A Sink of Atrocity: Crime in 19th-Century Dundee

by Archibald, Malcolm

  Ships moored in harbour were tempting targets for the petty thieves and juvenile vagabonds of the port. One example out of many was the case in January 1826, when two boys were caught robbing the cabin of the whaling ship Estridge. They had four days on bread and water to ponder their actions. Just over a year later four young sailors, together with a woman named Susan Frazer, plundered the brig Scotia. While two of the seamen were handed thirty days each, Frazer, a known thief and troublemaker, got sixty days in jail. By 1839 the penalties had become even stiffer as a man named James Stalker was given a full year in jail for thieving articles from the whaling vessel Fairy.

  On other occasions stranger mariners, those who did not belong to Dundee, caused the trouble. In August 1823 an English seaman had participated fully in the hospitality of Dundee’s taverns and was weaving his way about the docks. Drunken seamen were easy prey and a bunch of hooligans attacked the stray Englishman as he searched for his ship. By the time the sailor escaped he had been considerably roughed up and was looking for revenge. Finding a pistol on his ship, he returned to the shore, but rather than hunt for the men who attacked him, he fired at random, shooting at everything and anybody from the bottom of the Seagate all the way to the High Street. The watchmen eventually hustled him to the lock-up house for the night. Luckily the Englishman’s aim was no better than his judgement, for he injured nobody in his shooting spree.

  In June 1825 a trio of stranger mariners appeared in Dundee’s Police Court for causing a riot in Jamieson’s pub in the High Street. The sequence of events is probably familiar to most Dundee policemen and publicans today. The three men were drinking quite happily in Jamieson’s most of the afternoon, but they took a glass too many and began to sing. Either they were too raucous or the song was too bawdy, for Jamieson asked them to quieten down. Instead they drank some more, so Jamieson sent for help. The arrival of the police signalled a general melee and when one seaman, James Brown, kicked down a partition wall within the pub, Sergeant Thomas Hardy arrested him. It took four police to carry Brown to the police office, where he was held overnight with his two companions, John Wilson and John Wyllie.

  A Fishing Dispute

  Not only deep watermen but also fishermen could cause trouble. The fishermen of Broughty were famed as pilots and smugglers but could also be as aggressive as any other Scottish seamen. On the first Saturday of November 1849, two rival fisher crews argued in the Dundee fish market. When the police moved in to calm them, both crews moved away with dirty looks and threats, but they knew the situation was unresolved. At four o’clock that afternoon the first crew, Watson Bell, Lawrence ‘Dick’ Gall and George Bell, hauled up their sail and left the harbour, with the second crew of John Lorimer, Thomas Knight and George McCoull following in their oar-powered yawl a few moments later.

  The sailing boat arrived at the Hare Craigs first and waited for the yawl. As the oar-powered boat tried to pass, the sailing boat ran alongside and the crew boarded. Watson and George Bell simultaneously attacked McCoull while Lawrence Gall shouted encouragement, but within minutes everybody was involved. The fight lasted for about ten minutes with injuries on both sides, but the eventual victors were the harbour police, who fined George Bell a pound with the option of twenty days in jail, while Watson Bell and Lawrence Gall were fined 10/- or ten days.

  The Exciseman’s Awa’ wi’ the Wine

  Not surprisingly, smuggling was not uncommon in nineteenth-century Dundee. Usually it was small-scale stuff, such as the brandy, tea and tobacco the Customs and Excise officers seized from the vessel Thistle when she arrived from Gothenburg in November 1826, or the tobacco and spirits seized from an unnamed sailor who had just arrived from America in July 1824. On other occasions the amounts seized were much more impressive. For example, in 1821 the vessel New Delight of London put into the Tay to shelter from one of the savage North Sea squalls that blew up out of nothing. When New Delight anchored off Broughty, Customs officers boarded her. Her Master said she was bound for Montrose to load potatoes, but something about her made the Customs men suspicious and they searched her, without success.

  Still sure that something was wrong, but not sure what, the Customs men brought a pilot to steer New Delight off the Lights of Tay, those lights that marked the dangerous sandbanks. They searched her again, and again they found nothing. Only when they were reluctantly about to allow her to sail did one of the officers notice the quarterdeck was fairly high, but the accommodation below had little headroom. It was the work of a few moments to find a hidden compartment between the two, and the Customs men delighted over their discovery of nearly six tons of contraband tobacco. The crew were bundled into Dundee’s Town House jail.

  However, even Customs officers could be tempted. On Friday 29th October 1841 Vestal of Bo’ness waited off Tayport to enter the Tay with a cargo of Oporto wine. Her master, Captain Meikle, signalled all day for a pilot to guide them to Dundee, but without success. Eventually he tried without a pilot, but the entrance to the Tay is notoriously tricky. Vestal was driven onto the Gaa Sands, a sandbank at the tip of Buddon Ness just north of Dundee and around a third of the cargo was lost. Rather than whisky galore, it was wine galore in the Firth of Tay as the people of Broughty and Tayport and the places all around descended on this bonanza. For days there were scenes of drunkenness around Vestal, with even the Customs officers joining in. Apparently, though, the officials from Dundee did not become involved in the spree.

  Seamen and Ladies of the Night

  While most seamen ashore in Dundee headed toward the public houses, a considerable number ended up in the disreputable lodging houses, many of which doubled as brothels and were often dens of thieves. In the early years of the century, the narrow gulley of Couttie’s Wynd was one of the most notorious areas for these establishments. One of the public houses on this street was owned by James Davidson. He was commonly known as Humphie, and his establishment as Humphie’s House. At the end of October 1825 the master of a visiting ship was ill-judged enough to enter Humphie’s House and whatever happened there he also met the ubiquitous Susan Frazer, notorious as a prostitute and thief. When he realised he had somehow lost all his money he complained to the police and both Frazer and Davidson were arrested. While Davidson was set free, Frazer admitted to picking the captain’s pocket and was sent on to a higher court and eventually sentenced with a long spell in the jail.

  Couttie’s Wynd was too dark a street to attract many respectable people and for much of the century it remained a place of prostitution and drunkenness. In September 1861 Frederick Leverdowitz, Master of the barque Lavinia of Libau, visited one of the houses and came out minus a gold watch and chain and £90 in cash, which was a huge sum at the time. The police arrested three suspects: Catherine Grant, Catherine Hughes and her husband John Hughes. Catherine Grant, officially a millworker, was sent to jail for sixty days while the husband and wife team were given longer sentences.

  There were other areas of Dundee with nearly as interesting a reputation, including Fish Street, square in the heart of the old Maritime Quarter. At one time Fish Street had been the home of some of Dundee’s elite, but by the beginning of the nineteenth century it was a place of mildly dangerous pubs. At the beginning of September 1824 three English seamen were at large in Fish Street when a trio of local ladies took them in hand. With promises of great favours they helped the seamen into one of the low houses and departed with the Englishmen’s money. The ladies were never found.

  Mutiny

  Sometimes disputes at sea could be continued on land. The 1830s had been a bad time for the whaling industry with large numbers of ships sunk by the ice and others trapped over the winter. One of the latter was the Dundee vessel Advice, which lost most of her crew to scurvy. So in the summer of 1842 when Captain John Buttars of the whaling ship Fairy gave orders that they head deeper into the ice, it is not surprising the crew were worried. When they thought the ship was short of supplies they refused to go any further.

  On a sh
ip there are only two options when faced with the master’s orders: duty and mutiny. Anything the master orders the hands to do is their duty; anything they refuse is mutiny. Accusing the crew of mutiny, the master returned them to Dundee and dumped them on shore with no wages and no access to the possessions they had on board. The situation was bad enough for the local men, but for the seamen from Shetland, the majority of the crew, it was desperate. On the evening of 6th August, the thirty-two Shetlanders arrived at the police office and requested a bed for the night. Rising manfully to the occasion, the Dundee police gave each man access to a cell and a free penny roll. Next day Peter Twatt, one of the Shetlanders, went to court to argue for his pay. In such a seafaring town it is not surprising that the crowd cheered when the Justices, Alexander Balfour and David Milne, found in favour of Twatt. The victory was only the first as the Shetland men all gained their wages.

  The Dundee Scuttlers

  After mutiny, perhaps one of the worst crimes at sea was scuttling, sailing a vessel to sea and deliberately sinking her for the sake of insurance money. Dundee was not immune, with cases at either end of the century. In 1816, a man by the name of James Murray, alias James Menzies of Lochee, embezzled the cargo of Friends of Glasgow, which was then scuttled off Jutland for insurance.

  The 1893 case was far more complicated, with a group of shipbrokers and ship masters alleged to have sunk a number of vessels. The vessels were De Cappo, Gretgelina, Tryst, Barrogill Castle and William and Martha of Wick. The death of any ship is sad, but a deliberate sinking purely for profit must be the worst ending for any vessel. The supposed facts of each sinking are stark.

  On 24th August 1891, the tug Earl of Windsor was towing the lighter De Cappo from Aberdeen to the River Tyne. Commanded by Captain Andrew Baillie, De Cappo had a cargo of stones, and as they passed Girdleness, the weather turned foul. De Cappo began to leak and although the crew took to the pumps, the water level inside the lighter gained steadily. When Baillie told the master of Earl of Windsor the lighter was sinking, they decided to head for Montrose but as they changed course the bow was under water and the crew chose to abandon. De Cappo foundered within half an hour.

  Gretgelina was a Grangemouth-registered vessel of thirty-five tons commanded by fifty-five-year-old Captain Joseph Severn, who worked for David Mustard Hobbs of 30 Dock Street, Dundee. On 22nd December 1891, sailing from Grangemouth to Invergordon, she sprung a leak off the Redhead, by Montrose. As the water within Gretgelina rose, the crew took to the boats, and within quarter of an hour Gretgelina had sunk. They were then fifteen miles off Bodden, south of Montrose, and rumours soon circulated that Severn had either forced out the bow plates of Gretgelina or bored holes in her to make her sink. Adding to the speculation was the fact that Gretgelina was insured for the fairly large sum of £925, spread over three different companies.

  William and Martha was carrying a cargo of potatoes and paving stones from Castlehill in Caithness to West Hartlepool. She sunk in March 1892, just a short time after leaving harbour. Her owner was once again Hobbs, who insured the ship, together with her freight, cargo, captain’s effects, disbursements and outfit stores. He also insured a small fishing boat the ship was meant to have on board, but before the vessel left Castlehill Harbour, three small holes were bored in her hull, then carefully disguised. When they were at sea, the holes were re-opened and the vessel sank.

  Not content with merely claiming insurance for William and Martha, Hobbs also presented a false bill of lading for £28, claiming there had been 120 bags of potatoes on board the vessel, rather than the twenty-five bags that were actually there. As if that was not enough, in June Hobbs also claimed for a gold watch worth £8, a £3 clock and a collection of other nautical equipment that in total amounted to £70. In July he also produced a false receipt and bill of lading for £75, for the fishing yawl that was said to have been on board. This claim was made to Thomas Crosby of Sunderland. Finally, he told Thomas Crosby that he had paid £385 for the vessel rather than the £195 he had parted with. In total, Hobbs claimed £1043 in insurance for this vessel and received £518.

  There was also a lighter named Tryst that sank in October 1891. Again the scuttling was an insurance fraud. Tryst was underwritten by Lloyds and insured by the Maritime Insurance Company. The charge was that Hobbs insured the freight, cargo, salvage plant and commission on the sale of the cargo. As a lighter, Tryst was to be towed from Thurso in Caithness to Montrose, but Hobbs was accused of having the ship’s illustrious master, Joseph Severn, bore holes below her watermark so she sank some three miles off Clythness in Caithness. The tug Granite City of Aberdeen was towing her from Thurso to Montrose when she hit a heavy sea. The crew moved to test the pumps and were shocked to find the hold was partially filled with water. Leaping to the pumps, they tried to keep her afloat, but when it became obvious they could not, they signalled to the tug, which took all three of them off a few moments before she sank.

  The final vessel was the schooner Barrogill Castle. Hobbs was again the owner and he was accused of ordering Severn to set fire to her in November 1892 so he could claim her insurance of £600 from the West of Scotland Fire Office. Barrogill Castle had been berthed in Inverkeithing as she was unfit to sail. Hobbs brought a shipwright from Dundee to inspect her to see if she could be taken to the Tay, but before that happened she was burned at her moorings.

  In July 1893 Hobbs and Severn appeared before Sheriff Campbell Smith. Both pleaded not guilty although Hobbs was said to be very pale; their second appearance was before Lord Kyllachy at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on 8th August. Both admitted to some of the charges. With 117 witnesses against them and an indictment nine pages long, things looked bleak for the defenders, but although Hobbs was clearly upset when he appeared at the bar, Severn appeared virtually unaffected. They pleaded guilty to scuttling two vessels, William and Martha and Gretgelina.

  The defence argued for Hobbs’ previously good character, showing certificates of character given by previous employers and the Reverend Robert Duncan of Montrose. Hobbs also said his father was a sea captain and he had come under the influence of older men who later turned Queen’s Evidence. Severn’s council pleaded he was only an accessory to the crime, that at fifty-five he was quite an old man and there had never been any danger to life. Even so, the judge was not convinced. Lord Kyllachy gave Hobbs seven years’ penal servitude and Severn, as Hobbs’ instrument and a man of less intelligence and education, five years’ penal servitude.

  But that was not the end of the case. A fortnight later twenty-nine-year-old machinery merchant William Stewart of Royal Park Terrace in Edinburgh was arrested for his involvement in the scuttling of Tryst. His arrest was followed in October by the arrest of a seaman named William Ellington of Aberdeen, who had been Tryst’s master. The police had been searching for him, but he had been at sea until lately. Hobbs had sold Tryst to Stewart. Buying the engine and boiler of a grounded vessel named SS Speedwell, Stewart loaded them onto Tryst, insured her for a whopping £2390 through the Maritime Insurance Company Limited and got Ellington to bore holes in her so she sank. When the case came to court in January 1894, Hobbs was again accused of being involved in the scuttling of Tryst and the trial was set for 13th February. He came as a witness and gave the following story:

  In April 1892 he and Stewart discussed buying the engine and boiler of a wrecked vessel called Speedwell, then lying in the Thurso River. After buying the engine for £200, Hobbs suggested that Stewart have a hull built into which they could put it. Hobbs and Stewart met again at the Tay Bridge Station in Dundee and Stewart bought Tryst for £120. Hobbs had paid just £25 for the lighter. A tug was to tow the boiler to Leith and Hobbs insured it for about £900, on Stewart’s instructions. By that time Hobbs and Stewart had agreed not to build a hull but to lose the boiler and claim insurance. After loading Tryst with stones to ensure a fast sinking, Ellington bored holes in her bottom. Hobbs agreed he knew about the scuttling beforehand, but he claimed he was not in
volved and got no benefit. As in his previous trial he broke down in tears under cross-examination. In this case Stewart and Ellington were found not guilty. Hobbs was obviously out of his depth dealing with crime, but at least there were no deaths.

  How to Steal a Whale

  Nineteenth-century seamen often lived lives different from those men on land. They used a different vocabulary, experienced half the ports of the world and had unique customs and superstitions. It stands to reason that when seamen turned to crime, they could be just as unique. People steal anything, but sensible thieves prefer an item that is small, portable and easy to conceal. Probably the least likely object to be stolen would be eighty feet long, weigh upwards of fifty tons and have to be messily butchered and publicly processed to make it sellable, particularly if the initial theft was carried out in full view of the legal owners and about fifty other witnesses. Nevertheless, that is exactly what happened when George Thoms of Dundee saw an item he deeply desired.

  It was 23rd August 1829, deep in the Davis Strait, that treacherous stretch of iced water that separates the western coast of Greenland from the eastern seaboard of Canada. The whaling vessel Traveller’s master, George Simpson from Peterhead, sighted a whale and was in hard pursuit, with a couple of other vessels, Princess of Wales from Aberdeen and a Dundee vessel called Thomas, close by, but everybody was there for the same end.

  Traveller sent out her boats and the oarsmen pulled toward the whale, with the boatsteerer ensuring the boat was out of range of the flukes of the whale’s tail. Alexander Buchan stood up in the bows, aimed and threw the harpoon. The barbs stuck in deep and the crew released a mighty shout of triumph. ‘A Fall!’ they cried. ‘A Fall!’