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.
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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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