By Bob Smith.
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A’ve aywis likit the kwintraside Doon the wye fae oor hoose Twa railway sleepers war laid doon The Ord cam oot the nearbye dam In warm simmer days a paddled |
Sometimes I aet ma denner Lyin on the grassy banks Noo an agin there wid be a splash The Ord it jined the Leuchar Burn It wis on the banks o the Ord |
© Bob Smith “The Poetry Mannie”2011
Peter Williamson was kidnapped as a child in Aberdeen harbour and taken to the American Colonies where he was sold as a slave.
On gaining his freedom, he was kidnapped by the Indians, living with them and eventually escaping from them. He then spent three years in the British Army fighting against the French and the Indians, only to be captured again, this time by the French.
As part of a prisoner exchange he was repatriated to Britain in 1757.
In Plymouth he was released from the army with a purse of six shillings. This was enough to get to him to York, by which time he was penniless.
He managed to persuade some local businessmen to publish his book, titled The Life and Curious Adventures of Peter Williamson, Who was Carried off from Aberdeen and Sold for a Slave. This sold very well and gave him enough money to return to Aberdeen in June 1758, fifteen years after being kidnapped.
He had several hundred copies of his book with him, some of which he managed to sell on the streets of Aberdeen. The book eventually came to the notice of Councillors and merchantmen in the city, and although nobody was named, they did not like what they read. The Procurator Fiscal lodged a complaint with the Provost and Magistrates, stating:
“that by this scurrilous and infamous libel … the corporation of the City of Aberdeen, and whole members whereof, were highly hurt and prejudged; and therefore that the Pursuer (Peter Williamson) ought to be exemplary punished in his person and goods; and that the said pamphlet, and whole copies thereof, ought to be seized and publicly burnt.”
A warrant was issued for his arrest. He was taken from his lodgings and brought before a Magistrate at the courthouse. Peter was asked to repudiate publicly everything he had said concerning the merchants of Aberdeen. Until he agreed, he was to be imprisoned and his books seized. After a short time in the Tolbooth (a jail in the Aberdeen Town House), he was bailed and stood for trial. On being found guilty, he was told to lodge a document with the court confessing to the falsity of the book and to pay a ten shilling fine, otherwise he would be imprisoned. This he reluctantly agreed to, leaving Aberdeen and moving to Edinburgh.
In a ceremony watched by the Dean of the Guild, the Town Clerk, the Procurator Fiscal and the Baillies, the offending pages were sliced from 350 of Williamson’s books and publicly burnt at the Mercat Cross by the town hangman. The remaining pages were never returned.
In Edinburgh, Peter contacted a lawyer and started planning for a legal challenge. He opened a coffee shop which became frequented by the Edinburgh legal fraternity and he started to teach himself Scots law. The year 1760 saw the start of an extended phase of courtroom battles against his persecutors in Aberdeen. In 1762, he was successful in getting the result of the Aberdeen trial reversed and was awarded costs and a £100 in damages.
The results of his investigations had revealed the names of the businessmen behind his kidnapping. These were Captain Robert Ragg, Walter Cochrane (the Aberdeen Town Clerk Depute), Baillie William Fordyce, Baillie William Smith, Baillie Alexander Mitchell, and Alexander Gordon, all local merchants with a share in the ship, Planter.
Further litigation ensued. Witnesses were found and they were mainly men who as boys had managed to escape kidnapping. The father of a boy who had sailed with Peter Williamson to the Americas testified. He said that while the Planter had been moored at Torry, his son had returned to him and refused to go back. He claimed that Captain Ragg and others involved had spoken again and again with him in the street, warning him that he would be sent to the Tolbooth if he didn’t send his son back to the ship. The boy went back.
The main incriminating evidence was the so-called “kidnapping book”. This was a ledger detailing all the expenses of the slave-ship venture. It mentioned Peter Williamson by name and included entries such as:
“To one pair of stockings to Peter Williamson, six pence; To five days of diet, one shilling and three pence.”
One entry read:
“To the man who brought Peter Williamson, one shilling and six pence.”
Eventually in 1768 the case was proved. Peter was awarded damages of £200 plus 100 guineas costs.
Child slavery was endemic in Aberdeen and elsewhere in the 1700s. The plantations in the American colonies were desperate for labour. The Book of Bon Accord (Robertson 1839) records that:
“The inhabitants of the neighbourhood dared not send their children into town, and even trembled lest they should be snatched away from their homes. For in all parts of the country emissaries were abroad, in the dead of night children were taken by force from the beds where they slept; and the remote valleys of the Highlands, fifty miles distant from the city, were infested by ruffians who hunted their prey as beasts of the chase.”
Skelton (2004) mentions that it was estimated that 600 boys and girls were abducted and sold for slavery between 1740 and 1760 in Aberdeen and the North-east. On the voyage alone that took Peter Williamson, there were 69 youngsters on board.
A BBC website accompanying a radio series on the history of the British Empire fills in some background from the period:
“Most accounts of British slaving date from the 16th century with the shipping of Africans to the Spanish Main. But less discussed is what happened to English and Scots eight, nine and ten year-olds in places like Aberdeen, London and Bristol. Many from those places were sold for forced labour in the colonies.
London gangs would capture youngsters, put them in the hold of a ship moored in the Thames and when the hold was full, set sail for America. Many authorities encouraged the trade. In the early 17th century authorities wanted rid of the waifs, strays, young thieves and vandals in their towns and cities. The British were starting to settle in Virginia. So that’s where the children went.
This was a time when it was common enough in Britain to have small children as cheap, or unpaid labour. In 1618 one hundred children were officially transported to Virginia. So pleased were the planters with the young labour that the then Lord Mayor, Sir William Cockayne, received an immediate order from the colony “to send another ship load.”
See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/empire/episodes/episode_36.shtml
Sources:
*Joseph Robertson: “The Book of Bon Accord”. Aberdeen 1839.
*Douglas Skelton: “Indian Peter. The extraordinary life and adventures of Peter Williamson”. Edinburgh, 2004.
*Peter Williamson “The Life and Curious Adventures of Peter Williamson, Who was Carried off from Aberdeen and Sold for a Slave”. York, 1757.
Read the full story here: The Life and Curious Adventures of Peter Williamson
He’d just been congratulating himself – it was quite early in the season to feel as fit as he did.
During the appalling winter, his saddle-fitness had declined, but since the spring had come early and bright he’d managed to improve on that.
Climbing the steepest hill he knew in the town; he’d managed it that day with less distress, in a higher gear, quicker and with better form than he’d done so far that year.
Half way up he’d even felt good enough to kick, to dig down into reserves of strength he didn’t know he had – to spin the pedals faster and actually accelerate up the hill.
That hill at the very edge of the parish boundary of his town – quite rural really – up a forestry trail to a summit with an Ordnance Survey concrete pillar trig-point on top and such a view! The hill that gathers the rain that feeds the springs that become the burn that gave his town its name and gave the town the green estuarine littoral to found itself upon all those centuries ago.
Cresting the summit and now on a plateau the cyclist knuckle-flicks the paddle to slip up a gear and relaxes, pleased with himself. Now travelling at about walking pace on the loose gravel path, heading slightly down and dead straight, increasing speed; faster now – jogging pace, faster now – running speed faster again – faster than a runner – gravel chips pinging poing, boing from beneath chunky, nobbly tyres.
To think: the loose-ish glacially deposited aggregate sand and gravel of this kame hill were water-borne – carried by that burn water; speck by speck, stone by stone down the valley to form that estuary, now reclaimed beneath shopping mall and car park and railway station and road: a perfect flatland for development alongside the harbour – that harbour itself once the shifting sand estuary of a much mightier-yet watercourse, now granite pier and concrete pile contained, dredger-tamed.
Now speeding about as fast as he’d like to go for comfort and safety on the unmetalled surface – any more and his suspension-forks wouldn’t plushly absorb the bumps of the boulder-studded gravel and sand surface – he realises in the quiet of his outreaching thoughts that he’s not alone – something impinges on his consciousness, matching speed and direction – a flicker in the trees: the path now a fully enclosed avenue high contrast light and shadow strobe pulsing through the tree fronds hiding the sky above. Shafts of coppergold light here briefly blinding him through the slatted louvres of the pines – there illuminating the quiet dust of the still forest, suspended in the air, a moment holding its breath.
That flicker in the trees, it’s real, it’s alive, it’s a deer!
On a parallel route, he can see small antlers – a buck! Matching movement through the forest. But the cyclist is a noisy fuss on a forestry road and the roe buck is effortless amongst moss and fern and boulder and trees, jinking and sidewinding – maintaining smooth forward momentum, muzzle high on this slender neck and with this jet black moist eye regarding and shadowing the cyclist’s progress, the roe buck stays with him – steady.
And then, the path gradient turns positive again, robbing both of speed, but still they shadow one another slowing to the crest, slowing, slowing together, stopping – stopped.
Unclipping one foot from a pedal, the mountain biker stands as still and quiet as he can on the upward-sloping path, and the roe stops too as if somehow robbed of the impetus which earlier made him run. A living-room’s width away, the deer is just inside the margin of the trees; this body parallel to the path, this head turning to the man. A moment of complete silence. A moment of complete stillness.
compared to the roe buck, he was just a conceited dilettante, with all this weird equipment and preparations
This moment – not enough for the man to see too deeply into these deep moist reflective big black eyes. Not enough to make a true mutual connection, not enough. But enough to for him to see that in these black moist eyes here is no human emotion – no way to ever connect.
And suddenly silently these eyes are away! Turning at right angles, the parallel shadowing over, finished – the buck springs with no noise and these slenderest of neat legs over a stone dyke into a grassy field and away swift and down towards the broad valley of the ancient burn. The two part, their paths brought together by coincidence, by providence, now their routes bifurcated and branching away from each other forever.
Standing now alone, the cyclist felt a little ashamed that he should have thought himself fit, that his meaty-thigh-powered steel and aluminium contrivance should have filled him with self-congratulatory regard. For all he prided himself on being an outdoor type; of connecting with the good earth, of living the life of the world – rather than just inhabiting it; now the man realised that, compared to the roe buck, he was just a conceited dilettante, with all this weird equipment and preparations and clothes and planning. A fussy amateur, only playing at being real – only pretending to be outside.
By contrast the deer was the very essence of a self-contained life without superfluity. Lean, slender, light, swift, efficient. Fit and fitting. Truly free.
For, now freed from his brief alien contact with the man, centred wholly and still within his body’s own movement, the buck’s desire line down into the valley is primordial. He is moving without moving, as water flows within itself; the buck cannot be anything other than what he is; he is integral.
Just as without the water there is no watercourse, the deer is self-contained in his looping graceful curved route down across open fields following a path of least resistance with no artifice, no construction, no meaning, no implication. Nothing is wasted and nothing is superfluous. He has neither capacity for understanding any distinction between himself and the landscape through which he moves, nor way of understanding the passing of one moment to the next. For by his existence that understanding would be redundant: he is that landscape; he is that movement; he is that moment – there can be no distinction for all are one.
as these thoughts wandered across his mind, the cyclist realised that he’d lost sight of the buck
Flashing across the field and vaulting… up, hey! Over another dyke at speed the buck somehow remains that silently moving pool of stillness, motionless in his body; moving without moving – completely fit for his surroundings and fitting them seamlessly and essentially.
Providence he is, and he is subject to providence. Here is no human emotion. Here is only motionless motion.
The cyclist stood watching as the buck receded to a speck, proceeding into the depths of the valley and from this high vantage the man’s eyes flickered to the prominences which he noticed stood, seeming sentinels, either side of the valley as it descended meandering eastwards towards the town’s urban centre.
On a hill to the north of the valley, a civic water supply reservoir. Looking for all the world like a truncated pyramid built by an ancient civilisation, the reservoir’s sepulchral forms devised an appropriate reflection to the modernist-style city crematorium which occupied the mirror-slope hill to the south. To the north, life-giving cool water – to the south, death and disposal in flames.
As he regarded the buildings on these slopes, and as these thoughts wandered across his mind, the cyclist realised that he’d lost sight of the buck. Try as he might, he couldn’t pick him out any more amongst the fields and dykes, hedges and copses as they spread out below him in the valley. He couldn’t see whether the roe buck would travel on the north or the south side. He couldn’t see what choice providence had made for the bifurcating future. On one branch, nurture and a plan for the future – on the other, consuming searing erasure; an end to a future.
He re-clipped his foot into the pedal, sighed deeply and pedalled on.