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Coastal Notes
REWARD.
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Certain fishing boats, belonging to buckhaven, having yesterday entered the Harbour of stonehaven, and the shoremaster having, previous to their sailing the same evening, gone on board for the purpose of collecting the shore – dues, some of the Fishermen in the Boats, whose names are unknown, not only refused to pay the Dues, but also assaulted, threatened, and offered violence to the Shoremaster, while in the execution of his duty, and one of the Boats left the Harbour without paying any Dues whatever, in violation of the Act of Parliament under which the dues are leviable. The harbour trustees, being determined to use every means for bringing the Guilty Persons to Punishment, hereby, with the sanction of the Magistrates, offer a Reward of
Three Guineas
to any person who, within a month, shall give such information as may lead to the discovery and apprehension of the Offenders. The Reward will be paid on conviction, and the Informer’s name, if required, concealed.
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Stonehaven, 5th September 1837 |
JAs. Tindal
Clerk to the Trustees |
This reward poster, perhaps more reminiscent of the Wild West of Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, appeared in and around Stonehaven in the late summer of 1837. It’s not known whether the offenders were indeed brought to justice or if the reward was paid out, but these fishermen were clearly unhappy about paying the dues. Dues led to an international incident in 1869 when a number of French captains refused to pay harbour dues at Stonehaven. This eventually led to a ruling by James W Barclay, Vice Consul of France in Aberdeen that all the English boats over 10 tons had to pay the dues and there was no reason under the law why the French should be exempt.
The Harbour Trustees didn’t always get it right though: in 1859 they were reprimanded and fined £100 for wrongly charging dues to the herring curers. They also had to refund all the money unlawfully taken from the curers.
There’s evidence form Montrose that fuel costs were an issue as far back as the late 19th century. A group of fishermen wrote a stiff letter to the Harbour Trustees complaining bitterly that the cost of the harbour tug ‘Rapid’ was still set at 3d a mile, which they felt was excessive. The charge had been raised earlier when the price of coal had been high, but the price of coal had since reverted to a normal figure but the towing charge hadn’t fallen correspondingly. They were also angry at being treated like second class citizens in spite of the large revenues they generated for the Harbour. “We are not bound to come to this harbour with our various catches to be subject to want of attention and incivility in fact were it not for the fact that great encouragement and assistance is given to us by the fishcurers, many a good shot would go past the port altogether as when we are 50 miles off or even at a less distance it is a simple matter for us to shape our course for any of the neighbouring ports. This question is being seriously considered by us and if matters do not mend we will hold ourselves bound to put our thoughts into actions”. They claimed to be bringing in around £5,600 in revenue to the port, which would have been a considerable sum to let go so I imagine that the authorities must have made some efforts to keep the men happy.
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