Graham Dalton

  Scottish fishermen being in the Arctic ocean at the time of the Reformation between the time of Henry VIII and Good Queen Bess has stirred a bee in my bonnet. I've felt for some time that historians, or at least the official ones have a habit of thinking that the methods of previous generations were no more than the early developments of todays technology, when, in fact the technologies were fully developed in themselves. Admittedly not at an academically sophisticated mathematical level but most certainly at an advanced artisan stage. It is assumed that the early sailors could not make long ocean voyages or survive in harsh sea conditions. The first example is the Greek dismissal of the Phoenician claims to have circumnavigated Africa. Was it possible in Mediterranean craft? The boats were propelled by a mixture of oar and sail and the Phoenician sailors were professional with levels of skill like the present day round the world yachtsmen. With oars, a boat making 2 miles per ho...

  I had just settled back to the Stuarts when my local Writers' Group decided the months task would be a letter that changed the World. Naturally I looked over Bonnie Prince Charlie and his antecedents and then remembered John Cabot, on his first voyage, had brought back ore samples that looked like gold. They turned out to be 'fools gold', iron pyrites but it did it lead to English interest in North America, I wondered. Further investigation, into his son Sebastian revealed he had tried to find the North West Passage and may even have sailed into Hudson Bay. Following that it came to light that Sebastian had organised a search for a North East Passage. This expedition was undertaken by Willoughby and Chancellor but the pair became separated during a storm near the North Cape in the extreme north of Norway. Willoughby carried on but he and his crews died during the winter East of Murmansk, well known for the Artic convoys of WW2. Chancellor, having called at a Norwegian por...

  I’ve been belabouring Bonnie Prince Charlie and it’s taking me away from my objective of sea stories, so I need to stop. Just one last comment. Someone asked me if I could do a John Wayne set in the highlands and, after a bit of thought, I said ‘Of course, we could do The Searchers with a Lowland girl abducted by the McDonalds and being searched for in Glen Coe. Or we could do the rustlers, the Dalton gang would do, coming down from Robber’s roost to steal cattle. It would have the advantage of a language problem as Wayne would be a Lowlander and not speak Gaelic. There’s also a story about the surveyor making the roads, he is under threat to take the road through one clan and not another, depending on whether the clan chief is enlightened. A kind of Wayne railroad Western where the town wants the railroad but the rancher won’t allow it. Of course, that could be set in the industrial revolution, just think what happened when the railroad was getting close to Balmoral. My own vill...

 I watched Neil Oliver again and while admitting he was talking of the clans at the time of Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion, I notice the comment that Charlie lost about a third of his 'army' when the clansmen went off to secure their booty passed without comment on that booty; where it was got and what they did to acquire it. Well, I admit I have not studied the subject in detail but from the time of the Roman invasion, I am unaware of a single instance where the people of the Lowlands decided, without provocation, to invade the country of the clans, or to lay claim to any of it. What angers me is that the incursion of the clans into the lowlands is regarded by historians as 'romantic' and glorify it as a gallant attempt to restore the main line of the Stuarts to the throne, something the democratic areas of Britain had rejected, twice. Looking at the Stuart period, in the civil strife of the 1650's, the Lowland Scots did indeed invade English soil to assist ...