The thread about the Innocent Railway; How Scotland’s oldest railway tunnel got its name and revolutionised the city’s fuel supply

Writing on the topic of the Scotland Street tunnel, it’s hard not to stumble into the rabbit hole of railway tunnels and look at another, older, rope-worked incline tunnel in Edinburgh – that of St. Leonards – better known by the moniker The Innocent.

At 560 yards, it’s just a little over half the length of Scotland Street and its 1-in-30 gradient is a little less severe than the latter’s 1-in-27. It’s also less roomy, with a 19½ x 14¾ feet cross section vs. 24 x 24 feet. Like Scotland Street, it was worked by gravity downhill and by a static steam engine at the top of the incline to haul waggons uphill. It has a reasonable claim to be Scotland’s oldest railway tunnel – Dundee’s 330 yard long Law Tunnel was completed over a year before it, but traffic started running through the Innocent a few months before that on the Dundee & Newtyle Railway.

First things first – the formal name for the railway was the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway so what’s with it being known as the Innocent Railway ? One frequently repeated explanation is that nobody died, or was seriously injured, during the railway’s operational life. Let’s clear that up now – people did die and others were injured on this railway (more on that later), so that’s not where the name comes from. Rather, it comes from how “innocently” backwards the railway, with its plodding horse-hauled traction and ramshackle facilities seemed compared to the rival steam-powered “whizzing, whistling, sorting, buffing and blowing railways and having one’s imagination exasperated by their frantic speed“. It was in Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal of January 1846 where the name first appeared in print, as a gentle nickname. By this time the railway was 15 years old but already belonged firmly to a previous generation and had recently purchased by the bigger and more modern North British Railway.

Oddly, even Chambers gets it wrong, sayings “[it] never breaks bones” and “a friend of ours calls it ‘The Innocent Railway’, as being so peculiar for its indestructive character“. Tell that to the young woman who fell between two waggons on Saturday 3rd March 1838 and had her skull fatally crushed! Or to the passengers of the Portobello stagecoach who, on Monday 10th August 1840, had an empty train of waggons collide with their conveyance on a level crossing, injuring a number of them.

Construction wasn’t incident free either. Initial borings of the tunnel commenced at Duddingston in July 1827 and appear to have proceeded steadily and without hitch until February 1829 when a workman was killed and 8 received a variety of injuries – many serious – when 8 yards of masonry archwork, 30 tons of stone blocks, collapsed on them. Robert Inglis lost his life, leaving a widow and two young children; Robert Mercer had his right leg amputated by Mr Liston at the Royal Infirmary; James Gilmour suffered fractured ribs. So the Innocent may have had a lesser rate of incident than its competitors, but it’s evidently not true that there were none and that no serious injuries were incurred or lives lost during its operations. However they were obviously proud of their safety record, as its called out in an 1832 advert:

The Innocent opened for business in 1831 and the Edinburgh Evening Courant reported in August that year that it was then “in full operation” with trains of waggons “re-issuing twelve to fifteen tons of coals, with the speed of a mail coach” as they came out of the tunnel on the haulage rope.

Coal was the reason the railway was built – to bring the black riches from the Midlothian pits around Millerhill, Sheriffhall and south of Dalkeith, and from a branch to Cowpits in East Lothian, into the city of Edinburgh, at a depot in St. Leonards. A further branch extended to the harbour at Fisherrow for import or export of coal – this harbour soon proved not to be a useful destination and so the route was extended on a new branch to the Port of Leith. To the south, the Marquess of Lothian would build an extension across the South Esk river as far as his pits at Arniston at significant personal expense and the Duke of Buccleuch took a branch from Dalkeith to his pits around Smeaton.

In the mid-1820s, coal could come into Edinburgh either from Lanarkshire – by the Union Canal – from Fife or Northumberland – through the Port of Leith – or locally from East and Midlothian – by cart. However, the winter weather frequently strangled supplies by all 3 of these channels and as a result the growing city frequently suffered from winter fuel shortages, as deliveries dwindled and prices increased. What was needed was a more reliable and cheaper way to bring local coal into the city – a railway was thought to be such a way. Interested gentlemen issued a prospectus for the Mid Lothian Railway from Newbattle to Edinburgh in the winter of 1824. They forecast the best Midlothian coal could be sold in Edinburgh at 8s per ton if brought in by the railway, 40% cheaper when compared with the then market rate of 11s 6d per ton. It was therefore unsurprising that the Lothian “Coal Lords” were all early supporters – Archibald Primrose, 4th Earl of Rosebery; Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch; Sir John Hope of Pinkie, 11th Baronet; Francis Wemyss Charteris Douglas, 8th Earl of Wemyss & 4th Earl of March; and John Kerr, 7th Marquess of Lothian.

The Mid Lothian Railway soon became the Edinburgh & Dalkeith Railway of the above map. It re-used some of the trackbed of an even older horse-drawn railway, the Edmonstone Waggonway, which had opened for bsiness in August 1818. This line connected pits at Millerhill with a depot at Little France on the lands of Lt. Col. John Wauchope of Edmonstone & Niddrie Marischal. The Innocent threatened Wauchope’s older route and he successfully objected to its 1825 Parliamentary Bill. When a second Bill succeeded in 1826 he changed his mind and came to an agreement with the promoters. This allowed the use of some of his existing trackbed, to have his pits connected to the new railway and also to be paid a share of all the coal being carried across his lands. As a result, the Edmonstone Waggonway was surplus to requirements and was gone by 1831 when the Innocent commenced operations. Edmonstone Coal was soon being advertised for sale at St. Leonards, “direct from the pit head“.

The Innocent found itself a roaring success and was soon carrying over 300 tons of coal a day, all of it (except through the tunnel) by horse power alone. The colliers all provided their own horses and waggons, relieving the railway of having to oversee this aspect of operations. In 1836, a newspaper as far off as the Londonderry Standard reported that “the immense load” of a train weighing 54 tons was moved a distance of 6 miles by just 2 horses.

But it wasn’t just a case of bringing the coal into the city, the railway also promised to revolutionise how the city’s fuel supply was sold and distributed. At this time, people bought their coal from a preferred merchant and would specify the quality and origin, which depended on the particular pit and seam it was cut from. Some coals produced more light, some more heat, some burned with less smoke, some were cheaper, etc. These were sold like brands, e.g. the Marquess of Lothian’s Great Main Coal or Sir John Hope’s Craighall Jewel Coal, but customers were reliant on the Carters to deliver it to them and had to trust that they were getting what they had paid for. The railway would break the stranglehold of the Carters, who were widely thought to be overpriced and dishonest, selling coal of dubious quality and volumes on the side, and selling direct to the public.

The railway promised only to supply coal from named and trusted pits (those of the Lothian Coal Lords who backed it, naturally) and hand-picked a selected number of coal merchants to handle the trade from its St. Leonards depot. Neither the railway nor their merchants actually had any stores of coal of their own at the depot, these were the property of the customer’s chosen Collier so it came direct from their stocks. However the company employed a “Weigher“, Robert Gibb, whose job it was to ensure that the weight and type of coal that left the yard matched the customer order; signed and sealed.

oGibb soon proved that the Carters were indeed swindling customers and delivering inferior quality and underweight shipments, catching them red handed. He followed a Carter who had had accidentally left his paperwork behind at the depot and watched as a lady in Alva Street took delivery of the load. Making enquiries with her, he found that she had a receipt showing she had paid for 20cwt of the Duke of Hamilton’s Great Lanarkshire Coal from the canal, but he knew from his paperwork that the cart had delivered 18cwt of Sir John Hope’s Cowpits Coal from the railway: the Carter had swapped the paperwork over. The railway was quick to act and took out notices in the newspapers and the Post Office Directory to let it be known that their officers would be following and watching the Carters and that customers should only accept coals with a Weigher’s certificate signed and stamped by Gibb himself. They also let it be known that the dishonest Carter had been turned over to the Sheriff and that any others caught cheating would never again be allowed to transport railway coal.

To add further checks against fraud, the Weigher’s certificate would be marked with the time of dispatch and customers were to reject any coal delivered more than an hour after that time. This meant it was unlikely that there had been time to adulterate the load. Customers were also instructed to under no circumstances to allow the carter to keep the certificate after delivery, in case he should try use it again. Any one suspecting foul play was invited to inspect the Weigher’s register at the St. Leonards yard. The Railway was thereby guaranteeing both the quality and weight of the coal received, “to secure to the consumer what he has hitherto been little accustomed to, a knowledge of what kind of coal he buys, and of what price he really pays for it“. And with that, the Innocent Railway had totally disrupted the Edinburgh coal market – forever and for the better. The system was soon further improved, by contracting the management of the sale and delivery of coal to one Michael Fox, one of the line’s original engineers. He promised that all deliveries would be made in his own carts, “always being of the best quality and full weight“.

The railway – or rather Michael Fox again – was also quick to catch on that people would pay to ride along the rails as passengers and that they would bring in additional revenue. Starting in June 1832, he put a carriage on the rails and advertised it at 6d per passenger thus introducing the passenger train to Edinburgh. This was his own initiative and a runaway success, the Railway ended up buying it off him in 1836. His service carried 150,000 passengers in its first year and brought in revenue of £4,000. As a passenger railway, per track mile, this made it busier than the steam-hauled Liverpool & Manchester Railway. By September that year, Fox was advertising a timetabled service between St. Leonards, Sheriffhall and Fisherrow, with inside and outside seats (9d and 6d respectively) and that he had winter-proofed the former to “render them dry and safe from the effects of the weather“.

Michael Fox was obviously something of a serial entrepreneur – in 1835 he was advertising “swimmers’ specials”, trains from St. Leonards that would take bathers to Portobello or Seafield to take the waters. As far as I’m aware, nobody ever troubled to make an illustration of the Innocent Railway at work, so this double-decker horse-drawn rail carriage will have to do.

oWhen the technically more advanced North British Railway pushed south from Edinburgh to Berwick, the Innocent at first objected then allowed itself to be bought for the princely sum of £113,000. The NBR ripped up the horse-drawn “Scotch Gauge” Innocent and relaid it as a Standard Gauge steam-powered railway in 1847. They also took on the Marquess of Lothian’s railway as far as Gorebridge and rebuilt this in a similar fashion, thereby adding the adding the first push south of the railway that would eventually become the Waverley Route to Carlisle. The Innocent remained open until 1968 as an important but overlooked branch line into the city for coal, brewery and warehousing traffic. It was steam worked until almost the end, the old J35 engines “manfully struggling up the gradient“, sometimes taking multiple attempts to reach the top. “If they avoided asphyxiation in the hell hole, the crews were rewarded with a good dram from the bond“. The route that they followed is now a popular walking and cycle route, officially known as the Innocent Railway.

As a footnote, the Innocent may not have been so deserving of that name if its plans to tunnel its way north into the city centre had ever come to anything. One option was a 900 yard tunnel emerging in Holyrood Park, running on the surface from there, the other a monster 2,200 yard bore emerging at Waverley Station from the south – a great “what if” of Edinburgh transport history.

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#Coal #Collier #Colliery #DuddingstonCraigentinny #Engineering #Fisherrow #Industries #Leith #Midlothian #NorthBritishRailway #Railway #Railways #Southside #transport #Transportation #Tunnel #Tunnels #Written2023

It's poppy season at the Leith Community Croft! BEHOLD the beauty of our patch, Plot H, a.k.a. Haver Craws 🐦‍⬛🌼
#leith #edinburgh #garden #allotment #uk

Kudos to @oceanmistleith for taking care of Leith’s favourite moorhen. No change visible yet. Situation stable. This is #Leith in a nutshell.

Looks like the heavy rain over the weekend brought down a huge bow of a tree over the Water of Leith footpath. Nice framing though!

#Leith #Edinburgh #WaterOfLeith #Nature

Community Picnic in Victoria Park! Thankfully the weather was better than on Saturday. #Leith

A buzzard perching in the scrub-wood beside the cycle path by the Water of Leith.

There were lots of people watching it - one of them said it had been around for a week or so, and that they thought it was probably going for an easy meal from others' fledglings.

I've noticed buzzards flying over Leith before, but never seen one perched there!

(Apologies for the poor phone pic - it's all I had with me!)

#buzzard #raptor #birds #UrbanWildlife #Edinburgh #Leith

The thread about the history of the Leith Police and how there is more to them than merely dismissing us

Today’s auction house artefact is this Victorian Leith Burgh Police truncheon.

Policing in Leith goes back to the 17th century, when the first High Constables of the Port of Leith were established. They were appointed by the Magistrates of the Royal Burgh of Leith to uphold “cleanliness and orderliness, keeping the peace, law and order“. But at this point they acted as empowered individuals, rather than a force. Orders were given in 1725 stating that “they were responsible for the apprehension of beggars and vagabonds, persons guilty of a crime or disturbance, informing on houses of ill repute, bringing order to mobs and overseeing weights and measures.”

At this time, the principal civic building of Leith was the Tolbooth. It functioned as a seat of municipal government and administration, a customs house, a guardhouse, a jail and a meeting house and was one of the three essential public buildings of the Scottish Burgh; the others being the Mercat Cross and the Kirk.

In 1762, the seven constables held a meeting and elected a moderator, treasurer and clerk, and drew up regulations to form themselves into the Honourable Society of the High Constables of the Port of Leith. In 1771, Parliament passed the “Act for Cleansing and Lighting the Streets of the Town of South Leith, the Territory of St. Anthony’s and Yardheads thereunto adjoining, and for supplying the several parts thereof with fresh water“. The description of the act itself is a reminder that at this time, the municipal police were primarily concerned with lighting, cleansing and water supply; not watch keeping or law enforcement.

The act saw the election of 30 Police Commissioners to enact its provisions; the electors were the 2 magistrates of Leith (appointed by Edinburgh), the masters and 6 assistants of the 4 Leith trade incorporations (the Cordiners, Carters, Tailors and Weavers) and all heritors (the feudal landholders of a Scottish parish who were obligated to pay tax), liferenters (landholders for life) and proprietors of lands and tenement within the burgh. Basically, the people (men) with claim over land and/or property. Added to the Commissioners were the Lord Provost, Town Clerk of Leith, The Baillie (a civic officer) of St. Anthony’s Preceptory, and 2 others elected by the feudal heritors of Yardheads and St. Anthony’s.

So the Police Commissioners were basically a committee of the local worthies who were charged with keeping the streets clean and supplying water. At this time, Leith had no piped water, sewers, pavements or metalled roads (causeys) of any kind so they had their hands full. Such was the difficulty in resolving these issues in Leith, that for the next 20 years the Commissioners were fully occupied with water, cleansing and lighting. It was not until 1791 that attention turned to “watching and warding”, i.e. something more akin to modern policing.

The Commissioners had always employed a part time “Police Officer”, but his job was to keep order at the wells and to try and keep people to the schedule of the carters who carried away the filth of the town. Perhaps he is the officious looking man in Serres’ illustration conferring with the carter and the town drummer and poring over a schedule?

In 1791, this was made a full time position, and Leith’s first professional polisman was hired; at £25 a year. 10 years later, in 1801 the officer, one John Ross, was finally provided with a uniform. “A blue coat, red neck with buttons thereon and a red vest with a pair of boots“. In 1802, lawlessness in Leith was such that one of the Baillies proposed to the Police Commissioners that a part-time force of sixty men, in three watches, be hired for the purposes of law enforcement. At this point, Edinburgh stepped in and said “naw”, and that it would sort it. Edinburgh then did nothing for Leith, as was frequently the case; as James Scott Marshall puts it. “Edinburgh’s policy of masterly inactivity once more frustrated [Leith’s] desire for improvement.”

A new Leith Police Act, in 1806, made provision for the recruitment of watchmen for “Guarding, Patrolling and Watching the streets“. But again nothing was done, this time for want of money. Leith had 20,000 inhabitants, but Edinburgh absolutely and tightly controlled its purse strings. Finally in 1814, the size of the Leith Police force was tripled; to 3. Two watchmen were employed to assist the “intendant” (the man in the blue and red coat). The appointments were made by the Paving Committee as they had responsibility for safety on the streets.

In 1815, the force doubled in size, to 6, with 3 more watchmen being recruited. Finally in 1816, a special “Watching Committee” was formed, rather than leave the Police under the direction of the Paving Committee. But the new force was not well thought of and there were complaints asking for it to be better organised. The watchmen were also unhappy, as the day shift worked 6AM-9PM (!) and were unable to take on labouring work on the side as a result like the shorter nightshift could.

The force grew no further until the Municipal and Police Act of 1827, when the whole force of 6 was disbanded and then re-hired under a new system under a Superintendent; one James Stuart on £120 a year. The new force totalled 20, 1 Sergeant Major, 3 Sergeants, 3 “Daymen”, 3 “Night Patrol” and 10 Watchmen. Superintendent Stuart had the force raised to 27 with 1 more Dayman, 2 Night Patrol and 4 more Watchmen. The senior ranks were paid a guaranteed basic rate, which was supplemented by the court fees of each offender they brought in; half to the Sergeant Major, and the other half split between the Sergeants.

The 1827 act finally settled the boundary of the Leith Police, which had been rather vaguely defined up until this point due to the fragmentary municipal boundaries and land superiority of the separate parishes of North and South Leith. When the 1832 Great Reform Act extended the boundary of Leith to the red line on this map, the reach of the Leith Police extended too. A deal was also struck with the Edinburgh Sheriff to charge him for the lodging of prisoners sent from Edinburgh to languish in Leith.

The 1827 act also got round to the business of providing Leith with its first modern courthouse and police station, to replace the ancient Tolbooth. Some of the land of “Dr. Colquhoun’s Chapel” was acquired; a 99 year lease being taken on it. Dr Colquhoun was the minister of St. John’s Chapel of Ease on Constitution Street. This is how Leith’s first court house and police station came to be built on the corner of Constitution Street and [Queen] Charlotte Street, where they are to this day – although the courthouse is long unused.

The Leith Burgh Police were established in 1859 to cover the wider burgh of Leith defined in 1831 by the Great Reform Act. Policing of the port and docks was subsumed into the new force as a division, but the High Constables were maintained as an honourable society for ceremonial occasions. They still exist in this form, the uniform still being top hats and tails and the badge of office still being an ornamental baton. Until recently it was strictly a gentlemen’s club, although they have more recently elected a woman to their ranks.

They can be seen performing these same ceremonial duties for royalty here in Alexander Carse’s painting of the arrival of George IV in Leith back in 1822, backs to the artist with their top hats off. The fellows with the broad bonnets, white sashes and curving long sticks (bows) are the Company of Royal Archers .

At this point, the need for separate Commissioners of Police was redundant, as Leith was finally an independent burgh, The responsibility for oversight of the Police passed to the new Town Council, who made their home in the police station and court on Constitution Street. Below can be seen a picture of the Town Hall / court house / police station in 1870. It shows St. John’s, after the mock Tudor tower was built and parish school buildings were added to the front. Between the two is the small burgh fire station building .

The helmet badge adopted by the Burgh Police was from the traditional Leith coat of arms; the Virgin Mary and child on a galleon, underneath a canopy. The date of 1563 beneath refers to a letter signed by Mary Queen of Scots granting South Leith permission to erect its Tolbooth. Granting Leith this was a big step in its ancient struggle to exert independence from Edinburgh. The English had burned Restalrig Tolbooth in 1544 during the “Rough Wooing” (Restalrig at that time was the administrative centre of South Leith parish) and since then Edinburgh had been trying to prevent Leith from re-establishing its own local centre of law, order and taxation.

Anyway, Leith Burgh Police was a small force, but one well respected for keeping law and order in the potentially lawless port town. They were merged into the Edinburgh City Police as D Division in 1921.

Leith policemen were distinctive for wearing a “ball top” to their custodian helmet, Edinburgh had these only for upper ranks, the rank and file had a “button top”.

Leith’s greatest contribution to the world of policing is of course said to be the legendary tongue twister “The Leith Police Dismisseth Us” – which was apparently a test for drunkenness (but just try saying it sober!)

The Leith police dismisseth us, I’m sorry sir to say;
The Leith police dismisseth us, They thought we sought to stay;
The Leith police dismisseth us, They thought we’d stay all day;
The Leith police dismisseth us, Which caused us many sighs;
And the size of our sighs, when we said our goodbyes;
Were the size of the Leith police.

The Leith Police Dismisseth Us, a version from 1927

However the origin of The Leith Police Dismisseth Us is probably nothing to do with Leith. It actually first originates in print on the other side of the Atlantic; in the Boston Youth’s Companion, October 20th 1887, as a line in a list of “verbal snares” or tongue-twisters. It is quite similar to an earlier American tongue-twister; variously The Sea Ceaseth and Dismisseth Us With His Blessing or The Sea Ceaseth And that Sufficeth Us and it is likely these were created for elocution purposes and inspired by biblical verse.

It first appears in a British newspaper shortly afterwards, in December 1887 in the Irvine Times, before being reprinted widely across English papers the following year. These early examples are always in lists of tongue-twisters, many of which are still familiar such as Peter Piper and She Sells Sea Shells. A fuller version does not seem to appear in print until 1919 (in The Childrens Newspaper) but it had been widely popularised before this by the Mancunian musical hall comedian Wilkie Bard, one of the biggest acts of his day, whose stage gimmick was tongue twisters. Variety magazine announced in 1909 that he was appearing in London at the Tivoli, Oxford and Paragon with “a new tongue twister. It is called The Leith Police Dismisseth Us. Bard gets a whole lot out of this number with the aid of an assistant who does a lisping souse.“

The rhyme is still used for elocution, particularly in helping non-native English speakers master the “th” and -“s” sounds of the language.

Thank you to Chris Wright for his assistance and advice in researching the early details of “The Leith Police Dismisseth Us.”

If you have found this useful, informative or amusing, perhaps you would like to help contribute towards the running costs of this site – including keeping it ad-free and my book-buying budget to find further stories to bring you – by supporting me on ko-fi. Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends.

These threads © 2017-2025, Andy Arthur.

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

#AuctionHouseArtefact #Leith #Police #Policing #Written2021

The thread about the “Fury”; the short life and times of the first Royal Navy warship built in Leith

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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#Leith #March5 #RoyalNavy #Shipbuilding #Ships #Written2021

I was back in #Edinburgh #Scotland for a #LifeAtAXA #ConversationalAI conference speech and a #PhotoWalk ⏳ #TimeWarp to March 2024

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TAP ON TAP AFF: we've waited SO LONG for this joyful beep
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Studio sort out today and look what I came across!!

Prophecy
61x71cm acrylic & oil on canvas, tray framed
➡️ DM if interested
#Leith #Edinburgh #Scotland

#art #painting #cityscape #infrastructure #shadowsandlight

Sunset Over Leith (Radio Edit)

#scottishforce #fandg #trance #upliftingtrance #electro #newrelease #Edinburgh #leith

Links below 👇🏻

YouTube
youtu.be/oYDfZMN0RFs

Multi-link
ampl.ink/A2lEq

#trancefamily

#Newwork #OnTheEasel #InProgress #NotFinishedYet

Water Of Leith
40x30cm acrylic on paper
#Leith #Edinburgh #Scotland

#art #painting #cityscape #infrastructure #sunshineonconcrete #dappledlight

New work heading to the Velvet Easel Gallery this week for their upcoming Summer Exhibition : 31 May - 28 September

Sunshine On Leith
40x30cm acrylic on paper
🔗 link to gallery website in my bio
velveteasel.co.uk | Ownart
#Portobello #Edinburgh #Scotland

#art #painting #cityscape #infrastructure #leith
#sunshineonleith #pride #pridemonth #transsolidarity

The Belos, a Swedish Navy submarine rescue vessel, moored in Leith Docks https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/54530111107/in/dateposted/

#Edinburgh #Edimbourg #photography #photographie #Navy #Belos #Swedish #Leith #PortOfLeith #docks #Naval #ship #bateau

The Water of Leith at The Shore, basking in the light of a warm, spring evening

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The Water of Leith at The Shore, looking rather splendid yesterday evening.

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Leith Walk after dark

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