Blood on the Wave E-Book

John Sadler

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 452

Beschreibung

Scotland's long coastline runs from the waters of Galloway and the Solway, through the Irish Sea to the long sea lochs and myriad islands of the Celtic west, around grim Cape Wrath, the coast of Caithness, Pentland Firth and the Orkneys, eastward down to the Moray Firth, the eastern seaboard, to the Forth and the sentinel of the Bass Rock. It is an ancient strand redolent with history. Sea battles have been fought in its lee from the time of Agricola to the Atlantic convoys. In Blood on the Wave, John Sadler embarks on a pilgrimage around Scotland's rugged and stunning coastline, to explore the fascinating history that has occurred in its waters. Beautifully illustrated throughout with photographs and line drawings, the narrative also describes developments in ship building technique and design, developments in naval gunnery with a look at coastal defences. From the long oared Norse galleys that swept down through the isles and the sea lochs to Somerled's birlinns and nyvaigs contesting with those of Godred of Man in a moonlit clash of spears, many of the fiercest battles in Scottish history have been fought at sea. Examining an array of skirmishes from the Wars of Independence to the Napoleonic Wars, the scuttling of the Imperial German Navy at Scapa Flow to the lurking threat of Second World War U-boats and nuclear submarines hunting for Soviet spy ships, John Sadler has created a brilliant, insightful and unique portrait of the Scottish war at sea.

Leseprobe

This eBook edition published in 2012 by Birlinn Limited West Newington House Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QSwww.birlinn.co.uk

First published in 2010 by Birlinn Ltd

Copyright © John Sadler 2010

The moral right of John Sadler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-560-4 ISBN 13: 978-1-84158-865-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

This one is for Doug, for so many years of friendship

Let loose the hounds

Of war,

The whirling swords!

Send them leaping

Afar,

Red in their thirst for war;

Odin laughs in his

Car

At the screaming of the swords!

Contents

Preface

Map

1 Introduction: A Thundering of Waves

2 Kingdom by the Sea

3 Scotia: Coming of the Longships

4 Lord of the Isles: The Hebridean Galley

5 For Freedom: Ships and the Wars of Independence

6 The Old Scots Navy

7 Letters of Reprisal: The Privateers

8 Ships of the White Cockade

9 Band of Brothers

10 First Battle of the Atlantic

11 Wolf Packs

12 Cold Warriors: The Nuclear Age

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

List of Illustrations

Preface

Cape Wrath stands at the north-westerly extremity of mainland Britain. The beacon of the lighthouse there gives note of civilisation in a barren and untamed landscape of moor and moss, rock girt coasts and sandy inlets, secret lochans and tumbled stone. Nearly forty years ago, as a boy, I travelled with my father, the pair of us bumping along the uncertain track that wound northward from the hamlet at Blairmore in a venerable Series IIA Landrover. It was a quiet and empty landscape, the mournful note of a curlew the only complement to the racket of the engine. The rutted way gritted past Loch na Gainimh and Loch a’Mhuilinn before it petered out and we ground to a halt.

Then there was only the silence. The rest of the way to the coast – a couple of miles or so – was accomplished on foot, through heather and harsh marram of the dunes, past the rectangle of Sandwood Loch and its much haunted bothy to the bay itself. This was in July, a leaden day, skies heavy and grey, fitful wind plucking at the grasses. And suddenly we were on the beach, a lordly strand of unblemished gold that stretched between distant headlands, the long finger of Am Buachaille pointing at the sky. A sky which, as though by mysterious alchemy, suddenly cleared to flood the blue waves in dazzling light; such was my introduction to the coasts of Alba.

This book is as much a journey as history. In 1996 my earlier work Scottish Battles was published. I sought to provide in that work a single-volume introduction to land based conflict in Scotland. Since then I have followed this with numerous studies of individual battles and campaigns. All of this arises from my enduring fascination with Scotland, its peoples and history. Though I may claim to be a military historian I cannot pretend to enjoy equal expertise in naval matters. This is not, therefore, a specialised naval study. It is an account intended for the general reader who, like the author, loves Scotland, history and travel in roughly equal measure.

Naval encounters in Scottish waters are perhaps less well written up than Scottish land battles, though every bit as important an element in the rich tapestry of a nation’s history. The sea runs in the lifeblood of many Scots, and dramatic events on land have rarely been unaccompanied by actions at sea. The period this book seeks to cover – from the Iron Age to the Cold War – is very long and has witnessed immense changes in the technology and tactics of naval warfare. The view, therefore, which is given of each era is essentially a snapshot: an attempt, in each case, to provide a guide to the ships, men and principal actions.

Our narrative thus moves from triremes to longships, to birlinns and nyvaigs, carracks and galleons, ships of the line to ironclads, dreadnoughts and Polaris. From Romans to Scots, Norsemen, the Lords of the Isles, Andrew Wood and the Bartons, pirates, privateers and Nelson’s Band of Brothers, to echoes of Jutland and the Battle of the Atlantic, the long decades of the Cold War and the continuing debate over a nuclear deterrent. It is a story of kings and kingdoms, the Wars of Independence, Jacobites and Frenchmen and the death of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow.

Thanks are due to my agent Duncan McAra; my editor at Birlinn, Hugh Andrew; Mark Lawrence of Lochaline Dive Centre; Dr Paula Martin of Morvern Maritime Centre; Sue Mowat for providing access to a valuable resource on the subject of privateering; Bob Mowat of RCAHMS; Cindy Vallar for advice on pirates, ancient and modern; Jon Addison of Scottish Maritime Museum; Martin Dean of ADUS at St Andrews University; Iain Mackenzie of the Naval Historical Branch; Susie Barrett; Tamara Templer, Lorna Stoddart and Lee Deane of National Trust for Scotland; Malcolm Poole of Mallaig Heritage Centre; Denis Rixson, author and authority on the Hebridean galley; Cron Mackay for casting light on aspects of galleys at war; Tobias Capwell of Glasgow Museums; Charlotte Chipchase of the Royal Armouries, Leeds; Helen Nicoll of the National Museum of Scotland; Ailsa Mactaggart of Historic Scotland; James Mitchell of ‘The Secret Bunker’; and Sarah Beighton of the National Maritime Museum.

All errors and omissions remain, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

Northumberland, Spring 2010

ONE

Introduction: A Thundering of Waves

Caledonia! Thou land of the mountain and rock,

Of the ocean, the mist, and the wind –

Thou land of the torrent, the pine, and the oak,

Of the roebuck, the hart, and the hind;

Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens,

Though bleak thy dun islands appear,

Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans,

That roam on these mountains so drear!

Robert Burns

SCAPA FLOW, ORKNEY IS A lagoon-like stretch of water, a mere 24km by 13km, girded by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray, South Ronaldsay and Hoy. A superb natural anchorage, it has been a haven for battle fleets, certainly from the Viking epoch. Lyness on Hoy was the HQ for the British fleets that utilised Scapa Flow during the twentieth century and throughout the course of both World Wars. Thus this desolate shelter has housed some of the mightiest assemblies of warships ever seen at a time when British naval power was both unprecedented and largely unrivalled, slab-walled hulls and the vast, gleaming ordnance of dreadnoughts riding in the swell. It was from here that the fleet ventured out to do battle with the Kaiser’s navy at Jutland, and Scapa Flow remained the British navy’s northern haven for the whole duration of the struggle.

BEGINNINGS

Scotland’s waters are no stranger to dramatic confrontations and encounters at sea. From Agricolan invasion to shadow play of the Cold War, men-of-war have prowled her coasts. And it is a very long and varied coast, one of the most challenging and dramatic in the Western hemisphere. At 11,800km in length, it is over twice as long as England’s, longer than the coastline of the USA and accounts for 8 per cent of the entire coasts of Europe. Nobody in Scotland can be further than 65km from the sea. The spreading expanse of the Atlantic and the grey swell of the North Sea have provided livelihoods for countless generations of Scots, from the time of the earliest settlers to the harvesting of North Sea Oil.

In topographical terms, all that we see today, so seemingly ancient it appears surely to date from the dawn of time, is quite recent. Some 20 millennia ago, the topography was very different. This was the time of the great ice sheet. Coastlines were some 140m lower than at present, so that the North Sea was low-lying marshland, which our ancestors traversed on foot. The western seaboard lay some miles beyond the Hebrides. Scotland was shrouded in a dense blanket of deep ice, resembling our present view of the Arctic, entombed and sterile, pack ice forming around the coast in the depth of long, petrified winters with icebergs cracking free of glaciers.

When, perhaps 15,000 years ago, the ice at last began to release its death grip, leaving a harsh, windswept upland of deep valleys and towering peaks, sea levels began to rise, imperceptibly at first, no more than 15mm a year, but by 8,000 BC Britain had become an island. The rising seas flooded the lower levels leaving high ground as a patchwork of islands, Orkney, Shetland and the Hebrides; river estuaries swelled into the firths of Forth, Moray, Clyde and Tay. As the glaciers retreated across the frozen ground, they scoured vast quantities of sand and crushed rock towards the margins, and the power of the waves then pushed thousands of tonnes back towards the developing coastline, creating some of the country’s superlative beaches, lordly strands such as the White Sands of Morar.

Though the melting ice fuelled the inrush of the sea, the land, released from the immense burden of weight, began to lift; the thicker the press of the glaciers, as in the Western Highlands, the greater the consequential uplift. Where the dead hand of the ice sheet was thinnest, in Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, the land stayed calm and level. In some instances, where the earth heaved faster than the waves, the rise has left a residue of stranded ancient beaches and cliff formations. These occur particularly around Arran, Jura, Islay and the Inner Hebrides. In contrast, where the pace of change was reversed, whole areas of landscape slid beneath the encroaching waters.

We can say that by 3,000 BC the coastline was roughly that which we perceive today, but the process of change, while generally imperceptible in human terms, is nonetheless continuous. Wind and waves, the longshore drift driven by the incessant ebb and suck of the tide, all have their effect. The Northern and Western Isles continue to be affected by sea-level rise; the opposite obtains in places such as Fife, where Second World War anti-tank beach obstacles, happily never tested, are now over 100m inland! The sands shift beneath storm-lashed winds, flattening and buffeting the dunes. Shingle, those rounded pebbles ground by the ice sheet and the later actions of the waves, forms many of the beaches in the north and west, distinctive ridges or ‘storm beaches’ deposited by freak tides remain strewn above high-water mark

The sea was important to the early peoples of Scotland. Traces of settlement date to around 9,000 BC, showing that our ancestors followed hard upon the retreating glaciers. They were drawn by the fertile coastal plains, rich harvests to be had from the sea and the ease of communication by water; a factor that has remained constant since. Communities were small and existence precarious; they were, from necessity, in harmony with nature, the cycle of seasons and flow of the tides. In spite of the many subsequent developments, growth in population and the spread of industry and urbanisation, some 85 per cent of the Scottish coast remains essentially unaffected by the hand of man.

COAST

Coastline is unique, not only in its variety and movement but as the meeting zone between land and water, link to distant lands and continents, familiar yet ever mysterious, sparkling blue or grey, sullen, as still and subtle as a mirror, raging in white-capped fury. Beyond the line where sea meets land, past the high-water mark, home to glasswort and sea blite, lies the fringe of dunes, salt marsh and machair. Long sandy beaches are most commonplace in Aberdeenshire, Orkney, the western coast and isles; wondrous golden expanses that seem to stretch to infinity. Dunes form around tough grasses such as the high and tussocky marram, a barrier to the scouring wind, so the dune grows like cement fill within a framework of reinforcing. In places such as Crossapol on Coll, the dunes can soar to 35m or more in height. As a boy I recall the joy of high dunes on Achnahaird Bay, north of Ullapool, when a sweep of bright sands greets the eye, an instant and arresting transition from a landscape of moorland and bog.

In the far north-west, the keen-edged blades of northerlies, driving quantities of machair sand (constituted from calcium-rich shell deposits that act as a rich fertiliser, manuring dead ground between sand and hills) create a fertile coastal strip. Rich grasslands carpeted with bright flowering in spring and early summer, dotted with saltwater lagoons, freshwater lochans and fenland. During winter months the river estuaries, mudflats and salt marsh become the habitat for thousands of waders and wildfowl, like widgeon and Brent geese. In summer the high crowding cliffs become a safe haven for guillemots, kittiwakes, fulmars, razorbills, great swarming cacophonous colonies, which cling to the near vertical rock. Manx shearwaters burrow into the steep slopes to carve out nesting platforms. Sea thrift and Scot’s lovage somehow flourish even in the thin icing of salt-crusted earth that lies on ledges and in crevices. Distant St Kilda is girt with the most inaccessible of rock faces, and the inhabitants, before the evacuation, used to harvest a perilous crop of wild birds’ eggs from the cliffs, lowered on ropes, swinging over the frothing Atlantic breakers below.

On a grim and darkening evening in the reign of James VI, the coastline of Ayrshire between Girvan and Ballantrae was lit by a pattern of guttering torches, flickering fitfully in the breeze, air alive with the tramping of armed men and the scouring of dogs. Several hundred of the king’s subjects had embarked upon a search of the cliffs. For years, members of the local communities had been disappearing without trace. Fear and superstition stalked the steadings and townships. Now, at last, a witness had survived to give a grim account of the cause. A man and wife, riding back from the local fair, crossing the flat ground above the cliffs by Bannane Head, had been set upon by a ragged band of half-naked scavengers. Feral creatures seemed to rise from the very stones, half real, half spectral, hacking and clawing at the terrified mounts. The male, undeterred, drew his sword and laid about him manfully, beating the attackers off. His wife, heavy with child, was dragged from her horse, the carrion closed in and the screaming victim was dispatched with knives, horribly torn and dismembered, but her husband, blind with fury, fought clear.

It was he, heavy with grief and thirsting for vengeance, who had given the alarm, and the sheriff had called out the militia. The ‘slewdogges’ or hounds, picking up the scent of flesh, led the hunters to an unseen cave below Bennane Head, its mouth a dark gash in the rocks, sealed at high tide. Even the bravest quailed, for the sounds and odours emanating from the entrance seemed to presage the very mouth of Hell and nothing in these men’s lives could have prepared them for what lay within. For this proved the lair of the cannibal Sawney Bean(e), his wife, 8 sons, 6 daughters, 18 grandsons and 14 granddaughters, mostly begotten in incest, a savage and depraved clan who lived entirely by feasting on the flesh of others.1

According to The Newgate Calendar, Alexander ‘Sawney’ Bean(e) was born in the mid sixteenth century, a hedge trimmer, who found the lure of honest labour unattractive. He discovered a consort as idle and vicious as he and drifted through Galloway. With the cave as a base, the Beans embarked upon their career of kidnap and murder, seizing their victims at night, dragging their prey to the lair, where the luckless victims were dismembered and consumed. The cave became a veritable shop of horrors, adorned with bones and rotting body parts. As their numbers swelled, so did their feeding patterns. Bean schooled his children in the arts of murder and cannibalistic gastronomy. By the time of their discovery, it is said they’d killed a thousand people and instigated a reign of superstitious terror, one that had led to the lynching of several supposed culprits.

Now the true perpetrators were revealed, and the full extent of this unspeakable horror became known. All were dragged in chains to Edinburgh and confined in the Tolbooth, thence, possibly to Leith where the full rigour of the law was applied (apparently without the prior accompaniment of a trial). The men were lashed to posts and had both hands and feet hacked off, the women obliged to watch their final agonies as they succumbed to exsanguination, before they too perished, at the stake.

In the south-west, the wild Galloway coast bristles with history. Looking, on its southward flank, across the Solway to England and guarded by citadels such as mighty Caerlaverock and Kirkcudbright, the rugged northern hills encircle a fertile coastal plain. Roman writers name the Celtic inhabitants as Novantae, and it was on this coast at Whithorn that St Ninian established his church in AD 397. Rerigonium, named as one of the three thrones of Britain in the post-Roman era, and likely the capital of Rheged may have been located on Loch Ryan at Dunragit (Dun Rheged), near Stranraer. These fierce Gallowegian warriors had a reputation for savagery. They fought for Scotland at the Battle of the Standard in 1138, where, it was said, they would carry on the fight though studded like porcupines with English arrows!

THE WEST

Northwards from Galloway, that long flank of Ayrshire coast leads to the Firth of Clyde. For generations this was home to Scotland’s shipbuilding industry, though now the great days are long gone. HM Naval Base Clyde at Faslane stands some 25 miles north-west of Glasgow; home to the entirety of the UK nuclear deterrent force, four Vanguard class nuclear submarines, carrying Trident missiles. The base is now frequently beset not by warriors but the reverse, peace protesters, freshly agitated by current proposals for a new generation of Trident missiles. As an interesting postscript on the Cold War itself, the author recalls awakening at a small hotel by the shore of Loch Broom in the summer of 2000 to see a large and gleaming Russian cruise liner at anchor off Ullapool, her passengers soon flooding the shops of the delightful town; there was no sign of any hostilities, indeed there was marked cordiality all round.

Westwards, the Isle of Arran masks the long finger of Kintyre as it reaches into the cold Atlantic. Around this rugged peninsula, Jura and Islay are separated from the mainland by the Sound that leads to Argyll and the Firth of Lorne. Between Jura and Scarba whirls the Corryvrechan, a series of whirlpools, whipped into life by the gravitational pull of the moon. Loch Linnhe forms a slim fjord, guarded by the great fortresses of Dunstaffnage and Castle Stalker on the mainland and Duart on Mull. Another narrow sound divides the island from the westerly thrust of remote Ardnamurchan. Mull forms a part of that wonderfully widespread and diverse archipelago, which comprises the Inner Hebrides and includes Skye, Islay, Jura, Staffa and the Small Isles. Arran and the other islands around the Clyde Estuary do not form a part of this group. Long considered the last bastion of the Norse-Gael tongue, the Gaelic name Innse Gall translates as ‘Isles of Foreigners’: a surviving description from the Viking era.

Mesolithic settlers appear to have been the first colonists, from perhaps 8,500 BC. The magnificent stones at Callanish may have been constructed some five millennia later. In classical times, Greek chronicler Diodorus Siculus refers to the semi-mythical island of Hyperborea. In the twelfth century the Hebrides formed a part, perhaps even the core of the Lordship of the Isles, that long swathe of territory controlled by Somerled and, latterly his descendants, chiefs of Clan Donald. In order to try and exert some measure of sway over these fissiparous clansmen James V, in 1539, instructed navigator Alexander Lindsay to provide a Rutter. This comprised a series of navigational notes and aids that would facilitate the passage of crown vessels in these treacherous and, at that time, unmapped waters.

Over the often difficult waters of the Minch and the Little Minch lies a further westerly group of islands, collectively known as the Outer Hebrides. Lewis, or ‘The Long Island’ is by far the largest, but the archipelago also includes Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra. Compton Mackenzie’s highly successful novel Whisky Galore was based upon real events which occurred in 1941.2 In that darkest of years, the islanders of Eriskay received an unexpected source of liquid comfort when the SS Politician ran aground there. The stricken vessel contained some 24,000 cases of whisky, many of which were ‘recovered’ by grateful locals. The consequences of the affair were far from comic, and numbers of them were subsequently prosecuted; the legend, however, proved highly durable:

The great ship ‘Politician’

Her hold stacked high with grog,

Steamed proudly past the island,

And foundered in the fog.

A case was rent asunder,

Twelve bottles came to grief,

When the Barra surf – like thunder –

Came pounding on the reef.

And then the scent of nectar,

Came on the wild wind’s breath.

‘I smell it,’ screamed old Hector

‘It’s whisky – sure as death’.

Unknown, ‘The SS Politician’

Westwards again, cast like pebbles in the great sweep of the Atlantic, are the Monach Islands, Flannan Isles, St Kilda and distant Rockall. The Flannan Isles are a trio of small groups possibly all that remains of a much larger land mass, encroached upon by the swelling waters after the ice retreated. The name is derived from St Flannan who may have been the seventh-century Abbot of Killaloe in County Clare. The much later lighthouse was designed by David Stevenson and built in the closing years of the nineteenth century. It became famous for the enduring mystery surrounding the disappearance of the three man crew in December 1900. The alarm was first raised on 15 December when the light was observed to be nonoperational, but the relief vessel was unable to land until Boxing Day. No trace of the keepers could be found and nothing onshore could suggest what might have become of them. A search revealed that the west landing appeared to have suffered severely from storm damage. A host of rumours began to circulate concerning the men’s disappearance, from straightforward accident to foul play and the actions of sea serpents. The official inquiry concluded that the keepers had been swept away by a freak wave, but an air of deep mystery has clung to the place ever since.3

Along its entire length, the west coast of the mainland is studded with the passages of long sea lochs, the land often bare and rugged, steep mountains rising inland. In such inhospitable terrain, with much life and industry on the islands, it is natural that the sea would offer the most attractive highway and that the waters would often be contested as Norse and Gael, as then the later clan affinities struggled to exert hegemony. In all Britain there is no other region so little changed by development. Since the dark epoch of the Clearances in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, population has declined, many of the old settlements swept away; only the gaunt and abandoned walls, mute testimony to a largely vanished way of life, remain.

NORTHWARDS

To the north lie two more island archipelagos: Orkney (Orkney Islands) and Shetland. The former is some 10 miles off the coast of Caithness, comprising a grouping of over 70 islands and islets, almost a third of which are uninhabited. Mainland, some 202 square miles in area, is the largest of these. The place was inhabited long before Norse and latterly British admirals came to appreciate the advantages of Scapa Flow. First settled by Neolithic farmers, it remained, for some centuries, in the possession of the kings of Norway and was not finally annexed by the Scottish crown until 1472.

Further than Hoy

The mermaids whisper

Through ivory shells

a-babble with vowels

George Mackay Brown, ‘Further than Hoy’

Northwards again, to the furthest extremity of the British Isles, lies Shetland, washed by the Atlantic on the west and the North Sea to the east. Again, the largest island in this archipelago is named Mainland, at 374 square miles the third largest in British waters. Of the 100 or so islands only 15 are inhabited. Colonised by early farmers and later part of the Pictish kingdoms, Shetland was conquered by Vikings by the end of the ninth century. Powerful jarls, such as Thorfinn, an ally of MacBeth, ruled independently of both Scotland and Norway. The latter remained strong in the north until the reverse at Largs in 1263. King Christian I was obliged to mortgage Orkney and Shetland to the Scottish crown when he failed to stump up the requisite cash sum needed to fund his daughter’s dowry. Subsequent attempts by succeeding Scandinavian monarchs to redeem the charge were rejected.

Cape Wrath, lonely, bare, majestic – the name in Old Norse means ‘turning-point’ – was a handy rendezvous and re-victualling stop. Ironically the martial traditions of the Vikings are fully reflected in modern usage, for the area is home to a NATO training ground for combined arms exercises involving land, air and seaborne forces. Despite the roar of jet aircraft and rumble of guns and small arms, the Clo Mor cliffs, some 3 miles east of the lighthouse and the highest in Britain at over 900 feet, are home to thriving colonies of seabirds. From Cape Wrath to Duncansby Head in Caithness, the North Coast of the mainland is, in the west, punctuated by the long inlets of Loch Eriboll and the Kyle of Tongue, a pattern of points and headlands interspersed with broad, sandy beaches. The former fishing settlement of Dounreay, has, for over half a century, been taken over by what was the first of the nation’s nuclear reactors. Then there is the long south-westerly sweep down to the Dornoch Firth past Wick and Helmsdale, then Cromarty and the Moray Firth and on to Inverness, the Highland capital.

EASTERLY

This long east coast is a very different fellow from the west, punctuated by deep inroads of the sea firths but devoid of sea lochs and, in the main, encroaching hills. This is the land of fishing ports and industry. Inverness was a noted centre for ship building in the medieval period. East of the city on the south bank of the Firth, at Ardersier Point, mighty Fort George guards the narrows. Built at vast expense to the public purse, following Culloden in 1746, this great artillery fort was intended to deter future rebellions. In fact, the slaughter on Drummossie Moor had already achieved that particular objective admirably.

Aberdeen, the principal settlement in the north-east, was a thriving port trading with the Continent. In the early fifteenth century, Provost Davidson augmented his living from taverns by engaging, with some success, in privateering. He was in partnership with Alexander, Earl of Mar, the illegitimate son of the notorious ‘Wolf of Badenoch’, Earl of Buchan. Theirs proved a fruitful partnership. From his base on the Shiprow, the provost found handy vessels, and Mar provided the necessary muscle, his ‘caterans’ drafted as marines. In 1410 Davidson took a hefty prize in the form of a well-laden cog out of Danzig, bound for Flanders. The French impounded the ship when the prize crew docked at Harfleur, but the Scots produced a letter of marque from the Parlement in Paris, which trumped the rightful owner’s claims!

Now the Danzigers wanted blood. Mar’s causally dismissive responses to their no doubt outraged correspondence, wherein he suggested unnamed Dutch fishermen as the true culprits, sparked a private feud between Danzig and the city of Bon Accord. And for this the Aberdonians were well and enthusiastically prepared. On 6 July 1412 a Hanseatic cog, bound for Scotland out of Rostock, loaded with flour and ale, was taken off Cape Lindesnaes. The Scottish pirates threatened to throw the luckless skipper overboard, though this was probably mere bluster, and the crew were mostly let go in the boats. Some, however, perhaps less fortunate, were transported to Aberdeen and used as forced labour on the earl’s construction projects! Provost Davidson was not a party to this last venture, for he had followed Mar’s standard on the fatal field of Harlaw a year earlier, when the earl led a primarily lowland force against Donald of the Isles’ caterans, and there fell nobly in the fight.4

James VI described the ancient Kingdom of Fife as a ‘beggar’s mantle fringed with gold’. He was referring to the wealthy chain of coastal ports and fishing harbours, St Andrews also being justly famed as one of Europe’s great universities. The ports traded with the Low Countries, exporting wool, linen, coal and salt. Southwards, across the Forth, the coastline of East Lothian is dominated by sweeping cliffs that fall, dazzlingly sheer to the sea, gaunt sentinel of the Bass Rock standing off. The bare remains of lonely Fast Castle still cling to their precarious outcrop, and Eyemouth retains traces of the defences constructed there in the 1540s by the French to counter the English strength at Berwick.5

DEFENDING THE COAST

In the course of the Second World War, Fife had the unexpected distinction of being the only stretch of Britain’s coastline to be defended by foreign, in this case, Polish troops under General Maczek. Churchill had come to an agreement with the Polish government in exile to this effect and it was Poles, brave men who had escaped the rape of their country and vowed to fight on against the Nazi tyranny, who performed these duties. The soldiers carried out sentry duty and patrols along the beaches of Fife and the Tay estuary, as far north as Arbroath, while also keeping locals entertained with a series of parades and marches. All that now remains of this intriguing and largely forgotten aspect of the war are the lines of anti-tank obstacles that still line some beaches. It was a Polish officer, Lieutenant Josef Stanislaw Kosacki, who invented the mine detector, which would be of inestimable value to Allied troops.6

Coastal defence is as ancient as naval warfare. Changes in the nature of the perceived maritime threat govern the measure of response. The Dalriadic Scots built their forts, such as Dunadd, close to the water’s edge. Dumbarton Rock was the chief hold of Strathclyde. Somerled, the Norse-Gael Lord of the Isles, built a chain of forts to guard and victual the galleys patrolling the sea lanes of the West, and these formed the foundation of many coastal castles, such as Dunaverty, Mingary and Tioram. Others like Tantal lon, Dunbar, Berwick and Eyemouth frequently featured in the long wars with England. During the Napoleonic Wars, when the possible threat of French invasion hung in the air, a new form of coastal defence, the Martello Tower, was conceived and thrown up around the nation’s coastline. These were solidly built circular brick towers, blockhouses in effect, mounting a single, traversing roof gun. One was constructed at Leith in 1809 and, six years later, a further pair was erected at Longhope in Orkney, these latter examples as a response to hostilities with America. All three were again put into repair during subsequent alarums in the 1860s.

During the twentieth century, in the course of both world wars, the need for coastal defence swelled as perceived threats developed, aggression now coming from the air as well as the seas. James IV was one of the first to construct bespoke defences covering the Firth of Forth. He was, of course, concerned about the menace from England. By 1914, road and rail communications, industry and the great naval base at Rosyth had vastly increased the attractiveness of the target area. Both shores were studded with coastal batteries and searchlights. Other positions were established on the islands, the sea approaches were sown with mines, booms and anti-submarine nets. Scapa Flow and the Cromarty Firth were likewise girded with a ring of iron. Largely decommissioned after 1918, this necklace of fortifications was almost entirely refurbished on the outbreak of fresh hostilities in 1939. Now the threat was primarily from the air and anti-aircraft (‘AA’) batteries became the new front line. Initially these gun emplacements were rather ad hoc, earth and sandbag redoubts with the gunners living under canvas, fat, sausage-shaped barrage balloons, billowing above. In time these primitive works were extended and dug to form concrete casemates and bunkers, linked by tunnels, canvas replaced by the ubiquitous Nissen hut.

Airfields sprouted like a rash across the land, some of these subsequently developed into civilian aerodromes and now airports. Others lie, half reclaimed by nature, only traces of the paved runways, foundations of the control tower and bases for the Nissen huts survive, hidden among weeds, spectral reminders of the desperate days of 1940. Camouflage was employed to conceal the true nature of many defensive installations, a tactic that was continued throughout the long years of the Cold War, post 1945. This coastal network was complemented by ‘stop-lines’ inland, secondary defensive networks, anti-tank ditches and concrete pillboxes. The long sandy beaches of the east coast were studded with tank obstacles, squared blocks of concrete, many of which remain, mute testimony to what might have been. Most of these installations were intended to endure for no longer than the period covered by the hostilities and swiftly deteriorated, others were dismantled for safety reasons, yet many survive, decaying, silent, yet still deeply resonant.

HERITAGE FROM THE SEA

It is along the length of this rugged and ever-changing coastline that the history of naval actions in Scottish waters unfolds. Here ships fought in single, squadron and fleet actions; mighty navies such as Germany’s in 1919 went to their watery graves; warships from birlinns to Polaris patrolled the approaches. Naval power was highly relevant in the long centuries of Anglo-Scottish conflict. Successive kings of England chose the east coast route to permit their supply ships to keep pace with the army. At the Battle of Pinkie in 1547, gunfire from an English squadron disordered one wing of the Scots’ attack and had a material effect upon the outcome of the battle developing on land.

With their myriad inlets and harbours, the coasts of the Western Isles proved a haven for locals who sought to augment their meagre incomes by indulging in the more profitable game of robbery under arms. The inhabitants of Canna proved so singularly adept that the Abbot of Iona felt compelled to request a blanket excommunication for the offenders. In the sixteenth century, Pabay was a noted haunt of outlaws who earned their living by preying on ships and neighbours. Longay, off Scalpay, was another notorious haunt (in Gaelic the name means ‘pirate ship’). The sea-spoilers took merchantmen and fishing vessels from Flemings, Scots and English, the lure of profit neatly transcended any nationalist sentiment. These buccaneering tendencies were by no means the sole province of disadvantaged commons; the lure was equally attractive to cash-strapped gentry or any with an eye for profit. As previously noted, the Earl of Mar, something of a rogue himself, was happy to partner Provost Davidson of Aberdeen in the fifteenth century. Later, in 1518, Calum Garbh Macleod (‘Lusty Malcolm’) established a base on Rona. Here was located a secret natural harbour, the Port nan Robaireann (literally, ‘the Robbers’ Port’). From his stronghold of Brochel Castle, the MacLeod turned the various activities of individual sea-robbers into a flourishing, family-controlled enterprise.

Another sept active on the waves was MacNeil of Barra, whose bare island kingdom proved a poor space for husbandry but possessed a coastline with an abundance of sheltered coves. These formed ideal bases for swift pirate galleys, which would dart like swooping hawks upon unsuspecting merchantmen. In the reign of James VI, Ruari Og proved a most energetic predator. His penchant for attacking English vessels brought him to the attention of Queen Elizabeth who demanded action. James sent Mackenzie of Kintail to clip the pirate’s wings, but MacNeil made a fool of the king’s officer and pleaded his case in person. His tongue was on a par with his seamanship, for he escaped the noose.7 In the next century, Hugh Gillespie of Caistral Huisdean, Trotternish on Skye was a noted sea-thief, captured not by the crown but by his foes from Clan Donald. He ended his life and career in the dungeons of Duntulm Castle, tormented by helpings of salt beef rations and no water.

COLD WAR

A form of conflict the piratical clansmen and later buccaneers would never have dreamt of occurs regularly around Faslane naval base and surrounding waters.8 Here are based Vanguard Class Trident submarines: Vanguard, Victorious, Vigilant and Vengeance. On 25 October 1992, about 50 protesters from the Faslane Peace Camp and CND, loaded rather perilously into canoes and dinghies, tried, in vain, to deny a nuclear submarine access to the dock. This proved perhaps the most unequal struggle waged in Scottish waters and mercifully bloodless. The gleaming black hull of the great ship, riding the waves like an ancient leviathan, was in stark contrast to the anarchic flotilla of flimsy craft, crowded with earnest protesters, which sought to bar her passage. The weapons within her steel carapace had the capability to unleash destruction on a scale that would dwarf even a dreadnought’s finest broadside, yet oddly impotent against a squadron of tiny craft, striving as the symbols of peace.

One of these minnows, complete with obligatory film crew, rammed the bows of the submarine, a satisfyingly dramatic flourish if somewhat pointless. Swimmers, leaping from the dinghies, threw themselves in its path, to no greater effect. The protests continue today, and debate over a further generation of Trident missiles has added fresh fuel. In one sense Vanguard and her sister boats represent natural successors to the longships; there is an echo in their clear and uncompromising lines, combining grace with function, power and motion. Yet these nuclear submarines with their deadly armament represent the distillation of the power of the modern industrialised state, geared for war. The very terror of this fearsome arsenal could be said to have successfully acted as a deterrent to major world conflict since 1945.

The story of navies in Scottish waters is far from over.

A shiver passed over every Viking. Strong

Men shook as a child when lightning plays.

Then the trembling passed. The mircath, the

War-frenzy came on them. Loud laughter

Went from boat to boat. Many tossed the

Great oars, and swung them down upon the

Sea, splashing the sub-dazzle into a yeast of foam.

Fiona Macleod, ‘Washer of the Ford’

TWO

Kingdom by the Sea

A foe from abroad, or a tyrant at home,

Could never thy ardour restrain;

The marshall’d array of imperial Rome

Essay’d thy proud spirit in vain.

Robert Burns

Naval actions in Scottish waters probably occurred from an early period, but the first recorded instances of warships in northern waters arise during the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, or at least its southerly part.

THE COMING OF ROME

For warships, Rome relied upon the classical Greek trireme, though the design appears to have originated in Phoenicia. These vessels were powered by three rows of oars on each side, with one man per oar, and represented a development of the Homeric pentekonter, which had 25 oars per side. The technological advance which the trireme represented derived from its staggered seating arrangement, which facilitated three benches on each vertical. The Greek trireme most probably appeared in its developed form in the sixth century BC and went on to provide the mainstay of Greek and Mediterranean navies for centuries. A variety of offensive tactics were used. It was possible to manoeuvre around the enemy to secure an advantage, then attack from the rear, where he was more vulnerable. Less subtle, was the head-on charge, deploying a line of ships, with their fearsome rams, simply to batter a passage through an enemy formation. An obvious defence against this latter tactic was the ring or circle, the maritime equivalent of a wagon leaguer.

In earlier conflicts, before the ships became more heavily armoured around the prow and larger in size to accommodate more fighting men, or marines, favoured tactics were to ram and hole, thus sinking the enemy, or using the ram to shear his oars, rendering him immobile. In such close quarters engagements, speed and the ability to manoeuvre were paramount assets. The rowers were consummate professionals, with considerable stamina, and the captain who exercised and trained his crew most efficiently would be likely to come off best in the fight. Once a vessel was holed and sinking then prospects for those vanquished were bleak.

Driven by the need to carry more front-end armour and a greater fighting complement, larger ships were required and the trireme was, in part, supplanted by the quinquereme. The number of oars was not increased, for three banks was a practical limit, but the number of rowers grew from one man to several per oar. Fully crewed by competent oarsmen, a quinquereme could reach 10 knots in favourable conditions. Ramming was, to an extent, superseded by boarding and the use of on-board artillery to clear enemy decks. Triremes and lighter vessels were still popular, especially among smaller navies where the bigger ships required a far greater investment of resources. In battle, smaller and lighter vessels could perform scouting, skirmishing and support roles.

Rome had and continued to use a lighter form of trireme, the liburnian, developed by Liburnian seafarers and used alongside their swift galleys in pirate forays. Sea power was vital in the Mediterranean, yet Rome never valued her fleet as highly as her army. Prior to the outbreak of the first Punic war in 264 BC, she possessed no navy to speak of. The need to confront a major maritime power provided the spur. Despite an initial series of reverses, resilient Roman genius came up with the corvus (‘raven’), a form of grappling device which lowered a wooden drawbridge affair onto an enemy deck and secured the planking with a curved attached hook, or beak, thus giving the device its name. Once the corvus was in place, Roman marines could swarm over the decks and slog it out in a miniature land battle. By this means, the navy became a vehicle simply for putting legionaries in reach of a ship-based opponent.1

It would be vessels of this type that Julius Agricola deployed against the native tribes of Caledonia during his attempts at conquest in the closing decades of the first century AD. During the classical period, Scotland represented the very extremity of the known world, though there is evidence of human habitation dating back to the Mesolithic period, small groups of hunter gatherers, followed by the more numerous and settled peoples of the Neolithic era, possibly as early as 3000 BC. Beaker peoples and the long centuries of the Bronze Age were followed, perhaps around 400–300 BC, by the arrival of iron. These new settlers built great strongholds and distinctive ‘vitrified’ forts, beginning along the eastern seaboard, while other invaders, possibly from Ireland, infiltrated the west. Latterly, perhaps two centuries before the birth of Christ, a final wave of Belgic invaders percolated from the south, proud warrior elites with their long iron swords and handy chariots.

Early seafarers made use of the hide currach (more commonly known as coracles). These were divided into river and larger seagoing craft, both constructed of hides stretched over a timber frame. This was a cheap and easy form of boat building, which persisted for centuries, though unsuitable for war. Evidence for more substantial timber-built Iron Age ships comes from Denmark: the Nydam Ships, a fascinating archaeological discovery of remains of three ships dating from, possibly, the fourth century AD. These were identified as war spoil, and a quantity of arms and war gear was found alongside. Excavation in Denmark began in the 1860s but was interrupted by war with Prussia. Further work on the site was undertaken as recently as the 1980s.

In terms of construction, the Nydam Ship (the most intact and best preserved of the three) is a clinker-built galley with a broad keel, sturdy planks and comprising five strakes. Keel and planking are finished with cleats for securing the frames. The keel is fashioned from a single oak beam some 14.4m in length, tapering to the ends. Both stem and stern posts may have been carved from a single timber and are secured to the keel by means of a short horizontal scarf, fixed with a brace of plugs. The seams are finished in a manner identical to the later Norse longships, and the overlap is luted with woollen cloth, fastened with iron rivets. She is a slender and elegant craft of probably 15 oars a side, each with a length of somewhere between 3m and 3.5m. Steering was by side rudder.2

It appears highly likely that Iron Age inhabitants of Scotland used such craft. Such large deposits of war gear, dating from AD 200 to 400, found with the Nydam ships gives an insight into the type of weapons Celtic marines may have carried. Spear and shield were the most common arms. Perhaps as many as a third of the warriors hefted swords: long blades, not unlike the Roman spatha in form, intended for both cut and thrust, and like the spear used in conjunction with the shield. Bows too were in use, finely crafted long staves in yew wood and hazel. We are forced largely into the realm of conjecture when it comes to naval tactics. Archers, as in the later Viking period, would possibly be employed either to deluge the enemy deck or pick off targets of opportunity, until the vessels closed and spears clashed.

The third year of his campaigns opened up new tribes, our ravages on the native population being carried as far as the Taus [this could refer either to the Tay or Solway].

Tacitus, ‘The Life and death of Julius Agricola’

Having served with his mentor Suetonius Paulinus against Boudicca, Julius Agricola returned to Britain as governor in the closing months of AD 78. His attentions were initially diverted to Wales where fresh disturbances had broken out, and it was not until the following season that he could shift his gaze northwards. His objective was the subjugation of the entire island of Britain. Key to a successful outcome would be the deployment of his fleet, as his biographer and future son-in-law Tacitus confirms:

There is however a large and irregular tract of land which juts out from its furthest shores, tapering off in a wedge like form. Round these coasts of remotest ocean the Roman fleet then for the first time sailed, ascertained that Britain is an island, and simultaneously discovered and conquered what are called the Orcades, islands hitherto unknown.

During the course of the third season in the north it appears that a number of the southern Scottish tribes, the Votadini and Selgovae submitted, and he pushed as far north as the Tay. Superior Roman technology and the system of throwing up fortified marching camps prevented any large scale attacks, though the northern climate proved as hostile as the inhabitants. At this point, as Tacitus informs, he turned his attention to Galloway and the south-west: ‘. . . that part of Britain which looks toward Ireland’. Agricola was contemplating an expedition against Ireland: one of the numerous sub-kings had been driven into exile and begged the governor’s aid, thus opening up an opportunity. According to Tacitus, he detained the renegade ‘under the semblance of friendship till he could make use of him’. The chronicler also refers to a sea-crossing: ‘Agricola himself crossed in the largest ship . . .’, though this may mean the Solway Firth rather than the wider expanse of the Irish Sea.

For whatever reason, his proposed Irish venture did not proceed. In AD 83 we find the governor back in the east, advancing northwards and in force from the Forth–Clyde line: ‘He explored the harbours with a fleet, which, at first employed by him as an integral part of his force, continued to accompany him. The spectacle of war thus pushed on at once by sea and land was imposing . . .’ This combined arms operation was the first of which we have notice to be carried on in Scotland and would subsequently be mirrored by numerous others during the long centuries of Anglo-Scottish conflicts.

Agricola’s final and most dramatic campaign in Caledonia began with the dispatch of a naval squadron, whose main function seems to have been to harass the northern harbours. He then advanced his land forces, seeking solace in action from the bitter grief of losing an infant son. He brought the native hosts to battle at Mons Graupius and won a resounding tactical victory. This triumph was consolidated by a steady advance to the north, with the fleet keeping station and sweeping around through the Pentland Firth: ‘Those waters, they say, are sluggish, and yield with difficulty to the oar . . .’ If Julius Agricola had achieved his imperialist aims, his masters in Rome were less impressed. In balance sheet terms, the game was scarcely worth the candle. Tacitus blames the emperor’s jealousy for his hero’s recall, Domitian’s modest triumphs in Germany being outshone by those of his subordinate in Britain. Agricola was recalled without the customary triumph, slipping back into Rome under cover of darkness and, wisely, retiring from public life. Though the Romans did return, Scotland north of the Tay remained enemy territory, wild and never subdued.3

DALRIADA

O, ’tis a good song the sea makes when

Blood is on the wave,

And a good song the wave makes when its

Crest of foam is red!

For the rovers out of Lochlin the sea is a

Good grave,

And the bards will sing tonight to the sea-

Moan of the dead!

Fiona Macleod, ‘Washer of the Ford’

Should you drive southwards, along the line of the present A816, heading from Oban and passing by the southern tip of Loch Awe, through Kilmichael and Kilmartin, you will have entered an enchanted landscape where echoes of the distant past resonate as steady as beat of drum. Swelling from the plain, on the right hand, just before you pass the churchyard of Kilmachumaig, is the great hill fort of Dunadd, mighty rock-hewn fortress and capital of Dalriada (‘Riada’s Portion’). For centuries it dominated the ground and withstood the assaults of hostile Pictish tribes.

A stiff scramble up the conical mound brings you to the twin plateaux that comprise the summit. On the narrow spur between the two lies the ‘Inauguration Stone’ – the outline of a human foot incised into the rock. Nearby, is a shallow basin, cut from the stone, with a boar in relief. It was here that the ancient kings were consecrated, each slipping his bare foot into the carving, a symbolic affirmation that the new ruler would tread the same paths as his forebears. The exact purpose of the boar’s image is unclear, but the basin was used for ritual ablutions accompanying the ceremony. With outstanding views along Kilmartin Glen and the serpentine trail of the River Add, the place vibrates with the pulse of history. The citadel echoes the cyclopean masonry of the Bronze Age settlements of Homeric Greece, great Mycenae, Tiryns and Argos.

It was in AD 258 that the Irish warlord Cairbre Riada, son of High King Conar, who already held a province named Dalriada in Ulster, landed on the coast of Argyll and established a fresh domain there. This initial phase of colonisation was little more than a beachhead, and no real expansion seems to have taken place till after AD 500, when a wave of fresh immigrants, led by Fergus mac Erc, traversed the narrow sea and established Dunadd (‘The Fort of the River Add’), on the plain of Moine Mhor, embarking on decades of intermittent strife with their Pictish neighbours and the Strathclyde Britons. Earlier Roman writers had named these Irish Celts from Antrim as the ‘Scoti’ and, in the ninth century, when the Scottish chieftain Kenneth MacAlpin united the Picts and the Scots, this name was applied to the whole.4

Evidences for naval activity in the long, sanguinary cycle of battles between Picts and Scots, Strathclyde Britons and Northumbrian Angles is tantalisingly sparse. Picts and Scots are likely to have relied heavily upon maritime traffic for both commerce and war. Concrete references are scarce, though The Annals of Tigernach have an entry for 729 which asserts: ‘A hundred and fifty Pictish ships were wrecked upon Ros-Cuissine [possibly Troup Head].’ This would suggest war fleets of substantial numbers. A later entry for 733 mentions a Scottish squadron active off the Irish Coast with a battle fought in the River Bann. Flaithbertach is given as the commander of this expedition, and The Annals of the Four Masters makes reference to the same leader with his mercenaries. This suggests the Scots had been hired as free lances to intervene in an Irish dispute – such a trade in military skills has a later resonance with the Galloglas.

Ireland was regarded as militarily backward during this period, when revenge, glory seeking and spoil were prime motivators. Even the magnatial classes who led in war possessed only basic equipment, generally devoid of mail or harness. Ancient La Tene pattern swords or copies of Roman spathas, broad-headed spears, bows and axes comprised the armoury. Their descendants in Argyll, however, appear more vigorous. Dalriada was divided into three separate lordships; themselves subdivided into davachs