Inchkeithl HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE ISLAND. 29T
~~~~~ ~ ~~
land harbour, was repulsed in an attempt upon
St. Minoe (St. Monance) by the Laird of Dun,
?? and so without glory or gain, returned to England.?
The re-capture of Inchkeith during the French
occupation of Leith has already been related; but
the garrison there were in turn blockaded by Elizabeth?s
squadron of sixteen ships under Admiral
Winter, in 1560, which cut off their provisions and
communication with the shore.
The works erected by the English at first were
thrown down by the French, who built a more
regular castle, or work, and ?? upon a portion of the
fort, which remained about the end of the last
century,? says Fullarton?s ? Gazetteer,? ?? were the
initials M. R and the date 1556 ;? but the exactness
of the date given seems doubtful. During the
French occupation the island was, as has been said,
used as a grazing ground for the horses of the
gendarmes, which could not with safety be pastured
on Leith Links.
To prevent the island from ever again being used
by the English the fortifications were dismantled in
1567, and the guns thereon were brought to Ehinburgh.
In the Act of Parliament ordaining this
they are described as being ruinous and utterly
decayed.
In 1580, Inchkeith, with Inchgarvie, was made
a place of exile for the plague-stricken by order of
the Privy Council. After this we hear no more of
the isie till 1652, when in the July of that year, as
Admiral Blake at the head of sixty sail appeared off
Dunbar in search of the Dutch under Van Tromp,
the appearance of the latter off the mouth of the
Firth, ? put the deputy-governor of Leith, called
Wyilkes, in such a fright,? says Balfour, ?that he
with speed sent men and cannon to fortifie Inchkeithe,
that the enimey, if he come npe the Fyrthe,
should have none of the freshe watter of that
iyland.? .
From this we may gather that Major Wilks
(the same Cromwellian who shut up the church of
South Leith and kept the keys thereof) was a prudent
and active officer.
At this time, probably, all intercourse between
Leith and London by sea was cut 04 as Lamont
in the August of this year, records that Lady Crawford
departed from Leith to visit her husband, then
a prisoner in the Tower of London; adding that
she travelled ?in the journey coach that comes
ordinarlie betwixt England and Scotland.?
When Dr. Johnson visited Scotland in 1773,
Lord Hailes mentioned to Boswell the historical
anecdote of the Inch having been called U L?isk
des Chaux ? by the soldiers of Mardchal Strozzi j
)ut when the lexicographer and his satellite
anded there, they found sixteen head of black
cattle at pasture there.
That the defensive works had not been so com-
?letely razed as the Parliament of 1567 ordained,
s e a s apparent from the following passage in
Boswell?s work :-? The fort with an inscription on
it, MARIA RE 1504 (?), is strongly built.?
Dr, Johnson examined it with much attention,
I? He stalked like a giant among the luxuriant thistles
and nettles. There are three wells in the island,
but we could not find one in the fort. There must
prdbably have been one, though now dlled up, as
a garrisoxi could?not subsist without it . . . .
When we got into our boat again, he called to me.
? Come, now, pay a classical compliment to the
island on quitting it.? I happened, luckily, allusion
to the beautiful Queen Mary, whose name is
on the fort, to think of what Virgil makes fineas
say on having left the? country of the charming
Dido :-
Invitus, regina, tu0 littore cessi.?
? Unhappy Queen,
Unwilling I forsook your friendly state.? ?
Boswell was in error about the date on the stone,
and showed a strange ignorance of the history of
his own country, as Mary was not born till 1542 j
and there now remains, built into the wall of the
courtyard round the lighthouse, and immediately
above the gateway thereof, a stone bearing the
royal arms of Scotland with the date 1564.
There are now no other remains of the old fortifications,
though no doubt all the stones and
material of them were used in building the
somewhat extensive range of houses, stores, and
retaining walls connected with the light-house. If
the fort was still strong, as Boswell asserts, in I 773,
it is strange that the works were not turned to some
account, when Admiral Fourbin was off the coast
in 1708, and during the advent of Paul Jones in
1779.
We first hear of the new channel adjoining the
island in September, 1801, when the pewspapen
relate that the Wnghts, armed ship of Leith,
Captain Campbell, commander, and the Safguard,
gun-vesseJunder Lieutenant Shields?the former with
a convoy for Hamburg, and the latter with a convoy
for the Baltic, in all one hundred sail, put to sea
together, passing ?? through the new channel to the
southward of the island, which has lately been
buoyed and rendered navigable by order of Government,
for the greater safety of His Majesty?s ships
entering the Firth of Forth. This passage which
is also found to be of the greatest utility to the
trade of Leith, and ports higher up the Firth, has
292 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Inchkeith.
greatly enhanced the beauty and grandeur of this
interesting prospect by bringing the ships so much
nearer to this coast, and consequently so much
more within the immediate view of the metropolis
and its environs.?
From this it would appear that,prior to 1801,
all vessels leaving the Firth from Leith and above
it, must have taken the other channel, north of
Inchkeith.
With the exception of erecting the now almost
useless Martello tower, Government never made
any effort of consequence to defend Leith or any
other port in Scotland; thus it was said that Napoleon
I., aware of the open and helpless condition
of the entire Scottish coast, projected at one time
the landing of an invading army in Aberlady Bay ;
but in defiance of the recommendation and urgent
entreaty of many eminent engineers and military
officers, that Inchkeith, the natural bulwark of the
Forth, and more particularly of the port of Leith,
should be fortified, the British Government let a
hundred years, from the time of the pitiful Paul
Jones scare, elapse, ?? leaving,? as the Scofsman of
1878 has it, ?the safety of the only harbour of
refuge on the east coast, and the wealthiest and
most commanding cities and towns of Scotland ?to
the effectual fervent prayers ? of ?longshore parish
ministers.?
For five and twenty years the Corporations of
Edinburgh and Leith, the Merchant Company, the
Chambers of Commerce and other public bodies,
urged the necessary defence of Leith in vain.
Shortly before the Crimean war, the apathetic
authorities were temporarily roused by the number
of petitions that poured in upon them, and by
iiequent deputations from Fifeshire as well as
Midlothian, and slowly and unwillingly they
agreed to proceed with the fortification of Inchkeith.
Colonel John Yerbury Moggridge, of the Royal
Engineers in Scotland, was instructed to visit the
island and prepare plans, in 1878, based upon
sketches and suggestions, furnished some twenty
years before, and a commencement was made in
the summer of that year, the work being entrusted
to Messrs. Hill and Co., of Gosport, the contractors
who built most of the powerful fortifications at
Portsmouth and Spithead.
In shape Inchkeith may be described as an irregular
triangle, with its longest side parallel to the
shore at Leith. Three jutting promontories form
the angles-one looking up the Firth at the west
end is above a hundred feet in height; another
faces the direction of Kinghorn, and is fifty feet
less in altitude; the third, facing the south or Leith
(Herald and Chronicle.)
quarter, shows a more rounded outline than the
other two.
On these it was suggested the forts should be
built, and connected together by a military road a
mile and a half long.
The workmen, at first 120 in number, were
hutted on the island for the week, and only came
back to Leith on Saturday night to return to their
labour on the Monday morning. The August of
1878 saw Colonel Moggridge fairly at work, and
the little cove or landing-place at the south-west
quarter of the island, encumbered with piles of
rails, tools, tackling, and all the paraphernalia of
the contractor, while the operations for cutting the
military road, in face of the cliff, ninety feet high,
overhead, were at once proceeded with.
The huts of the workmen were double lined
wooden houses, covered with felt, like those in
Aldershot camp, and were situated in the hollow
between the lighthouse hill and the west promontory.
Around the interior of the huts were sleeping
bunks for the men, ranged in three tiers, and in the
centre were tables on each +de of a cooking stove.
No spirituous liquor was allowed to be landed.
The old wells were all cleaned out and deepened,
and as the work proceeded the aspect of the whole
western face of, the island changed rapidly.
The men worked from six in the morning till
eight in the evening, with two hours interval for
dinner and -tea, and were paid extra for the two
hours between six and eight o?clock in the
evening.
In the formation of the military road, two objects
had to be kept in view-easy gradients, and. as
much cover as possible from the long range guns of
an enemy coming up the Firth. Thus, the path
commences at the north emplacement, and bends
westward from the lighthouse hill, which completely
shelters it from the north and west. A short branch
diverges towards the western battery, but the main
road, eighteen feet wide, is carried under and partly
along the face of the cliffs, which overlook the
cove, where alone a landing could be effected by
an armed force ; and there, no doubt, it was that
Strozzi was slain, when the island was stormed by
the French.
Trending then southwards, the road passes along
a small plateau facing Leith; and beyond it, the
steep face of the hill has been cut into, and the
road built up, till it emerges on the comparatively
level southern point. The whinstone and conglomerate
blasted from the cuttings were utilised in
the formation of seaward parapets, and in making
the foundation of the road solid and dry to bear the
heaviest traffic,
