DOWN MEMORY LANE: Fort George-Rosemarkie wedding whisky smuggling mission ends in tragedy
A rather extravagant main course, a new village at The Haugh, a ferry boat disaster between Fort George and Rosemarkie and faster coach travel to the south were among key news items contained 210 years ago in the Inverness Journal, forerunner of the Courier, writes Bill McAllister.
The centenary of a remarkable Nairnshire soldier is also recorded, along with his plans for a musket ball in his leg...
This glimpse back to 1811 showed how, despite severe rural hardship, the great and the good relished their food. The Mackintosh of Mackintosh gave a dinner at Moy Hall ‘to a distinguished party’.
They must have been peckish for the Journal reports: “One of the dishes at the table was the hind quarter of one of the blackfaced breed of sheep, seven years old, which weighed 80lbs and had 24lbs of suet. It proved a delectable treat.”
The dinner began at 6pm and lasted till 2am, an eight-hour feast!
That autumn’s Northern Meeting saw 140 diners and included a trotting match between a pony belonging to the Marquis of Huntly and a horse owned by Mr Forbes of Culloden. Those who backed the pony won their bets, as it covered the six miles in 23 minutes.
The Journal also disclosed: “It may be mentioned as proof of the increasing population of this place that Mr Smith, who holds two acres of land at The Haugh, has feued the same for the purpose of building.
“This ground being square and laid out, it will form a neat village which is to be called Gordonville.”
Gordonville Road remains in The Haugh. The riverbank between the Ness Islands and the castle was known as the Castle Haugh as it was royal land. The new ‘village’ has long since been swallowed up by Inverness’s expansion.
Three men smuggling whisky across the river opposite Ness Castle were using a rope to pull the boat. “The river being very high, the rope broke, the boat filled”, says the report, “two of the men were drowned and the third was rescued after being carried a mile-and-a-half clinging to the stern”.
Sadly, the whisky was to be used at the wedding of one of the drowned men.
That November, 11 people were drowned and only two survived when the Fort George-Rosemarkie ferry overturned in a fierce wind. One man was saved by clinging to a pony which had been on the stricken vessel while the other survivor held successfully on to the mast.
A daily mail coach between Inverness and Aberdeen was launched, while the Caledonian coach company introduced a five-days-a-week run and stated “a person leaving Inverness at six o’clock in the morning can with comfort and ease get to Edinburgh next day to dinner”.
The road from Inverness to Fort Augustus caused the contractor to go bust and his surety, Sir John Campbell of Ardnamurchan, had to finish the work although he was £2000 out of pocket.
That summer the Journal reported:”This place for some days back has been the resort of an immense number of persons of rank and fashion, who at this season of the year generally visit the north.”
Tribute was paid to John Reid, from the Nairnshire village of Delnies, on his 100th year. He joined the 2nd Battalion of the Scots Royals “upwards of 80 years ago” and fought at Culloden, Dettingen, Fontenoy and Walls.
Reid then served “through the whole of the American War and was present at the sieges of Quebec and Ticonderoga, where he was severely wounded by a musket ball which entered his thigh and was found impossible to extract”.
The paper adds: “This ball he means to bequeath as a legacy to one of his sons, of whom he has several, all begotten in lawful wedlock although he married at the age of 70, and all of whom are serving their King and country.”
John Wayne hadn’t a look in on John Reid...
Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
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