Stonehaven Harbour in the 17th and 18th centuries

In today’s post I’m going to be looking at a set of records relating to the harbour at Stonehaven. 2020 is Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters, a celebration of Scotland's lochs, waterways, islands and coastlines. We had intended on carrying out some events and activities to highlight our collections relating to rivers and coasts in Aberdeenshire, but this has been made a little more challenging with the lockdown! Hopefully this blog post will make some contribution to the Year of Coasts and Waters. 

Our Stonehaven harbour records are not fully listed yet, but box lists were being prepared by staff and volunteers just prior to lockdown and the records certainly date back to the 17th century.  

The start of the 1693 Shore Dues Tables, entitled "Ane Exact Table for uplifting Shoar Dews at Stonehyve"

The harbour was first built in the 16th or early 17th century in the Old Town of Stonehaven. The collection includes three shore dues tables which show the rates the town charged ships for using the harbour and unloading and loading goods there. These date from 1693, the 1730s (this item is unfortunately in rather poor condition) and 1756. Images and transcripts of the tables have been added to our website here: https://www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/services/libraries-and-archives/aberdeen-city-and-aberdeenshire-archives/stonehaven-harbour. The transcriptions should explain any unfamiliar terms and decipher some of the trickier handwriting.  

What can they tell us about Stonehaven’s history? They give us a valuable insight into the sorts of goods imported and exported from Stonehaven in the 17th and 18th centuries, which in turn tell us about the industries in the area, and the commodities being consumed by local residents.  Across all three tables we see building materials (timber, bricks, slates) and goods like coal, mill stones, lime listed as imports.  

Section of the 1730s table: the final two lines list the different grains imported and exported at the Harbour: "bear wheat peese or any oyr [other] grain"

Foodstuffs are also listed across all three tables – salt, fish, grains and, in 1756, cheese, butter, onions, apples - but there is a noteable expansion in the range and luxuriousness of the products imported by 1756. Although some of the items listed – tea, chocolate, coffee, spices, lemons, oranges and tobacco - don’t seem particularly noteworthy to us, in the mid 18th century these were luxury goods, only available to wealthier consumers. This may reflect a growing market for these goods in the Stonehaven and Kincardineshire. 

Another food item shows Stonehaven’s connection to one of the darker aspects of 18th century life: the transatlantic slave trade. Loaf sugar and raw ingredients for powder sugar and sugar candy would all have been produced by slave labour on plantations in the Caribbean. This demonstrates the triangular structure of the slave trade, in which British ships shipped enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and America to work (known as the "middle passage"), and goods produced by slave labour returned to the UK. This seems particularly relevant in the current context of the Black Lives Matter campaigns worldwide. 

Loaf sugar listed third from the bottom in this section of the 1756 Shore Dues table. The top entries lists other luxury goods

The 1756 table also includes a wider range of fabrics and other consumer goods: candle wicks, liquors, different qualities of papers, stockings and playing cards. 

Entry for "200 pack playing Cards"

In terms of exports; these are only separated out in the 1693 and 1730s tables but give us an idea of local industries in the area; unsurprisingly fish and various grains are mentioned in both tables, but slates are also mentioned as an export which suggests they were being manufactured locally.  

It will be interesting, once the Stonehaven Harbour collection is complete, to draw comparisons between Stonehaven and the larger harbour in Aberdeen. The latter is currently the focus of an Archives Revealed-funded cataloguing project at Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives. More information about the Aberdeen Harbour Board cataloguing project can be found at the Project’s Blog.