Leith.] FIGHT IN THE HARBOUR. ?33
of war, which had been at anchor for six weeks
in the Roads, and apparently with all her guns
shotted,
About noon on the 10th December, 1613, an
Englishman, who was in a ?mad humour,? says
Calderwood, when the captain and most of the
officers were on shore, laid trains of powder throughout
the vessel, notwithstanding that his own son
was on board, and blew her up. Balfour states
that she was a 48-gun ship, commanded by a
Captain Wood, that sixty men were lost in her,
and sixty-three who escaped were sent to London.
Calderwood reduces the number who perished to
twenty-four, and adds that the fire made all her
ordnance go off, so that none dared go near her to
render assistance.
In 1618 Leith was visited by Taylor, the Water
Poet, and was there welcomed by Master Bernard
Lindsay, one of the grooms of his Majesty?s bedchamber;
and his notice of the commerce of the
port presents a curious contrast to the Leith of the
present day :-cc I was credibly informed that within
the compass of one year there was shipped away
from that only port of Leith fourscore thousand
boles of wheat, oats, and barley, into Spain, France,
and other foreign parts, and every bole contains a
measure of four English bushels; so that from
Leith only hath been transported 320,000 bushels
of corn, besides some hath been shipped away
from St. Andrews, Dundee, Aberdeen, &c., and
other portable towns, which makes me wonder that
a kingdom so populous as it is, should nevertheless
sell so much bread corn beyond the seas, and yet
have more than sufficient for themselves.?
In parochial and other records of those days
many instances are noted of the capture of Scottish
mariners by the pirates of Algiers, and of collections
being made in the several parishes for their
redemption from slavery. In the Register of the
Privy Council, under date January, r636, we find
that a ship called the Jdn, of Leith, commanded
by John Brown, when sailing from London to
La Rochelle, on the coast of France, fell in with
three Turkish men-of-war, which, after giving him
chase from sunrise to sunset, captured the vessel,
took possession of the cargo and crew, and then
scuttled her.
Poor Brown and his mariners were all taken to
Salee, and there sold in the public market as
slaves. Each bore iron chains to the weight of
eighty pounds, and all were daily employed in
grinding at a mill, while receiving nothing to eat
but a little dusty bread. In the night they were
confined in holes twenty feet deep aniong rats and
mice, and because they were too poor-being only
mariners-to redeem themselves, they trusted to the
benevolence of his Majesty?s subjects. By order
of the Council, a contribution was levied in the
Lothians and elsewhere, but with what result we
are not told.
In 1622 the usual excitements of the times were
varied by a sea-fight in the heart of Leith harbour.
On the 6th of June, in that year, the constable of
Edinburgh Castle received orders from the Lords
of Council to have his cannon and cannoniers in
instant readiness, as certain foreign ships were engaged
in close battle within gunshot of Leith
A frigate belonging to Philip IV. of Spain, cbmmanded
by Don Pedro de Vanvornz, had been
lying for some time at anchor within the harbour
there, taking on board provisions and stores, her
soldiers and crew coming on shore freely whenever
they chose; but it happened that one night two
vessels of war, belonging to their bitter enemies,
the Dutch, commanded by Mynheer de Hautain,
the Admiral of Zealand, came into the same anchorage,
and-as the Earl of Melrose reported to
James VI.-cast anchor close by Don Pedro.
The moment daylight broke the startled Spaniards
ran up their ensign, cleared away for action, and a
desperate fight ensued, nearly muzzle to muzzle.
For two hours without intermission, the tiers of
brass cannon from the decks of the three ships
poured forth a destructive fire, and the Spaniards,
repulsed by sword and partisan, made more than
one attempt to carry their lofty bulwarks by
boarding. The smoke of their culverins, matchlocks,
and pistolettes enveloped their rigging and
all the harbour of Leith, through the streets and
along the pier of which bullets of all sorts and
sizes went skipping and whizzing, to the terror and
confusion of the inhabitants.
As this state of things was intolerable, the burgesses
of the city and seaport rushed to arms and
armour, at the disposal of the Lords of Council,
who despatched a herald with the water bailie to
command both parties to forbear hostilities in Scottish
waters ; but neither the herald?s tabard nor the
bailie?s authority prevailed, and the fight continued
with unabated fury till midday. The Spanish
captain finding himself sorely pressed by his two
antagonists, obtained permission to warp his ship
farther within the harbour ; but still the unrelenting
Dutchmen poured their broadsides upon his
shattered hull.
The Privy Council now ordered the Admiral
Depute to muster the mariners of Leith, and assail
the Admiral of Zealand in aid of the Dunkerpuer;
but the depute reported that they were altogether
vnable, and he saw no way to enforce obedience
184 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. rLeith .
but by bringing ordonnance from the Castell to the
shoare, to dins at them so long as they sould be
within shot.?? (Melrose?s Letter.)
Upon this the constable and his cannoniers, with
a battery of guns, came with all speed down, by the
Bonnington Road most probably, and took up a
position on the high ground near the ancient chapel
of St. Nicholas; but this aid came too late, for
Mynheer de Hautain had driven the unfortunate
Spanish frigate, after great slaughter, completely
outside the harbour, where she grounded on a dangerous
reef, then known as the Mussel Cape, but
latterly as the Black Rocks.
There she was boarded by a party of Leith seamen,
who hoisted a Scottish flag at her topmasthead
; but that afforded her no protection, for the
inexorable Dutchmen boarded her in the night,
burned her to the water?s edge, and sailed away
before dawn.
Two years after this there occurred a case of
? murder under trust, stouthrief, and piracie,? of
considerable local interest, the last scene of which
was enacted at Leith. In November, 1624, Robert
Brown, mariner in Burntisland, with his son, John
Brown, skipper there, David Dowie, a burgess there,
and Robert? Duff, of South Queensferry, were
all tried before the Criminal Court for slaying under
trust three young Spanish merchants, and appropriating
to themselves their goods and merchandise,
which these strangers had placed on board John
Brown?s ship to be conveyed from the Spanish port
3f San Juan to Calais three years before. ? Beeing
in the middis of the sea and far fra lande,? runs
the indictment, they threw the three Spaniards
overboard, ?ane eftir other in the raging seas,?
after which, in mockery of God, they ?maid ane
prayer and sang ane psalm,? and then bore away
for Middelburg in Zealand, and sold the property
acquired-walnuts, chestnuts, and Spanish wines.
For this they were all hanged, their heads struck
from their bodies and set upon pikes of iron in the
town of Leith, the sands of which were the scene
of many an execution for piracy, till the last, which
occurred in 1822, when Peter Heaman and Fransois
Gautiez were hanged at the foot of Constitution
Street, within the floodmark, on the 9th of January,
for murder and piracy upon the high seas.
On the 28th and 30th March, 1625, a dreadful
storm raged along the whole east coast of Scotland,
and the superstitious Calderwood, in his history,
seems to connect it as a phenomenon with the death
of James VI., tidings of which reached Edinburgh
on that day. The water in Leith harbour rose
to a height never known before; the ships were
dashed against each other ?? broken and spoiled,?
and many skippers and mariners who strove to
make them fast in the night were drowned. ?It
was taken by all men to be a forerunner of some
great alteration. And, indeed, the day followingto
wit, the last of March-sure report was brought
hither from Court that the King departed this
life the Lord?s day before, the 27th of March?
.
CHAPTER XX.
LEITH-HISTORICAL SURVEY (continued).
Si William Mown?s Suggestinns-Leith Re-fortified-The Covenant Signed-The Plague-The Cromwelli in Leith-A Mutiny-Newspaw
Printed in the Citadel-Tucker?s Report-English Fleet-A Windmill-English Pirates Hanged-Citadel seized by Brigadier Mackintosh&
Hessian Army Lands-Highland Mutinies-Paul Jones-Prince William Henry. .
CHARLES I. was proclaimed King of Scotland,
England, France, and Ireland, at the Cross of Edinburgh
and on the shore at Leith, where Lord Balmerino
and the Bishop of Glasgow attended with
the heralds and trumpeters.
The events of the great Civil War, and those
which eventually brought that unfortunate king to
the scaffold, lie apart from the annals of Leith, yet
they led to the re-fortifying of it after Jenny Geddes
had given the signal of resistance in St. Giles?s in
July, 1637, and the host of the Covenant began to
gather on the hills above Dunse.
Two years before that time we find Vice-Admiral
Sir William Monson, a distinguished English naval
officer who served with Raleigh in Elizabeth?s reign
in many expeditions under James VI., and who
survived till the time of Charles I., urging in his
?Naval Tracts? that Leith should be made the
capital of Scotland !
?? Instead of Edinburgh,? he wrote, I? which is
the supreme city, and now made the head of justice,
whither all men resort as the only spring that waters
the kingdom, I wish his Majesty did fortify, strengthen,
and make impregnable, the town of Leith, and
there to settle the seat of justice, with all the other
privileges Edinburgh enjoys, referring it to the
