Nelson & His World

Discussion on the life and times of Admiral Lord Nelson
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 Post subject: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Mon Feb 10, 2014 2:02 pm 
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Do a search for 'Mary Buick' and variations upon the following story will be found. There is even a plaque in the memory of Mary Buick in Dundee harbour. The story appears to be an accepted fact.

Thomas Watson of Cellardyke in Fife, served aboard HMS Ardent during the early 1800's. In those days, sailors wives were allowed to go to sea with their husbands and Thomas's wife, Mary Buick, gave birth to Mary Watson at sea during the Battle of Copenhagen.

All three ( Thomas, Mary and Mary junior) then served aboard HMS Victory, where Mary Buick laid out the body of Admiral Horatio Nelson. The following is an extract from the book "Kilrenny and Cellardyke" by Harry Watson:

"And so it came about that Thomas and Mary Watson were serving aboard HMS Ardent in the spring of 1801 when she was ordered to join in the historic attack on Copenhagen under Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and his second in command, Vice Admiral Lord Nelson.

On April 2nd, at about half past ten in the morning, there began what Nelson himself, dodging flying splinters on the quarter deck of the Elephant, summed up as the most terrific of all the 103 engagements he had been in. On being told of Parker's signal to cease action and withdraw,
Nelson jokingly put his telescope to his blind eye, and entered the realm of popular mythology.

When the smoke of battle cleared, about 3 o'clock that afternoon, the Ardent's losses totalled 31 men killed and 68 wounded. Incredibly, as the shore batteries in Kattegat pounded the old warship's
wooden sides, Mary Watson went into labour and gave birth to a baby daughter, Mary Watson Junior.

Fifty years later during the 1851 census of Kilrenny, little Mary Watson - now Mrs John Campbell of John Street, Cellardyke - would give her place of birth as "Aboard HMS Ardent, 64 gun ship, at sea".

Later, the little family were transferred to Nelson's new flagship, the Victory, just in time to take part in the Battle of Trafalgar. While Thomas Watson took charge of a gun crew, and his wife tended to the wounded and dying, little Mary Watson was sent below in the care of another Cellardyke man, Malcolm McRuvie; and when Nelson succumbed to his fatal wound it was Thomas Watson's wife Mary Buick who was called on to help prepare the corpse for the embalmers".


The thing is that there is no mention of a Thomas Watson, (as a gunner nor from Fife), or Mary Buick nor Malcolm McRuvie in the national archive at Trafalgar and no mention in the crew muster of the Victory.

The reason for my interest is that my son's father-in-law made mention of the fact that he was related to Mary Buick and the family story is that she attended Nelsons body during the preservation process.

So, fact or myth?

Regards, Terry


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 12:02 am 
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Hi Terry

I will help if I can but I have to say I start in the sceptical camp.

There certainly were women on ships in Nelson's day, most notably at the Battle of the Nile. But, unless my memory is deceiving me I can't recall any mention of women on the British ships at Trafalgar. Let alone a child of that age.

Regardless of that I looked on the 1851 census to find the entry that you refer to re Mary's birth on HMS Ardent but I cannot for the life of me find it. I know these things sometimes get transcribed incorrectly so I just wondered have you actually seen that census entry?

MB


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 6:47 pm 
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I did a little idle Googling myself this afternoon and on this website:

http://auchmithieroots.freeforums.org/h ... -t221.html
I note that a contributor called Harry (scroll down a bit) notes this about Mary Buick:

I've seen her entry in one of the later Cellardyke censuses, where she gives her "place of birth" as "Aboard HMS Ardent, 64-gun ship, at sea". No date though! He does admit that no one has been able to confirm the legend about the embalming Nelson's body as fact.

The story about the embalming of Nelson's body is given sufficient credibility to allow its inclusion in a teaching pack about Nelson. Scroll down to 'Scots and the battle of Trafalgar' to see mention of Mary.

http://www.ewht.org.uk/uploads/download ... rsPack.pdf

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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 8:48 pm 
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Hi Anna

You know me of old - always looking for the evidence!! :D

If that census entry really is there I would love to see it. A few years ago I got intrigued by any census entries where people were born at sea. So I remember searching on all sorts of things like sea, HMS, ocean, Atlantic, Pacific etc. etc. But no matter how I search I can't find that detail on the 1851 census.

(There is one famous census entry where somebody put their POB as "near the field of the Battle of Waterloo")

And just on the subject of Mary Buick preparing Nelson's body for embalming. Surely he wasn't embalmed as such. That would involve draining off the blood and replacing it with a preservative. I can't recall that that happened to Nelson's body. I thought the whole body was just immersed - initially in "spirits of wine" and then brandy which was the nearest thing they had to pure alcohol.

Later this evening I'll pull out my copy of Beatty's report of Nelson's death and remind myself what he wrote.

If anything incorrect in what I've written above (quite likely!) I'll report back.

MB


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 9:28 pm 
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Well I was mostly right - in that Beatty simply says that on the examination of the wound a quantity of blood was evacuated from the wound. Nothing about all the blood being drawn off etc. etc.

He then goes on to say that the hair was cut off and all the clothes removed except his shirt and the body placed in a barrel of brandy.

There is a note that refers to "spirits of wine being the best preservative when it can be procured." I had the feeling that they had enough spirits of wine initially and that it was topped up by brandy but I must be wrong on that.

I am wracking my brains now to think whether any additional preservation work was done on Nelson's body when it had arrived back in England. I'll see if I can look anything out on that and again report back.


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:03 pm 
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I've just had a look at Dr Hills' 'Nelson: a medical casebook' by far the most recent and authoritative examination of Nelson's medical history and death.

She quotes Nicolas Vol 1 page 193: 'as soon as circumstances permitted the Surgeon to devote a portion of his attention to the care of Lord Nelson's honoured remains, measures were adopted to preserve them as effectively as the means then on board the Victory allowed.' No mention is made of embalming; only of putting the body head first into a leaguer of brandy. 'This brandy was drawn off and replaced once more before Victory reached Gibraltar on 28th October,where the brandy was replaced by spirits of wine [ethyl alcohol] There had been no spirits of wine aboard Victory, although Beatty felt it was 'by far the best when it can be procured.'' (Nicolas Vol iii, p. 98)

In his public record, Beatty was at pains to record that Nelson's remains were generally well-preserved: the facial features, he notes, were 'somewhat tumid from absorption of the spirit but on using friction from a napkin they resumed in great degree their natural character.' but this is not what he wrote in a private warning to the Admiralty, noting then that 'the face of the dead hero was in a poor state and could not be exposed to the public gaze at the Lying in State'.

I think it is probably safe to assume that Nelson was not enbalmed. If Mary was involved at all, ( a big 'if') could it be possible that she took part in preparing the body for preserving as best they could?

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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:29 pm 
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I have just searched the Scottish Census for 1851. The daughter, Mary is listed on this Census as Mary Camble. Age 50 born about 1801 she was shown as married to John Camble.
The place of birth section states "On board The  Ardent, 64 Gun Ship At Sea". In the later Census John and Mary are named Campbell.  The Parish was Kilrenny. Town Cellardyke. Unfortunately I could not see a copy of the original Census as it is not available to view online.

I found this link very helpful in the search as it mentioned that Mary married John Campbell. There is an email link for anyone who wishes to follow this up. :D

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/t ... 1088349011


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 10:37 pm 
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In 1881 Mary Campbell is 80. The Census states: Where born At Sea Off Copenhagen. :D


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 11:02 pm 
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Good work folks!

However, no mention of Thomas Watson or the other Cellardyke man Malcom McRuvie in the Trafalgar archive let alone on the muster list of HMS Victory. Mary Buick (if she was on it) might not have had a mention (being a super-numery), but the other two, as serving seamen should have been?

The link above gives this further information:

Thomas and his wife Mary Buick continued in the Navy service, and later were with Lord Nelson on H.M.S. Victory during the battle of Trafalgar. During this battle, little Mary was sent down below in the care of another Cellardyke man, Malcolm McRuvie. When Nelson died from his wounds, it was Mary and another woman who had the job of sewing Nelson's body into a canvas shroud. Both Thomas and Mary eventually settled back down in Cellardyke, where for a number of years they kept a public house, no doubt regaling their customers with the stories of their adventures.

So, was Nelson sewn into a canvas shroud? I don't recall this?

There is no doubt that Thomas and Mary existed, their gravestone is in the kirkyard at Kilrenny:
http://donald-macleod.photoshelter.com/ ... 6FmqIF0Pw0

Note the spelling on the stone: "BUEK"


Last edited by scotsgent on Wed Feb 12, 2014 12:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 11:56 pm 
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appear wrote:
I have just searched the Scottish Census for 1851. The daughter, Mary is listed on this Census as Mary Camble. Age 50 born about 1801 she was shown as married to John Camble.
The place of birth section states "On board The  Ardent, 64 Gun Ship At Sea". In the later Census John and Mary are named Campbell.  The Parish was Kilrenny. Town Cellardyke. Unfortunately I could not see a copy of the original Census as it is not available to view online.

I found this link very helpful in the search as it mentioned that Mary married John Campbell. There is an email link for anyone who wishes to follow this up. :D

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/t ... 1088349011


Well done. Excellent. I am usually quite dogged with my Ancestry searches. But Camble for Campbell and Ardont for Ardent defeated me on this occasion!!


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:45 am 
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I discovered this forum by accident last night while browsing the net, and decided it was well worth joining. Particularly in view of this thread.

Let me put my hand up right away and admit that my book, "Kilrenny and Cellardyke: 800 Years of History" (John Donald, Edinburgh, 1986) helped to perpetuate the legend that Thomas Watson, Mary Buick and Malcolm McRuvie of Cellardyke in Fife served on the "Victory" at Trafalgar. I started researching my family-history and the history of my native village in the early 1980s and got a great deal of information from the three books written by our local historian George Gourlay in Victorian times. His book about Cellardyke came out in 1879 and he wrote two further books. Gourlay's methods were quite modern, because he kept back numbers of old local newspapers, so that he could check names and dates of, for example, disasters at sea, and he also went round the town interviewing old folk about interesting events they had witnessed. It was Gourlay who first put in print the story about Trafalgar, and descendants of the Watsons and Malcolm McRuvie have perpetuated the story down to the present day.

I have talked to and corresponded with some of these people, and have also met and written to the historian Roy Adkins, whose book about Trafalgar came out in 2004, and everyone is agreed that there is no evidence for the Watsons or McRuvie having been in the crew of that ship. If I had known this back in 1985 when the book was nearing completion, I wouldn't have included that story. However, Roy Adkins assures me that Thomas Watson did serve on HMS Ardent, and after that on HMS Bellona, from which he was discharged at Spithead at the end of his naval service.

Now for Mary Buick. You may be surprised to learn that descendants of Thomas Watson and Mary Buick still live in their old house at 7 Shore Street, Cellardyke. One member of that family - I'll call him by his initials AG - came to see me one day last year with a scrapbook of old photos and box-files of documents, so we had a rare old time swapping stories and reminiscences. I left home in Cellardyke to go away to university at the age of 18 and I've just turned 70. AG is a very good researcher, and he has discovered that - far from running after the press gang that was dragging her husband Thomas Watson back to their ship - Mary Buick actually made her way down to Yarmouth later in the year, and the Allotment Book of HMS Ardent has an entry for 1st February 1799 to the effect that Thomas Watson has asked for 1/2 of his wages to be sent to his wife Mary Buick, at an address in Yarmouth. The ship occasionally put in there, and the couple's 1st child John Watson was born there in 1799. The payments to Mary Buick stopped on 28th February 1801 and AG speculates that Mary may have joined the "Ardent" then, perhaps in the capacity of a nurse.

You've all heard the story of Mary Watson, the "Baby of the Sea-Battle", who was born on the "Ardent" in 1801 during the Battle of Copenhagen. She later married a cooper called John Campbell and lived to be 90, bringing up a large family. Some descendants moved to Australia and set up a business in Adelaide. The AG I've mentioned is descended from her brother James Watson who inherited the house at 7 Shore Street where his descendants still live. Next-door at no.6 lived Thomas's brother William Watson ("Water Willie") who was my 3 x great-grandfather. Gourlay tells a rattling good yarn about him too but I won't go into that here.

Now for Malcolm McRuvie. He was from Campbelltown in Argyll, and the surname was originally McIlreavie, but the Fife people are notorious for mangling names they aren't familiar with, and in Cellardyke - where he married two local girls in succession - his name became McRuvie and descendants all over the world have preserved that spelling. A friend of mine back home has set up a Cellardyke page on Facebook, on which he posts interesting stories from old local newspapers, and he recently sent me an obituary from 1876 of Malcolm McRuvie's 2nd wife Isobella Wilson which mentions the old boy himself (mistakenly saying he was from Inveraray rather than Campbelltown) -

1876
One of the oldest inhabitants of Cellardyke died in the ancient house there which she had been born and had uninterrupted passed her long span of fourscore and seven years on Monday last. The venerable inmate was the last survivor of the family of the worthy James Wilson, who, for the long period of fifty six years was town officer and also the beadle of the parish, and who, by a curious coincidence, died at the same advanced age in the early spring of 1830’ it’s a strange thing hoo folk sometime get their ain” is a familiar Scottish saying, true if ever in Isabella Wilson’s case, seeing that the home keeping Cellardyke damsel was woo’d and wed by the young sailor Malcolm McRuvie, all the way from the dukes town of Inverary. This was some sixty years ago when the revenue cutters used to rendezvous in the Forth, when their black snake like hulls and flowing clouds of canvas were the pride of the sea, just as the blue jackets who manned them were to the hearts of the winsome lasses by the green old shore. The peace loving cutterman, however soon quitted the king’s service and cast his lot in with the hardy fishers of Cellardyke, and so a new name which has since spread and prospered, was added to the coast, he was endowed with no little observation and a kindly heart, and many a pleasant night was passed by his friends listening to his curious stories by the ancient hearth, which by the way was the last relic in the East of Fife of the old Scottish ingle, projecting with centre post to the very middle of the floor, and having a huge chasm for a chimney, so open in fact as to have enabled you to study astronomy by the winter fire. But the world is ever changing and years have elapsed since the old mariner went to his rest, where his faithful partner has now re-joined him.

=======

So Malcolm had been a sailor on a revenue cutter, chasing smugglers on behalf of the Customs & Excise service, but there's no mention of him serving at Trafalgar. However, he does seem to have been a bit of a story-teller!

There are still McRuvies in the town. Old Kate McRuvie was a Sunday school teacher when I was little, known to her contemporaries as "Kate the De'il" on account of her temper. One branch moved up to Aberdeen where John McRuvie is a popular radio presenter, compere and DJ. I've met an Australian McRuvie who has been a TV journalist, builder of adobe houses and maths. tutor.

A few days ago - here's a coincidence - I got an email out of the blue from a New Zealand TV company who make a programme very similar to our "Who Do You Think You Are?"
They are planning a programme about someone who is a descendant of Malcolm McRuvie, and he or she had told them about my book. They were looking for more information. I don't know who this person is, but I suspect they are descended from Malcolm McRuvie and Isabella Wilson's daughter Mary McRuvie who married a Highlander called Donald McKay and emigrated with him to New Zealand. This couple's daughter Isabella Wilson McKay married a farmer called Valentine Vickers Masefield who was a 2nd cousin of the British poet laureate John Masefield of "Sea Fever" fame ("I must down to the sea again ...").

Enough already. I hope some of this has been of interest.

Harry


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 Post subject: Re: Thomas Watson and Mary Buick - aboard the Victory?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 5:28 pm 
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Many thanks, Harry, for that fascinating piece of history!

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