Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus

by Marjory Harper

  Perhaps Selkirk’s greatest legacy lay not in his transient colonies, but in his published articulation of theories of colonization, which undermined the solid wall of landlord hostility and marked a watershed in the whole debate on emigration. In 1805 he wrote Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland, the first major attempt to defend Highland emigration, in which he emphasized that while the Highlands needed to be modernized, the region’s inhabitants had the right to emigrate in order to evade progress and protect their culture. This could best be done, he argued, through ‘national settlements’ in British North America, where the Highlanders would not only preserve their language, culture and customs in self-contained colonies but also prevent the British territories succumbing to the manners and morals of the United States. Three years later, in a pamphlet which advocated a universal system of military recruitment across the United Kingdom, Selkirk eroded the argument that Highland emigration should be discouraged on the grounds that Highlanders were uniquely important to the country’s security. 13 Despite defensive and even hysterical reactions from some landlords and newspapers, Selkirk’s writings were generally well received, and within a few years even the proprietors were forced to acknowledge the strength of his arguments, albeit tacitly. While his colonies perhaps served as a prototype for the systematic colonizers of the later nineteenth century, Selkirk, operating at a transitional period in the history of Scottish emigration, had through his pen created a less controversial climate in which his successors could practise their agency arts.

  Shipping agents and the business of emigration

  Nineteenth-century emigration agents therefore had a solid foundation of eighteenth- century precedent on which to build. This was evident not least in terms of shipping. Tobacco may have given way to timber as a transatlantic cargo, but the westward-bound timber ships continued to carry emigrants, just as the tobacco traders had done the previous century. By 1815 the Canadian timber trade had become a regular and often dominant business in a number of ports throughout the British Isles, and soon came to account for a third of all British tonnage to Canada. Having responded initially to wartime shortages of naval supplies, followed by Napoleon’s Baltic embargo in 1807, the timber merchants soon expanded into emigrant transport, offsetting the damaging effects of the Passenger Vessels Act by offering competitively priced passages to the Maritime Provinces and the St Lawrence. But security as well as cheapness had to be emphasized by Stornoway merchant and shipowner John Mackenzie when in 1810—11 he negotiated with a timber shipper in Liverpool to pick up 150 Highlanders destined for Prince Edward Island. ‘The James (350 tons) … to sail from Stornoway to Prince Edward Island … master well-armed now fitting out at Rodel in Harris’ ran the advertisement in the Inverness Journal on 22 March 1811. As the timber trade expanded after the war, so these ad hoc arrangements gave way to a network of emigration agencies which advertised for passengers and arranged their passages on behalf of individual shipowners and firms. Major port cities such as Glasgow supported numerous agencies, but in the first half of the nineteenth century, when emigrant shipping to British North America remained decentralized, shipping agents could still be found in virtually all the ports that dispatched these human cargoes — including twenty-three Scottish ports in 1831 and 1832. 14 Sub-agents were also active in the hinterland of these ports; indeed, until the 1850s shipowners not only in Dumfries but also in the Cumbrian ports of Workington, Whitehaven and Maryport found it worthwhile to employ agents at Annan, Langholm, Moffat and Hawick to recruit emigrants from the Borders.

  While agencies in the big Lowland ports competed strenuously for business, Highland agents seem to have adhered to an unwritten gentlemen’s agreement in determining mutually exclusive catchment areas. Moreover, whereas in the Lowlands the emigrant came to the agency, in the Highlands the agent generally sought out the emigrant. On 30 January 1829 the Inverness Journal reported the forthcoming emigration to Prince Edward Island of ‘several hundred souls’ from Skye. They had been recruited from Lord MacDonald’s estates by two fellow islanders, ‘men of substance and character’, who had chartered ‘one or more vessels’ in an undertaking that was ‘partly a trading speculation, and partly an act of philanthropy’. Like the tacksmen in an earlier generation, these agents were known to most of their recruits, but that was not always the case. In a region where emigration was often undertaken by large groups, frequently from a single estate, shipowners had to cope with fluctuating demand. They did this by employing agents as middlemen, to fill the erstwhile role of the tacksman-agent in terms of matching demand with supply. As well as relaying information about the volume and location of would-be emigrants to the shippers, they notified the scattered emigrants about embarkation times and places, and also sometimes helped to raise finance for the journey. Until the 1830s William Allan of Leith dominated the recruitment scene in Sutherland and Easter Ross. He enjoyed good relations with the Sutherland estate management and operated through a multiplicity of sub-agents — innkeepers, merchants, shoremasters, carpenters and postmasters — who sold the tickets and organized steamers to take emigrants to the main regional embarkation ports of Cromarty, Thurso and Lochinver. While many of Allan’s sub-agents were located in Sutherland, they were also strung out along the Dornoch, Cromarty and Beauly firths, as well as south into Speyside. His counterpart on the west coast and in the Inner Hebrides was Archibald MacNiven of Tobermory, who claimed in 1841 that for the previous twenty years he had arranged ships for 16,000 Highlanders who had emigrated to British North America, over half of them to Cape Breton. 15

  By that time, however, Duncan MacLennan and John Sutherland were developing a monopoly of Highland emigration agencies, particularly in the area previously covered by William Allan, attracting custom through a huge network of sub-agents from the Orkneys down to Campbeltown, at the southern tip of the Mull of Kintyre. MacLennan, from Inverness, began operating in 1832, when he advertised in the Inverness Journal that he had ‘entered into an arrangement with a major shipping establishment of Liverpool for the transport of passengers to Quebec, Pictou and New York’. 16 In 1840 he joined forces with Sutherland, who lost no opportunity to remind emigrants that he was both a Highlander and a Nova Scotian, having lived in the province for over twenty years. Both men were adept self-publicists, securing favourable press coverage of the departure and arrival of their vessels — nineteen of them by 1844. As well as emphasizing comfort and safety, the advertisements always gave detailed accounts of transatlantic farming and business opportunities, and, as agents for the two main land companies in the Canadas, MacLennan and Sutherland could offer a comprehensive service that included land as well as transport, just as Lord Selkirk had done to a previous generation of Highlanders. On 1 July 1842, for instance, readers of the Inverness Journal were told of the recent departure of the Lady Emily from Thurso and Loch Laxford, bound for Pictou and Quebec:

  Mr Sutherland, the emigration agent, who has been some time residing in Wick, accompanies the vessel to America, for the purpose of establishing a depot, and appointing agents in that country for facilitating the views of emigrants on their arrival. He also intends making arrangements for blocks of land, both in Nova Scotia and Canada, so that emigrants, proceeding by his vessels, may have the advantage of at once taking possession of farms or locations without losing their time and money in inquiries. The northern counties of Scotland are peculiarly indebted to Mr S. for laying on his vessels in this part of the country — for before he established himself, those desirous of emigrating had to bear the expense of removal to Greenock, which equalled, if not succeeded, the whole sum now charged for the passage to America. Nearly 2000 emigrants have been sent out by him within two years, in vessels of the first class. So far as we know, Mr Sutherland has left behind him a character for uprightness and integrity. His conduct to the poorer classes of emigrants has been very praiseworthy — he very frequently granting free passages to many members of a family where the head of it could no
t command sufficient means to carry them all out. Mr S. returns to this country in November next, when he intends carrying on the same agency, but on a much more extensive scale than hitherto.

  When Sutherland sent the Prince Albert from Thurso to Quebec seven years later, the John O’Groat Journal intoned that the Thurso-based agent had ‘every reason to be satisfied with the whole arrangements’, and went on to paint a rosy parting picture:

  6. Silver snuff box, inscribed to John Sutherland, a government emigration agent in the Highlands, 1849, made by Nathaniel Mills, Birmingham, 1846.7.

  … there was wonderful order, both above and below, and the crew and emigrants seemed to be as little out of sorts as if they had been out at sea for a fortnight. Upon deck children were playing, young lads and lasses chatting, women knitting, men pumping, girls cooking, friends talking together for the last time, and the honest tars cracking their jokes at every body’s expense. 17

  While Sutherland and MacLennan exercised a virtual monopoly in Sutherland and Caithness, the number of agents advertising vessels in the Aberdeen-shire press was in some years almost as extensive as the number of ships on offer. Such competition not only helped to keep prices down but may also have contributed to a generally high standard of service, as agents who lost their reputations were well aware that customers could easily transfer their business elsewhere. Between 1830 and 1880, a total of fifty-nine agents advertised over 100 ships sailing from Aberdeen and other local ports with passengers to various destinations, primarily in Canada, although several dabbled in the Australian and American emigrant trade as well. Even in the less well-known embarkation ports, no single agent controlled the trade. Six agencies seem to have been active in Peterhead between 1832 and 1857. William Volum (1832 and 1842), John Skelton (1832) and George Skelton (1842) sent four shiploads of emigrants to Canada, A. & J. Clark and John Hutchison sent one vessel to the Australian gold fields in 1853, and in 1857William Gammack advertised his services as agent for ‘respectable houses’ in the passenger trade to all parts of America and Australia. From nearby Fraserburgh two agents, John Wemyss and George Wallace, sent vessels to Quebec in 1843 and 1854, while from Banff in 1851 and 1852 emigrant ships were sent to Quebec and Melbourne by Thomas Adam and James Wood respectively.

  Very few of these agents dealt exclusively in the passenger trade; most were importers of Canadian timber, while some, like the Duthie brothers and George Thompson of Aberdeen, were shipbuilders. Alexander Duthie, as well as being a timber merchant who dabbled in the emigrant business for eight seasons, also ran vessels in the guano trade and was the first Aberdeen shipowner to establish a regular mercantile business between London and Australia. His shipyard built a string of vessels used on the transatlantic emigrant run, including the extremely popular and commodious Brilliant, which was represented by his brother William for thirteen consecutive years. Another brother, Robert, advertised three Canadian timber ships at various times in the 1830s. George Thompson had many strings to his bow. Not only was he a prosperous shipowner who operated a fleet of vessels to Quebec, gradually buying out his associates and extending his shipping empire to the Baltic, the Mediterranean, South Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Far East; his Aberdeen Line and Thistle Line operated out of London and Liverpool respectively, and he also served as Aberdeen’s Dean of Guild (1840), Lord Provost (1847—50) and MP (1852—7).

  Of the fifty-nine agents who dispatched emigrant ships from the Aberdeen area, nineteen also represented the interests of individuals and companies in other ports. This type of depersonalized, long-distance agency became increasingly important in the second half of the century, when large shipping companies in Glasgow, London and particularly Liverpool came to monopolize the emigrant trade. Steamship lines such as the White Star, Dominion, Cunard, P&O, Anchor, Allan, Black Ball and Black Star employed an ever-changing network of agents throughout Scotland, not just in erstwhile embarkation ports but also in the rural hinterlands. Unlike the earlier generation of agents, many of these men had no previous connection with shipping, and no personal interest in the recruitment of emigrants other than the commission they could earn from the shipping companies by booking passages for emigrants on their vessels. They included shopkeepers, merchants and businessmen who simply sold tickets on a part-time basis, but before the end of the century they had been joined by firms such as MacKay Brothers and H. W. J. Paton, professional travel agencies which were to continue throughout the twentieth century. The booking agents were courted not only by steamship companies. Competing destinations relied on them to advertise, distribute literature and arrange meetings for their representatives, giving them commission on each ‘eligible ’ emigrant they recruited. By the 1890s, for instance, booking agents who sent emigrants to Canada not only received the shipping company’s commission of 6s per passenger and the railway company’s commission of 5 per cent on rail fares; they were also entitled to a bonus of 7s from the Canadian government on each farm labourer and domestic servant sent to the prairies. In 1903 the system was extended to provinces east of Manitoba and in 1906 the bonus was raised to £1.

  Even in the era of centralized embarkations, local shipping agents could have a vital role, not only in making the emigrants’ travelling arrangements but also in actively encouraging them to take the plunge, through persuasive advertising, liaising with government agents to secure employment for their clients, and sometimes accompanying their recruits overseas. James Scott of Ayr was regarded as an ‘A1 agent’ who at the turn of the century brought Ayrshire to ‘the forefront of the Scottish counties’ in terms of Canadian recruitment. At the same time Alexander Longmuir, a booking agent in Stonehaven, regularly accompanied parties to Canada, where he himself had lived for sixteen years, using these summer visits to look up previous settlers and gather information about future employment opportunities for his winter recruitment campaign. In July 1907, for instance, having accompanied a party of 200 emigrants to Winnipeg and supervised their distribution to situations which he had secured for them in advance, he went on to Moose Jaw and Regina, where he visited friends and acquaintances from the north of Scotland, including a Stonehaven couple who had emigrated in 1906 and were running a temperance hotel, as well as farming their quarter section. This service was not offered only by individuals. MacKay Brothers, a booking agency with offices across Lowland Scotland, regularly chartered trains to bring recruits to Glasgow, accompanying them across the Atlantic and often giving them letters of introduction to employers, and similar facilities were offered by well-known firms such as Paton and R. & J. Davidson. Walter Easton of Jedburgh adopted a slightly different approach, using his position as manager of the Jedburgh Gazette to publicize his experiences during a tour of Canada, and subsequently publishing the collected articles in an illustrated guidebook. And Mary Farnon of Falkirk, one of the few female booking agents, was described as ‘quite a hustler and very anxious for business’, despite being handicapped by an inaccessible office and a poor advertising window. 18

  But shipping agents did not enjoy an unblemished reputation, and nineteenth- century operators were just as controversial as their eighteenth-century predecessors. James Robertson, a Scot living in Prince Edward Island, was criticized by the Duke of Atholl in 1808 for transporting 700 people to the island at a rate of £9 a head, ‘to make a profit of £5 per head independent of profit on the sale of land’. 19 It was probably the same agent who was castigated in the Inverness Journal in 1810 as a ‘philanthropic crimp’ who enticed the unwary Highlander to Prince Edward Island with the promise of ‘a lairdship and an air-built castle ’, demanding a 50 per cent advance on the passage money, with the balance to be paid on embarkation, defaulters forfeiting their deposit. The anonymous critic pulled no punches:

  A set of nefarious vagabonds are at the present moment traversing the Highland districts of Scotland, for the purpose of deluding the poor ignorant natives, and seducing them from their mountains. One of these man-dealers goes about from h
ut to hut using all the arts of presuasion [sic] on ignorant credulity, blending falsehood with truth, exaggerating all the evils of their situation and of human existence, and painting, in the most fascinating colours, the fabulous pleasures, wealth, and independence of a trans-Atlantic life … The little croft is then dismantled, and every thing turned into money, to gratify the insatiable voracity of this human shark; and when an intended emigrant has a large family, he will often give every penny he is worth in the world to one of those unprincipled impostors, even to the amount of hundreds of pounds, for carrying him and his little ones from their native glens, to a distant barbarous region, where they shall be doomed, perhaps for the rest of their lives, to cheerless exile, and the most abject slavery and destitution. 20