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The Legacy of George Watson

George Watson’s Involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade

George Watson was born in Edinburgh on 23 November 1654. After a long career as an accountant, merchant, banker and investor, he died on 3 April 1723. He was well known during his lifetime for acts of philanthropy as well as for the astute business dealings through which he amassed a considerable fortune. As he was unmarried and childless, on his death the greater part of his wealth was bequeathed in his will to charitable causes, particularly to education. He appointed the Company of Merchants of the City of Edinburgh to oversee the expenditure of his legacies, including that which enabled the foundation of the school for the sons of “decayed merchants” of Edinburgh. George Watson instructed that this school should bear his name and be called George Watson’s Hospital. 

Until recently, the exact source of the wealth that funded the foundation of the original George Watson’s Hospital had not been fully researched. Whilst the majority of George Watson’s business activities were based in Edinburgh, other cities in Great Britain and in continental Europe, the evidence now available indicates that he also invested in colonial schemes and in the trade in enslaved African people.

We know from letters in the Edinburgh City Archive that George Watson was involved with James Pitcairn and Michael Kincaid in a project to charter a vessel to transport slaves and ivory from Guinea to Barbados1. The first letters to mention this venture date back to December 1695. The initial voyage was intended to take place in mid 1696 and was to be undertaken in conditions of secrecy as Scots were not allowed to trade with English colonies before the Act of Union in 1707. Pitcairn and Kincaid specify that “our business needs not be public”.2 A letter from June 1696 further outlines the route and captain for the imminent sailing of The Amity as well as the names of some of the other investors: James Foulis, Alexander Lorimer, William Gordon, and Robert McKerrall.3  

Both George Watson’s ledger and financial journal document investments in a ship called The Amity which left Dublin for Barbados in autumn 1696.4 5 It was captained by James Somerville yet despite the intentions laid out in the initial letters, it does not appear to have been involved in the slave trade at that time.6 In this first voyage, The Amity carried beef, cheese, and buttons to Barbados while bringing sugar, cotton, and ginger from Barbados,7 and tobacco from Maryland or Virginia back to England.8 Watson made further investments in The Amity between 1696 and 1700.9 10

George Watson and his associates saw an opportunity to make money given a number of economic factors. First, the price of sugar had become advantageous to merchants in England and investors saw this opportunity and quickly moved to exploit it. Pitcairn and Kincaid wrote to George Watson to outline the change in route for The Amity due to “sugars being now so much fallen.”11 This explains why the first voyage did not follow the plan outlined in the December 1695 letters. Shortly after The Amity’s arrival in Barbados the duty on sugar was doubled.12 The reduced profit from only trading sugar and tobacco could explain why the next three voyages reverted to the original plan of sailing first to the West African coast. 

It was also at this time that the colonial office in Barbados had identified a 28,000 deficit in the number of slaves required to work their plantations and desired either free trade or a regulated Royal African Company to rectify this.13 Shortly after this statement, the Board of Trade in Barbados got their wish. With the ending of the Royal African Company’s monopoly in April 1696, conditions were perfect for investors to get involved in this newly opened market. 

The Amity appears in official colonial papers as it was seized by the English authorities in Maryland in 1698 for trading illegally due to it being a Scottish ship. This seizure also appears in the English newspapers.14 However, it was soon trading again because of the technicality that although James Duncan, its captain after James Somerville died after arriving in Barbados,15 was Scottish, he lived in England and so was entitled to trade with the English colonies as per the Acts of Trade and Navigation.16

Recent research in the National Archive in London has established that a ship called The Amity arrived in Barbados from the Island of May off Guinea in West Africa in December 1698, December 1699 and in March 1700.17 On none of these occasions is there clear documentary evidence that its cargo included slaves because the entries in the shipping records are either damaged, illegible or blank. However, given the intention set out in December 1695, the route and ports of call, as well as the market conditions, it is a reasonable inference that these voyages carried enslaved African people. There also exists a letter dated 9 November 1700 in which Pitcarin and Kincaid allude to a “transport service,” and suggest that George Watson could recoup a debt owed to him from another potential investor in this “transport service,” Alexander Innes.18 Watson and Innes were trading tobacco together through a ship called The Robert of Leith in 1696,19 a vessel that George Watson appeared to be managing himself.20

Between 1698 and 1700, after departing the Isle of May and crossing the Atlantic, The Amity followed a pattern of exporting sugar, rum and molasses from Barbados before trading in tobacco in Maryland. The production of all four of these goods would certainly have come from plantations worked by enslaved people.

In November 1700, a letter from Pitcairn and Kincaid informed George Watson that The Amity had been robbed by pirates near the Isle of May. The ship was then refitted in Barbados but it was subsequently seized, condemned, and sold by the government in Maryland.21 At this point, the appetite of Watson and his fellow investors in the transatlantic slave trade seems to have waned as there are no further mentions of ventures of this kind in his letters or ledgers. 

The aim of this research was to better understand George Watson’s involvement in the slave trade and therefore does not touch on his investments elsewhere within the English colonies. While researching these voyages and reading his letters it is clear that George Watson also had financial interests and investments in Jamaica22 and India23, and in the tobacco trade.24 He also invested in a ship that sailed between Angola and Cartegena in 1698, which was a major lane in the transatlantic slave trade for the colonies of South America.25 It is often said that Watson did not invest in the Darien scheme and while this appears to be true, it cannot be said that he wasn’t involved. George Watson was tasked by the Commissioners of the Darien Scheme to procure arms for the first colonists to the isthmus of Panama.26 As a prominent and shrewd accountant, merchant, and investor it should not come as a surprise that George Watson was so involved in colonial trade during these years. In fact, he was one of a number of Scottish merchants engaging in transatlantic trade despite the Acts of Trade and Navigation.27

Very little in history is clear cut. Not only are our interpretations of events seen through the prism of our own times and experiences, but historical evidence is rarely as clear or complete as we might wish it to be.

But what the archival evidence clearly shows is as follows:

  • George Watson and his colleagues Pitcairn and Kincaid had the intention of investing in a ship to carry slaves from West Africa to Barbados.

  • They invested in a ship called The Amity that sailed in the years immediately after the Royal African Company lost its monopoly on the trade of enslaved people and at a time when Barbados was actively asking for more slaves.

  • The Amity made three voyages between December 1698 and March 1700 on the exact route used at that time by ships taking Black people from West Africa to enslavement in the plantations of the Caribbean.

1. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1695, December 7  and December 24). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 8, Bundle 1) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
2. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1695, December 24). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 8, Bundle 1) Edinburgh, United Kingdom 
3. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, June 6). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
4. Watson, G. Ledger 1684-1697 (1696, October). [Investments in The Amity] Edinburgh City Archives (SL242 12/11/10) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
5. Watson, G. Financial Journal 1684-1697 (1696, October 1). [Investments in The Amity] Edinburgh City Archives (SL242 12/11/9) Edinburgh, United Kingdom, p.241
6.Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, June 6). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
7. Colonial Office Barbados Shipping Returns 1678-1704. The National Archives (CO 33/13) Kew, United Kingdom
8. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, October 31). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
9. Watson, G. Ledger 1684-1697 (1697, February). [Investments in The Amity] Edinburgh City Archives (SL242 12/11/10) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
10. Watson, G. Financial Journal 1684-1697 (1696, February 18). [Investments in The Amity] Edinburgh City Archives (SL242 12/11/9) Edinburgh, United Kingdom, p.241 p.244 
11. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, October 31). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
12. Colonial Office Council Barbados 1696-1699 (1697, August 31). The National Archives (CO 29/6) Kew, United Kingdom
13. Colonial Office Board of Trade Barbados 1696-1699. The National Archives (CO 28/3) Kew, United Kingdom
14. Ridpath, G. (1703) The Case of Scots-men Residing in England and in the English Plantations, Edinburgh <https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PZuC-AFKaTUC> pp.9-10
15. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1698, March 17). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 7) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
16. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1698, March 17). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 7) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
17. ‘Council Papers 1698-1701 (Continued)’ (1914). The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 22/1, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4243320> p.34
18. Colonial Office Barbados Shipping Returns 1678-1704. The National Archives (CO 33/13) Kew, United Kingdom
19. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1700, November 9). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 3) Edinburgh, United Kingdom Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, April 9). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom 
20. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, July 4). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
21. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1700, November 28). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 3) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
22. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1698, December 20). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 7) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
23. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1698, September 15). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 7) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
24. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1696, July 4). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 14, Bundle 8) Edinburgh, United Kingdom
25. Pitcairn, J. and Kincaid, M. (1698, December 20). [Letters to George Watson] Edinburgh City Archives (GD277, Box 12, Bundle 7) Edinburgh, United Kingdom 
26. Pratt Insh, G. (ed.) ‘Papers relating to the ships and voyages of the company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies, 1696-1707’ (1924). Scottish History Society, 6. National Library of Scotland [SCS.SHS.87] Edinburgh, United Kingdom 
27. Dobson, D. Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011) p.60