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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 76

Tayport and Broughty Ferry

Tayport and Broughty Ferry

were little more than fishing villages without other landing places than the beach and rocks; the dangers to navigation at the entrance of the river were marked, buoyed, and page 6 lighted under the care of the office-bearers of the Seamen's Fraternity, but there was no floating lightship or pilot vessel, and accidents were more numerous and fatal than they are now. The seamen belonging to the port learned their business as apprentices, and were well up to their work. Large smacks carrying goods and passengers to London, and brigs trading to the Baltic ports and a few to America, were manned with efficient and hardy sailors. There were no merchant-ship midshipmen; young lads of respectable connections who did not get into the Royal Navy or the East India Company's service had to go to sea as sailor boys and get a good practical knowledge of their duties, which, united to the education afforded them at the schools of Dundee, enabled most steady fellows to become officers and commanders of merchant ships in various parts of the Empire at home and abroad. The Grammar School, the Parish School, and the Dundee Academy gave the means, at a very moderate cost, of obtaining some knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, mechanics, navigation, chemistry, and kindred sciences which were not usually taught at provincial schools, and least of all in English town schools of that period. The Academy stood in the Nethergate, opposite the foot of Tay Street; the buildings were not imposing, but the teachers and subjects taught were very good indeed, and fitted many young men for acting a useful part in life, and attaining positions of professional page 7 distinction. My father was for many years a much-respected member of the Town Council under the