David seemed to think an offer of £3000 had been mentioned. This, in a time of trade depression was surely way beyond what might be expected. And as it turned out it was not an actual offer on the table. In fact it became an offer of £1500. A week later he was telling James Elsmie that he, Thomas, had advised prospective buyers that the vessel could be sold for £1700; and a week later when about to leave St Johns the owner was told “the people here has taken a notion of the Mercury and now offered £1800”. All the coming and going round selling the ship surely tells us much of the state of mind of the captain, swinging from pessimism of carrying freight to limited optimism of a sale. He wrote of St Johns “this is a cold country plenty of ice and snow”, a good metaphor for the business prospects he faced.

All this speculation about selling Mercury would seem to have upset Elsmie for by early July David Thomas apologised, “I am sorry I spoke of selling Mercury but I thought you had better sell than lose money as things are alwise so low”.

Fish Curing at St Johns

Fish for Brazil. This, as he had earlier speculated, was his scant reward for beating his way through ice and cold to Newfoundland. Casks of cod and not even a full cargo. When on 15^th May the schooner left the chilly north for the warmer clime of South America it was with a half cargo and still David Thomas was part owner of the ship which arrived at Pernambuco (Recife) on 15^th June.

At the Brazil port he was ordered to Bahia (San Salvador) south of Recife which turned out to be “a long dreary” passage. Captain Thomas’s mood was made no better when he found at Bahia discharging could only be done by lighters making for delay in loading his next freight which was to be 60 tons of wood and 1600 dried hides, all for Boston, USA. The wood to be carried north was probably a variety of “Brazil Wood”, Caesalpinia. Now an endangered species it was a commodity much sought after for the high quality of timber, a source of red dye and important medicinal uses. One particular form, Caesalpinia echinata, became the wood of choice for manufacturing bows for string instruments, particularly violins. CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) looks to protecting the small number of trees that remain. This trade in timber which was helping to keep Mercury in business was one small part in a long historical chain stretching from the 16^th century to the later 19^th. International, global trade, as we have seen, brought wealth, employment and material well-being across the world but carried with it consequences which later generations would inherit.

We have seen from his correspondence how stressful the life of a master mariner could be. It must also at times been a lonely one insofar as he was away from family and friends many months at a time. No matter how well he managed relations aboard ship it was no substitute for the closeness of family life and the ability to converse directly with friends and business partners. He did have Margaret Thomas, his wife, on occasional passages which must have boosted his moral when she was well. James Elsmie and others could meet with him when he was in a UK port, rail connections made this increasingly straightforward but he never had the pleasure of meeting with them in a foreign harbour. At Bahia he decided the time was right to remedy the situation.

So he instructed James Elsmie to see that his, David Thomas’s, wife Margaret come across the Atlantic to meet up with him in Boston “as she appears to be miserable without me and it appears I cannot homeward except coming in ballast”. In other words as freights remained problematic the ship might be at Boston for some time before a good charter was found, providing an opportunity for Margaret to cross to the USA and prepare for whatever further passage was arranged.

Tellingly the captain also tried to entice the Elsmies over the Atlantic, an ocean he had navigated so many times, a bread and butter, if at times arduous, passage. This was a crossing he took in his stride and perhaps assumed those choosing to come by steamer, as he expected his wife and the Elsmies to do, would find it no problem. David Thomas would not have been David Thomas if his invitation for the principal owner and his two sisters to cross to the USA was not both an optimistic appeal with a somewhat negative conclusion, such was the man: “I think if you and sisters would try a trip across the Atlantic at this season you would all be the better of it. The passage is so short now with these powerful steamers and the change may do you all good. Mrs Thomas if well will make a good nurse as she is an old sailor but I rather fear I shan’t have the pleasure of seeing you on this side of the water”. Perhaps the suggestion that they, Elsmies, might need to be “nursed” across the Atlantic was the clincher. Whatever it was they did not cross “the pond” to meet with the captain.

His invitation had been posted from Bahia shortly before sailing in July 1882. When Mercury arrived at Boston on 2^nd September Thomas was sadly disappointed, quickly writing I “am sorry you did not take a trip across as the sea has been as smooth as the dock”. Good weather had marked the schooner’s passage northward resulting in early arrival at Boston, before Margaret Thomas landed from a steamer out of Glasgow. Not that he had long to wait to meet up with his wife whose ship docked on the 7^th September. Three weeks into her visit to the USA David Thomas perhaps with mixed emotions reported to James Elsmie: “I am glad to say Mrs Thomas is keeping very well since she has been in Boston and hopes you are all keeping well at home”.

With the cargo of timber and hides discharged, and fixed with a mixed cargo for New Zealand the Mercury was set to depart from Boston. Another year of trading was completed and although he was unable to convince James Elsmie to sell the ship the captain did have the compensation of having his wife aboard for his preferred passage south to New Zealand.

Boston, “Mrs Thomas is keeping very well . . .”