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In 1679, after the Scottish Covenanters' uprising was quashed at the
Battle of Bothwell Brig,
1184 prisoners were captured after the battle, some were tortured and
executed ("…to be hanged on a gibbet till they be dead, and their bodies
be hung up on chains in the said place till they rot…"), but most were
discharged on August 14th with the Act of Indemnity proclamation while
some were executed and others died of illness, or wounds. However, an
earlier order had been made on July 4th by the Privy Council for all
"Ministers, Heritors, and Ringleaders" who were to be prosecuted and
banished to the plantations as white slaves.
William Paterson
was the merchant in Edinburgh that contracted with Provost Milns, Laird
of Barnton, for the job of transportation.
The prisoners were
held in the Greyfriar’s Churchyard, Cannongate and Edinburgh Tollbooths
(prisons) and Heriot’s Hospital. On November 15th the 30 prisoners held
at Edinburgh Tollbooth were moved to Leith by Captain John Ballfour to
board the Crown of London which was commanded by Captain Thomas Teddico
(described by the Reverend Blackadder as a "…profane, cruel wretch, and
used them barbarously…") and sailed for either Barbados or Virginia on
November 27th with 257 prisoners. (Another source states the ship was
under comand of Captain Patterson.)
So, in November 1679, these unfortunates were lead on to a ship, the
Crown of London, in Leith, where they were to be transported to English
plantations in America to become slaves.
The Crown of London set sail in December 1679.
The captain's planned course is unknown, but the ship’s first port
of call was Orkney where, on December 10, 1679, she sheltered from a
storm off Scarvataing, a headland in the parish of Deerness, a mile or
two from the sheltered bay of Deer Sound.
In gales typical of the
season, the ship was driven on to rocks after her anchor chain snapped.
The captain and crew escaped the doomed vessel by hacking down the
ship's mast and clambering across it to reach land.
The
prisoners, however, were not so fortunate.
They had been confined
to the hold and the hatches battened down under the captain’s orders.
The reasoning behind this act was simple - the captain would be paid for
the number of slaves on board the vessel and recompensed for those who
died on the voyage. He would receive nothing for an escaped prisoner.
So, when the ship left port, Patterson took steps to make sure none
did.
One member of crew did attempt a rescue by breaking through
the deck with an axe. His valiant efforts meant that around 50 prisoners
escaped and made it to the Deerness shore.
The remainder perished
as the ship broke up and sank. It is said that over the following days,
bodies washed up over three miles of the Deerness coastline.
Of
the 47 or so prisoners who escaped to shore, most were recaptured and
shipped to slavery in Jamaica, or New Jersey.
The people of
Orkney were told that the prisoners were rebels fleeing from justice,
but some are said to have escaped capture. Tradition has it that some
survivors made it to Stromness, where they found passage on a ship to
Holland. Local tradition also dictates that some were permitted to
settle in Orkney. The 46 known survivors were possibly reshipped to
Barbados, Jamaica or New Jersey as slaves. However, some were reported
to have escaped to Ulster, Ireland. Additionally, the families of Muir
and Delday, on Orkney, claim to be descended from survivors.
It has also been suggested that the ship,
filled with prisoners, was never meant to make it to the colonies. A
fully-laden vessel, travelling the northern routes at that time of the
year was bound to run into trouble, especially when it had no provisions
adequate for such a major voyage.
At the time the Colonial ports
in America were open only to ships from England - a fact that makes it
highly doubtful that a ship bearing cargo from Scotland would have been
permitted to land.
Was there a darker motive behind the voyage of
the Crown of London?
A monument for the Covenanters was erected
in Deerness in 1888, three hundred yards from the spot where the ship
went down.
A further monument takes the form of a red and grey
Aberdeenshire granite drinking fountain almost immediately
in front of St Magnus Cathedral. Put up in 1890, it was not
universally loved: 'an absurdity in polished granite,
utterly out of keeping with its surroundings.' The design is
by James Hutcheon of Aberdeen, but he is unlikely to have
been the designer of the Deerness Memorial. This fountain is
on the site of the Old Town Hall.
Among those
'Covenanter martyrs' who drowned were John Douglas, of
Kirkmichael, Ayrshire and Samuel
Douglas, of Cavers, Teviotdale..
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