Royal Scots Navy

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Royal Scots Navy
Royal Scots Navy (RSN)
Cabhlach Rìoghail na h-Alba
In My Defens God Me Defend

("In My Defence God Me Defend")
ColoursBlue, White, & Red    
Engagements
See list
Commanders
Civil Ensign

The Royal Scots Navy (or Old Scots Navy) was the

Lord High Admiral
.

King

guerre de course. James V built a new harbour at Burntisland
in 1542. The chief use of naval power in his reign was a series of expeditions to the Isles and France.

The

Commonwealth in 1653, they were absorbed into the Commonwealth navy. After the Restoration Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment, but a fixed quota of conscripts for the English Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs. Royal Navy patrols started to extend their routes into Scottish waters, and in the Second (1665–1667) and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–1674), between 80 and 120 captains took Scottish letters of marque and privateers played a major part in the naval conflicts. In the 1690s, a small fleet of five ships was established by merchants for the Darien scheme, and a professional navy of three warships was established to protect local shipping in 1696. After the Act of Union
in 1707, these vessels and their crews were transferred to the British Royal Navy.

Origins

A carving of a birlinn from a sixteenth-century tombstone in MacDufie's Chapel, Oronsay, as engraved in 1772

By the late Middle Ages the Kingdom of Scotland participated in two related maritime traditions. In the West was the tradition of galley warfare that had its origins in the Viking

clinker-built ships, usually with a centrally-stepped mast, but also with oars that allowed them to be rowed. Like the longship, they had a high stem and stern, and were still small and light enough to be dragged across portages, but they replaced the steering-board with a stern-rudder from the late twelfth century.[5] The major naval power in the Highlands and Islands were the MacDonald Lord of the Isles, who acted as largely independent kings and could raise large fleets for use even against their nominal overlord the King of Scots. They succeeded in playing off the king of Scotland against the kings of Norway and, after 1266, the king of England.[1]

There are mentions in Medieval records of fleets commanded by Scottish kings including

Hakon Hakonsson's Kristsúðin, built at Bergen from 1262-3, which was 260 feet (79 m) long, of 37 rooms.[9] In 1263 Hakon responded to Alexander III's designs on the Hebrides by personally leading a major fleet of forty vessels, including Kristsúðin, to the islands, where they were swelled by local allies to as many as 200 ships.[10] Records indicate that Alexander had several large oared ships built at Ayr, but he avoided a sea battle.[6] Defeat on land at the Battle of Largs and winter storms forced the Norwegian fleet to return home, leaving the Scottish crown as the major power in the region and leading to the ceding of the Western Isles to Alexander in 1266.[11]

Andrew Wood's flagship, The Yellow Carvel, in action, from a children's history book (1906)

English naval power was vital to King

Robert I's success was his ability to call on naval forces from the Islands. As a result of the expulsion of the Flemings from England in 1303, he gained the support of a major naval power in the North Sea.[12] The development of naval power allowed Robert to successfully defeat English attempts to capture him in the Highlands and Islands and to blockade major English controlled fortresses at Perth and Stirling, the last forcing King Edward II to attempt the relief that resulted at English defeat at Bannockburn in 1314.[12] Scottish naval forces allowed invasions of the Isle of Man in 1313 and 1317 and Ireland in 1315. They were also crucial in the siege of Berwick, which led to its fall in 1318.[12]

After the establishment of Scottish independence, King Robert I turned his attention to building up a Scottish naval capacity. This was largely focused on the west coast, with the

Earls of Lennox in the seventeenth century.[14]

King

letters of marque that allowed him to gain compensation for the capture of his vessels by the Portuguese by capturing ships under their colours. These letters would be repeated to his three sons John, Andrew and Robert, who would play a major part in the Scottish naval effort into the sixteenth century.[15] In his struggles with his nobles in 1488 James III (r. 1451–88) received assistance from his two warships Flower and King's Carvel also known as Yellow Carvel, commanded by Andrew Wood of Largo.[13] After the king's death Wood served his son James IV (r. 1488-1513), defeating an English incursion into the Forth by five English ships in 1489 and three more heavily armed English ships off the mouth of the River Tay the next year.[16]

Sixteenth century

James IV

Main article: James IV of Scotland
A model of the Great Michael, the largest ship in the world when launched in 1511

James IV put the naval enterprise on a new footing, founding a harbour at Newhaven in May 1504, and two years later ordered Andrew Aytoun to construct a dockyard at the Pools of Airth. The upper reaches of the Forth were protected by new fortifications on Inchgarvie.[17] Scottish ships had some success against privateers, accompanied the king in his expeditions in the islands and intervened in conflicts in Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea.[18] Expeditions to the Highlands to Islands to curb the power of the MacDonald Lord of the Isles were largely ineffective until in 1504 the king accompanied a squadron under Wood heavily armed with artillery, which battered the MacDonald strongholds into submission. Since some of these island fortresses could only be attacked from seaward, naval historian N. A. M. Rodger has suggested this may have marked the end of medieval naval warfare in the British Isles, ushering in a new tradition of artillery warfare.[1]

In 1509, timber was cut in the forest of Darnaway for the king's ships.[19] James IV acquired a total of 38 ships for the Royal Scots Navy, including Margaret, and the carrack Michael or Great Michael, the largest warship of its time (1511).[20] The latter, built at great expense at Newhaven and launched in 1511, was 240 feet (73 m) in length, weighed 1,000 tons, had 24 cannon, and was, at that time, the largest ship in Europe.[20][21] It marked a shift in designed as it was designed specifically to carry a main armament of heavy artillery.[1]

In the

Habsburg-Valois war of 1521–26, in which England and Scotland became involved on respective sides, the Scots had six men-of-war active attacking English and Imperial shipping and they blockaded the Humber in 1523. Although prizes were taken by Robert Barton and other captains, the naval campaign was sporadic and indecisive.[22]

Privateers

Main article: Andrew Barton (privateer)

Scots privateers and pirates preyed upon shipping in the North Sea and off the Atlantic coast of France. Scotland's

Lion took a Portuguese ship, but was detained by the Dutch authorities at Veere for piracy. James IV managed to engineer his release, but in 1509 John Barton with Lion took a Portuguese vessel that was carrying Portuguese and English goods. In 1511 Andrew Barton headed south with Jennet Purwyn and another ship to continue the private war, and took prizes that he claimed were Portuguese, but contained English goods. He was intercepted in the English Downs by Lord Thomas Howard and Sir Edward Howard. Barton was killed and his two ships captured and transferred to the English navy.[24]

James V

Main article: James V of Scotland
The captured Salamander, in the English Anthony Roll

James V entered his majority in 1524. He did not share his father's interest in developing a navy, relying on French gifts such as

guerre de course in the 1530s with at least four of a known six men-at-war were royal naval vessels on the Scottish side.[25] James V built a new harbour at Burntisland in 1542, called 'Our Lady Port' or 'New Haven,' described in 1544 as having three blockhouses with guns and a pier for great ships to lie in a dock.[26]

The chief employment of naval power in his reign was in a series of expeditions to the Isles and France. In 1536 the king circumnavigated the Isles, embarking at

Dieppe to begin his courtship of his first wife Madeleine of Valois.[28] After his marriage he sailed from Le Havre in Mary Willoughby to Leith with four great Scottish ships and ten French. After the death of Queen Madeleine, John Barton, in Salamander returned to France in 1538 to pick up the new queen, Mary of Guise, with Moriset and Mary Willoughby.[29] In 1538 James V embarked on the newly equipped Salamander at Leith and accompanied by Mary Willoughby, Great Unicorn, Little Unicorn, Lion and twelve other ships sailed to Kirkwall on Orkney. Then he went to Lewis in the West, perhaps using the newly compiled charts from his first voyage known as Alexander Lindsay's Rutter.[30]

Rough Wooing

Main article: Rough Wooing
A Scottish armed merchantman engaged in the Baltic trade is attacked by a Hanseatic ship. Detail from Carta marina, by Olaus Magnus.

During the Rough Wooing, the attempt to force a marriage between James V's heir

English marine force and burnt. Salamander and the Scottish-built Unicorn were captured at Leith. The Scots still had two royal naval vessels and numerous smaller private vessels.[32]

When, as a result of the series of international treaties,

Treaty of Boulogne (1550) marked the end of the Rough Wooing and opened up a period of French dominance of Scottish affairs.[38]

Battles on Orkney and Shetland

English and Scottish warships decoration on John Speed's Map of Scotland, 1610

The Scots operated in the

war between Spain and France, small ships called 'shallops' were noted between Leith and France, passing as fishermen, but bringing munitions and money. Private merchant ships were rigged at Leith, Aberdeen and Dundee as men-of-war, and the regent Mary of Guise claimed English prizes, one over 200 tons, for her fleet.[41]

The re-fitted Mary Willoughby sailed with 11 other ships against Scotland in August 1557, landing troops and six field guns on

John Clere of Ormesby was killed, but none of the English ships were lost.[42] In July 1558, two Scottish warships from Aberdeen, owned by Thomas Nicholson, the Meikle Swallow and Little Swallow, attacked an English fleet off Shetland. The Scottish sailors took cattle and other goods belonging to Olave Sinclair on Mousa. Sinclair claimed compensation in the Edinburgh courts.[43]

Reformation crisis

See also: Scottish Reformation

When the Protestant

William Winter was sent north with 34 ships and dispersed and captured the Scottish and French fleets, leading to the siege of the French forces in Leith, the eventual evacuation of the French from Scotland,[40] and a successful coup of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation. Scottish and English interests were re-aligned and naval conflict subsided.[45]

Marian Civil War

Main article:
Marian Civil War

After Mary, Queen of Scots was captured at the Battle of Carberry Hill, the Earl of Bothwell took ship to Shetland. The Privy Council sent William Kirkcaldy of Grange and William Murray of Tullibardine in pursuit in August 1567. Some of their ships came from Dundee, including James, Primrose, and Robert.[46] They encountered Bothwell in Bressay Sound near Lerwick. Four of Bothwell's ships in the Sound set sail north to Unst, where Bothwell was negotiating with German captains to hire more ships. Kirkcaldy's flagship, Lion, chased one of Bothwell's ships, and both ships were damaged on a submerged rock.[47] Bothwell sent his treasure ship to Scalloway, and fought a three-hour-long sea battle off the Port of Unst, where the mast of one of Bothwell's ships was shot away. Subsequently, a storm forced him to sail towards Norway.[48]

When Mary's supporters, led by Kirkcaldy, held

Berwick upon Tweed to meet and convoy the English ships carrying the guns to bombard Edinburgh Castle.[49]

James VI goes to Denmark

Main article: Anne of Denmark and contrary winds

Chancellor of Scotland John Maitland of Thirlestane equipped a fleet of six ships.[50] Patrick Vans of Barnbarroch hired Falcon of Leith from John Gibson, described as a little ship.[51]

Maitland's expenses detail the preparation of James Royall, which was equipped with cannon by the Comptroller of Ordinance John Chisholm for the use of the royal gunner James Rocknow, usually based at Edinburgh Castle. The guns were probably intended for firing salutes. The sails of James were decorated with red taffeta. James VI sent Robert Dog from Denmark to Lübeck to buy gunpowder which he shipped to Edinburgh castle.[52] James VI sent orders from Denmark to the town of Edinburgh requesting the council hire a ship for his return. They chose the Angel of Kirkcaldy, belonging to David Hucheson, and this ship was painted by James Warkman.[53] When Captain Robert Jameson died in January 1608 James was at Ayr, unrigged and stripped of its furniture.[54]

Seventeenth century

Royal and marque fleets

The Red Ensign flown on a mid-17thC Scottish merchant ship. An exhibit in the National Museum of Scotland.

After the

major expedition to Biscay.[57] The Scots also returned to the West Indies, with Lochinvar taking French prizes and establishing the Scottish colony of Charles Island.[39] In 1629 two squadrons of privateers led by Lochinvar and William Lord Alexander, sailed for Canada, taking part in the campaign that resulted in the capture of Quebec from the French, which was handed back after the subsequent peace.[58]

Covenanter navies

Main article: Wars of the Three Kingdoms

During the

Commonwealth fleet.[62]

Restoration navy

Painting of a Scottish ship, perhaps part of the Darien fleet, by an unknown artist

Although Scottish seamen received protection against arbitrary impressment thanks to Charles II, a fixed quota of conscripts for the Royal Navy was levied from the sea-coast burghs during the second half of the seventeenth century.[63] Royal Navy patrols were now found in Scottish waters even in peacetime, such as the small ship-of-the-line HMS Kingfisher, which bombarded Carrick Castle during the Earl of Argyll's rebellion in 1685.[64] Scotland went to war against the Dutch and their allies in the Second (1665–67) and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars (1672–74) as an independent kingdom. A very large number of Scottish captains, at least as many as 80 and perhaps 120, took letters of marque, and privateers played a major part in the naval conflict of the wars.[65]

By 1697 the English Royal Navy had 323 warships, while Scotland was still dependent on merchantman and privateers. In the 1690s, two separate schemes for larger naval forces were put in motion. As usual, the larger part was played by the merchant community rather than the government. The first was the

fifth rate and two smaller ships, Royal Mary and Dumbarton Castle, each of 24 guns, generally described as frigates.[67]

After the

Admiral of Great Britain.[14] The three vessels of the small Royal Scottish Navy were transferred to the Royal Navy.[67] A number of Scottish officers eventually left the Royal Navy for service in the fledgling Russian navy of Peter the Great. These included the captain of Royal Mary Thomas Gordon, who became a commodore in 1717 took service and rose to be Admiral and commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet.[68]

Officers

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^
    ISBN 0140297243
    , pp. 166-7.
  2. ^ "Skuldelev 2 – The great longship", Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde, retrieved 25 February 2012.
  3. ^ N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain. Volume One 660-1649 (London: Harper, 1997) pp. 13-14.
  4. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , pp. 2-3.
  5. ^ "Highland Galleys" Archived 10 May 2006 at the Wayback Machine Mallaig Heritage Centre, retrieved 25 February 2012.
  6. ^ a b P. F. Tytler, History of Scotland, Volume 2 (London: Black, 1829), pp. 309-10.
  7. ISBN 1-78057-006-6
    , pp. 106–111.
  8. ISBN 0-7509-2977-4
    , p. 147.
  9. ISBN 0-14-191257-X
    , pp. 74-5.
  10. ISBN 0-7864-4038-4
    , p. 157.
  11. ISBN 0-7509-2977-4
    , p. 153.
  12. ^ a b c d N. A. M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain. Volume One 660-1649 (London: Harper, 1997) pp. 74-90.
  13. ^ a b c J. Grant, "The Old Scots Navy from 1689 to 1710", Publications of the Navy Records Society, 44 (London: Navy Records Society, 1913-4), pp. i-xii.
  14. ^
    ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 10.
  15. ISBN 110802629X
    , pp. 19-20.
  16. ISBN 1906476683
    .
  17. ISBN 0859766632
    , p. 235.
  18. ^ a b J. Grant, "The Old Scots Navy from 1689 to 1710", Publications of the Navy Records Society, 44 (London: Navy Records Society, 1913–14), pp. i-xii.
  19. ^ George Burnett & Aeneas Mackay, Exchequer Rolls, vol. 13 (Edinburgh, 1891), pp. clxxxiv, 209-10.
  20. ^
    ISBN 0-85976-338-2
    , p. 45.
  21. ^
    ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , pp. 33-4.
  22. ISBN 9004185682
    , pp. 36-7.
  23. ^
    ISBN 0748614559
    , pp. 181-2.
  24. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , pp. 81-2.
  25. ISBN 9004185682
    , p. 39.
  26. ISBN 085976611X
    , p. 164.
  27. ISBN 1904607780
    , p. 239.
  28. ISBN 1904607780
    , pp. 152-53.
  29. ^ A. Thomas, Princelie Majestie: The Court of James V of Scotland 1528–1542 (Birlinn, 2005), pp. 158-9.
  30. ISBN 0-7486-1455-9
    , p. 76.
  31. ^ M. Merriman, The Rough Wooings (Tuckwell, 2000), p. 181.
  32. ISBN 9004185682
    , p. 50.
  33. ^ A. Cameron, ed., The Scottish Correspondence of Mary of Lorraine, Scottish History Society (1927), pp. 176, 180 and 186.
  34. ^ Strype, John, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. 2 part 2 (1822), 14-15.
  35. ^ Calendar State Papers Foreign Edward, Longman (1861), 10.
  36. ^ M, Merriman, The Rough Wooings (Tuckwell, 2000), p. 72.
  37. ISBN 9004185682
    , pp. 50 and 76.
  38. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , pp. 59-62.
  39. ^
    ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 172.
  40. ^
    ISBN 0140297243
    , p. 197.
  41. ^ John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. 3, part 2 (Oxford, 1822), p. 81.
  42. ^ John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. 3 part 2 (Oxford, 1822), pp. 67-9, 86-87, and G. Buchanan, History of Scotland, trans Aikman, vol. 2 (Glasgow, 1827), 396, bk. 16, cap. 19: Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles: Scotland, vol. 5 (1808), p. 585.
  43. ^ John H. Ballantyne & Brian Smith, Shetland Documents, 1195-1579 (Lerwick, 1999), p. 92 no. 129.
  44. ISBN 0748602763
    , pp. 115-17.
  45. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 69.
  46. ^ John Hill Burton, Register of the Privy Council of Scotland: 1545-1569, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1877), p. 544.
  47. ^ Register of the Privy Seal of Scotland, vol. 8 (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 66-67, no. 397: Guy, John, Queen of Scots, the True Life (2005) p. 360.
  48. ^ Strickland, Agnes, ed., Letters of Mary Queen of Scots, vol. 1 (London, 1842), pp. 244-248: Reid, David ed., Hume of Godscroft's History of the House of Angus, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 2005), p. 171.
  49. ^ Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 12 (Edinburgh (1970), 344.
  50. ^ HMC Salisbury Hatfield, vol. 3 (London, 1889), p. 438.
  51. ^ Robert Vans-Agnew, Correspondence of Sir Robert Waus of Barnbarroch, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 447, 452-3.
  52. ^ Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, 'James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts, 1588-1596', Scottish History Society Miscellany XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 29, 37: John Mackenzie, A chronicle of the kings of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1830), p. 142
  53. ^ Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh: 1589-1603 (Edinburgh, 1927), pp. 16-17, 330: Amy L. Juhala, 'Edinburgh and the Court of James VI', Julian Goodare & Alasdair A. MacDonald, Sixteenth-Century Scotland (Brill, 2008), p. 349.
  54. ^ National Records of Scotland, Jamesone, Robert, Wills and testaments Reference CC8/8/44, pp. 250-1.
  55. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 169.
  56. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 168.
  57. ISBN 0199261490
    , p. 118.
  58. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 174.
  59. ISBN 0415221315
    , pp. 19-21.
  60. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , p. 198.
  61. ISBN 90-04-18568-2
    , pp. 204-10.
  62. ISBN 9004185682
    , p. 239.
  63. ISBN 0813933528
    .
  64. ISBN 0748617906
    , p. 44.
  65. ISBN 9004185682
    , pp. 239-41.
  66. ISBN 900414711X
    , p. 349.
  67. ^ a b J. Grant, "The Old Scots Navy from 1689 to 1710", Publications of the Navy Records Society, 44 (London: Navy Records Society, 1913–14), p. 48.
  68. ISBN 1862321426
    , pp. 27-8.

Further reading

The most accessible work on the Old Scots Navy and Scots naval matters, prior to 1649, is

N. A. M. Rodger
, The Safeguard of the Sea (1997), which provides extensive coverage in context, particularly for the Wars of Independence and the reign of James IV. The bibliography provided by Rodger is considerable, and includes works on the Early and High Medieval periods. The second volume of Rodger's history, The Command of the Ocean (2004), offers comparatively little coverage of Scotland.

Norman Macdougall, James IV (1989) is the standard life of the king most important to the history of the Royal Scots Navy, and does not stint on naval coverage. Works such as R. Andrew McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles (1997), Colm McNamee, The Wars of the Bruces (1998), and Sean Duffy, Robert the Bruce's Irish Wars (2002), may be helpful to expand the context provided by Rodger.

Jamie Cameron's James V (1998) adds detail from published and manuscript sources to the stories of the king's voyages, and gives detailed analysis of their historic context.

External links

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