A Book of Death and Fish (52 page)

A re-examination of attitudes to the Slave Trade in Scotland with particular reference to records pertaining to The Royal Burgh of Cromarty and its surrounding districts

T
HE
P
H
D
THESIS OF
P
ETER
M
AC
A
ULAY

INTRODUCTION

Estate owners in the colony of Guyana were in the habit of transferring the names of their home settlements to the Guyanese areas they held jurisdiction over. Scottish names were also given to many people who were brought to these estates to work without payment. Strong connections with the estate owners’ home regions in the United Kingdom were thus maintained. This might help to explain why the burgh council of the trading port of Cromarty opposed the abolition of slavery. It is interesting to set this clearly recorded standpoint against the background of wealth and culture still visible in that burgh, a significant seaport at the time. It is also very tempting to make comparisons with other administrations in which the most repressive of edicts were issued from the most refined examples of balanced, neo-classical architecture.

The mercantile architecture of Cromarty has still a high degree of integrity. In this thesis we will be examining the declared written opinions of senior members of that community with reference to the Parliamentary Bills which eventually made participation in the slave trade illegal within Great Britain.

Those who voted for such declarations, at the level of the burgh council, were by definition (according to the franchise at the time) those with wealth and so with vested interest. There is of course no record of how
farm workers or dock workers or serving girls thought. This thesis begins with full acknowledgement of that limitation. However we will look at one particular life-story, not because it is typical but because detailed records of its circumstances still exist.

One Hugh Junor brought a daughter and a son back from that coast of Guyana. He did not bring their mother. The children were called William and Eliza. They were half-casts, in the terminology of the time. Both attended school on the Black Isle. Eliza is still there. She was buried in Rosemarkie. Her brother left that area. He did not go home. Who could say where home was for William Junor? But it seems very likely, from surviving records, that he might have found somewhere more welcoming in Buenos Aries.

The case-study of his sister will be studied more closely. Her father married. Her father died. Her stepmother married again. Her new husband was the Reverend Archibald Brown. We might well expect that support and protection would have been offered Eliza, from that man of the church, now her legal guardian.

The Reverend was a pamphleteer and activist but one who supported the slave trade. He is described as clutching a drawing – elegantly done but for a practical purpose. It showed how best to pack the hold of a ship with live cargo, for the maximum profit.

Eliza was forced to leave the area of the Black Isle, for a time. Later, she and her own daughter returned to Fortrose, where they were to make their living as seamstresses. They marked out their own will to be there, on that peninsula. This was a woman who had once being taken over oceans by her own father, leaving her natural mother behind.

This is a story but it has been gleaned from a range of extant documents and records. These have suggested a line for further research. The following thesis will attempt to gather and present a wide range of recorded statements and comments, not previously collated and all relating to the trade in slaves, with links to Scotland, prior to the legislation to free all ‘owned’ slaves in 1833. The various Acts of Parliament, to abolish the trade, driven initially by William Wilberforce, were of course passed in a series of gradual measures. The conclusive Act only completed its passage three days before the death of the principal instigator of the process.

In a Scotland now entering the second decade of a new millennium, it is all too easy to take a fabled liberal consensus for granted. This thesis will give documented evidence of attitudes to one single issue, close scrutiny. The study will be limited to one small part of Scotland during the period 1800 to 1833. We will examine recorded statements, minutes, letters and published texts with a view to summarising an accurate record of local opinion, for and against abolition of the trade and freeing of slaves in the regions under the British Empire, at the time.

T
O WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
, please accept this as the last and final document to the date fixed thereon and signed by myself and witnessed by my friend the Reverend Armitage, who you may be interested to know is now back in the fold. Or operating the gate to the fold. Anyway, he’s got his old job back. I don’t think you have to believe in God to be an Episcopalian minister. Or priest.

The most important thing to say is that the cod appear to be coming back. Well, not the same guys exactly, but their progeny. I left a few behind in the fridge in the townhouse kitchen. I hope the message got out. The key’s under the usual stone. People still drop off fresh fish when they know you’re not well enough to catch your own. They came from the west side, of course. The Minch has still not recovered. You might not rate cod but these were line-caught. Their delicate frameworks were not crunched. So the mottles and marbling changed in tone from a kelp-tinged russet to best butter. The very tint of the pats you’ll find simply wrapped in greaseproof paper.

You hear more of the news when you live close to the hoil. I can tell you the thumping big cod are being taken on the searoad to Muckle Flugga. Balta Sound is still sad. The sailor reported that there are only a few saturated timber piles to hint of the bustling piers, the commerce and banter. We have to imagine my Lewis grandmother, and maybe my Broch one as well, taking their picnic on the Sunday when the boats’ ropes remained secure on the rafts of black fishing ships.

Outskerries is a rich looking place, though, he said, and the port of Lerwick has all the signs of a Scandinavian city, with oil revenue stacked in the warehouses. The trawlers and purse-seiners rise high but they have to remain tied up on designated days (not necessarily Sundays). So the mate returns to Whalsay or Outskerries to whitewash his house again and set a few creels with the lad. The surviving trawlers, sheltering in the home haven, show more and more signs of terminal decline. Their registrations are seldom SY. Most were bought after doing their short commercial life’s work on the east coast. The BF or FR ship is patched and paint is thrown in its direction now and again. There are exceptions. There’s a fine AB whalebacked boat in signal red and a timber ship with an all-over deck casing of steel that’s well painted in a very fetching lilac. The skipper’s a cove, not a blone, but pride is taken. Most of the voices you’ll hear when they’re mending nets are Romanian or Bulgarian but there are also deckhands from the Philippines.

So what’s so different from the hotchpotch of voices you might have heard in the days of the great herring trade – Ukrainian or Russian or German or Polish or Swedish or Danish or Cockney, or Geordie or Buchan or man of Hoy or any other tone of any other trader who has passed through our hoil?

But I’m not going to prolong the rant. You already know the predisposition of the Long Island male towards preaching. Even if the faith is skepticism.

F
IRST
, the menu. The most important thing about this Will is the gathering to read it so we’ll try to make the most of that. I hope my surviving friends will have made the arrangements for the scoff to take place in my house on Kenneth Street. Gurnard and mackerel. Serve them up as Hebridean tapas and this is how, if you will. There will be enough in the kitty for a
deoch
of choice to wash it down.

I’d like you please to fillet the gurnard – red ones or grey, doesn’t matter. But conserve the carcasses to produce a stock. If it’s not too fancy a term – can we call it a
jus
? Anyway, a reduction of that stock with a bay leaf in it and some fino sherry. Take parsley from the boxes out the back door.

Then please tap them dry on a clean cloth. (Is that why they’re called tapas?) Moisten them again but with lemon or lime juice or both. This is an anti-scurvy device but it also brings out the taste. Maybe some finely chopped fresh chilli but not too much. Take some fine polenta flour in a separate plate and season it. If there’s any of the black designer-salt left in the jar, sprinkle some of that in it. It won’t taste much different but it will look very fine. Failing that, substitute a good twist of black pepper but if you do, you probably want to leave out the chilli.

A fair bit of clear oil, nothing too strong-tasting in itself and not too hot but enough to crisp the polenta coating. Drain and serve with a few spoons of the intense
jus
, in a separate small bowl, as a dip.

Grab your own bit for quality control and get on with the mogs (AKA in SY as mackerel, runag, mogerero). If they’re small fish, the sort we seldom used to see, but which taste even sweeter, cut slits in the flanks so the flavourings enter. If they’re large, cut a fillet from each side. The head, backbone, guts and tail will come off in a one-er but don’t keep them for stock. Ideally you want to get them in a pot as soon as possible but the other kind of pot. Just take it aboard a small craft and row far enough to take shrimp or prawn or crab from the mouth of the Creed. (The river.) As my olaid once said, a visitor to SY heard the phrase The Mouth of the Creed and wondered what cultish religious practices took place in this town.

Have the oven quite hot. Sauté onions and garlic and ginger with fresh ground masala, composed to your taste. But please consider splitting some cardamoms and getting the seeds in there. Smoky paprika is good for the look as well as the taste. Tumeric is a bit powerful but the smallest hint is not terrible. You can stuff the cavities of the fish with a bit of greenery – coriander is good but please, not the individual packets air-freighted in from Israel.

With luck the conversation will be going full pelt over the first course, so the mogs will have a chance to bake till they’re about as crisp as they get on the barbecue. Remember, that’s not cats. I’ll never get that way folk on the mainland use our words for fish, for animals.

Someone nearly as fussy as me should attend to the basmati so it should be steaming ready with something close to a crust happening at the base of the pan. And the dhal should be Beluga black lentils or, failing that, I’d go for Puy. I realise that these staples were probably not grown on the Peninsula or anywhere else on our own long Island but it seems a bit more sensible to import sacks of these, slow-time, than flying delicate sproutings around the globe. Plus, it’s good to keep some mariners in trade.

If you can’t get hold of mogs, I’d go for megrim. A firm and tasty fish and more common in the trawl than lemons or Dover sole.

As to music, we may have done that already. A small but select gathering. Sorry if you missed the tunes. We were blessed with fiddle and guitar and chopstick percussion, not long before I made my exit from Kenneth St. I had a feeling I wouldn’t need to make a return booking for the cab.

I could have given the cancer of the bowel a good run for its money but they sussed out I’ve had poor lungs for some time. The heart wasn’t that great either. I thought I was eating a healthy diet of fresh fish. I thought that using butter again, for a fair number of years, rather than the low cholesterol oils and spreads, was quite balanced.

When I failed the MOT they advised me that prawns and scallops are very high in the bad sort of cholesterol. ‘How many years have you been living like this?’

‘A couple.’

‘And exercise?’

‘I have been walking well-defined routes,’ I said. There wasn’t a lot of point in adding that these were between the kettle and the computer, avoiding the growing heights of papers.

I did take one proper day off, helping out on
The Real McCaughey
, in Loch Erisort. The usual deckhand was taking part in either the peat-revival or the religious one. The skipper was very happy to let me take the wheel for the day. I was just not fit enough to do any hauling or even sorting. But I could still steer the boat while he did all that physical stuff.

Davie is fishing a lot of territory I know. He finds the edges and borders where the big langoustines dig in. He has detail on his colour sounder and he targets these tight ribbons that have escaped the trawl and the dredge. He tubes the catch, to protect it, on its travels. I think he might know each prawn by name, the way he talks about them. Good job I help him out, when the Garyvard lad has skidaddled, or he’d probably be talking to them too. And come on, it wouldn’t be a day off if I came to sea with coriander and lime and lemongrass. So Davie throws butter on the pan and sautés the smaller prawns in the shell. He hails his mate, back from his dives, and a bag of scallop shells comes over on the boathook in exchange for a bucket of our own catch. If Anna is back home, I make sure a fry of each goes round the corner for her and her mother.

We served up a wee starter of each, that last kitchen party on Kenneth Street. Anna was on an expedition, out of contact. Cambodian rivers. Gabriele sent a card but it included a note saying she was sure I didn’t want her attending but bawling. She was right. Mairi and Davie came along. So did their lads. Mairi must have decided she’d left it too late to have her own offspring but the two lads came to the Island along with Davie. Their mother fell for an Indian traveller and she’d gone back there with him to discover herself.

The Piscie minister presided when I got a bit short of breath. Michael has kept up his wee property on the Peninsula. He claims to have an eye to the future but I think he’s looking to a rise in Island property prices rather than any possible progress of his own soul.

In case you’re anxious about an ending to my rant, to rival
Rocket Post
, can I confirm for you that Davie, the cove from away, has made Mairi a happy woman. I’ve a feeling that her computer consultancy fuels the
Ford Mermaid
but the boat’s in safe hands when that cove drives her. His boys think she’s cool and she seems really easy with them. Davie says they came back to life when they got going on the fishing and boats. I’ve shown them a couple of marks, myself. They take it all in.

Mairi has never got back in touch with Kenny. I’ve phoned him a couple of times. When the house was quiet around the New Year. My old mate from Westview is still on the tack except for the occasional break-out. He did up an ex-council flat in Brixton, now Grade C listed. He’s been with the same blone for years but they don’t live together. She’s never been up this way. He says she keeps her own flat in another block, a couple of bus stops away. She just carries on with her normal life whenever Kenny goes AWOL. It’s usually over in a week, these days. He must have something to come back to. I only got all this gen the week we buried his mother.

As far as I know Angus is still alive but not responding to anyone. Kenny did go along but he said he didn’t think there was much point. He didn’t stay long. Not a flicker. Our skipper is likely to outlive me but I think I’ve had the best deal.

Enough of the merry banter. It’s time to talk property.

Dear Anna, love for you has been the sustaining and constant factor. But I’m not leaving you the house. You’re doing not too bad, young woman. I’ve no idea how your mother will dispose of the empire on Leverhulme Drive. If all that stuff I built is still intact then there’s a fair chance one or other building will provide some income. They don’t belong to me, so I can’t give you what I don’t now have.

It was great to know you were making good use of the garage-cum-library. Not everyone would see why you’d need the both of them in one building. I’ve no idea what the arrangement is with your mother but you tell her something from me: if she’s charging you rent for it, I’m coming back to haunt her. If she thought my obsessions were boring in life wait till she hears me intone the specifications of all these engines, as a ghost. It will be constant, the dimensions, tolerances, servicing instructions, repeating in her ears for the rest of her own life.

It seems to me that the legacy of that troubled architect who was the grandfather you never met, included a fine house and a fine boat which are now outwith the family. But he also left a pretty sensible portfolio of
property and your mother’s share should be enough to give you a good start. That’s nothing to do with me but I’ll tell you now what is. Because I made a shit job of explaining it at the time.

I was happy to put my own research on the back-burner when I knew you were on the way. It’s nothing to do with being led to believe you were a son and heir, at the time. It didn’t come naturally, biting the lip and taking the queen’s shilling but it was a worthwhile job and it fed the family. It was right for the time but then I had to get out.

Living with your mother was like that too. Leaving her, wasn’t leaving you. It wasn’t really about meeting or re-meeting any other woman. My aspirations had become different to your mother’s. Pity I didn’t think all this out before putting up all these extensions. None of them provided space. Never mind, the shared equity from the Kenneth Street abode helped the both of us complete our studies. So I’m turning full circle, back to the faith of my labouring grandfathers, in education as the way ahead. The house did its job for me as it did in the past, for a good few folk now already in the land of the dead. But I no longer really own it.

Anna,
a ghráidh
, I think the ones that judge us might be our offspring or the ones nearest to that. I managed to organise getting a boat put back together but I broke up one family. I don’t think it would have been any easier for you or your mother if I’d been able to hold on a bit longer. But you might say, what was so important that it was worth all that damage?

If I don’t really think that spelling out details of past actions is going to make that much difference to the future, why did I have to get back to my subject? I’m sorry but I don’t know. It just seemed to matter. We might have free will but I don’t think I had a choice.

I regret that we missed a bit of theatre, in my box coming out the storm windows, up top but I hope that the idea raised a smile. What I very much hope is that I’ve passed on some stories to you.

A bit more practical stuff now. I suspect that a sensitive hospital staff might have legally helped me on my way, by omission or otherwise, and if so I thank them for it.