The Royal Scottish Navy
I’ve started to research the navel activity during the Stuart Kings as it was a time of expanding trade and am enjoying it immensely. Irritatingly, the first thing I have come across is the cause of Bannockburn. I was taught simply that Edward II was determined to subdue the Scots but it turns out that he set off to relieve the siege of both Stirling and Perth which had been supplied by sea and the rivers Forth and Tay. The towns were not only besieged but a blockade had been established on both rivers by ships from the islands friendly to Bruce. Then I came across James II of Scotland giving out letters of Marque which allowed Scottish captains to seize Portuguese ships in retaliation for those the Portuguese had from Scottish merchants, indicating the Scots had become active in the Atlantic trade. The Scots traditional markets were, of course, the North sea and Baltic states even to Moscow and there was a great deal of interaction between the Baltic and Scotland’s East Coast before Columbus and the opening of the Atlantic trade. Unfortunately I have not yet been able to find any detail of engagements, beyond a mention that James IV’s ships defeated five English warships in the Forth in 1489 and a further three in the Tay in 1450. However, I have found research for a novel is a matter of collecting snippets from a variety of sources and only five percent becomes valuable.
The picture is of a carving of the USS Constitution