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[Sidenote: 1647.]
‘Two years before this, one Captain George Scott came to Inverness, and
built a ship of a prodigious bigness for bulk and burden--never such
a one seen in our north seas. The carpenters he brought with him to
the north, and my Lord Lovat gave him wood--fir and oak--in Dalcattack
Woods. I myself was aboard of her in the Road of Kessock, April 1645,
and many more, to whom it was a wonder. She set sail the day before the
battle of Auldearn; and among other passengers that went in her south
were--Colonel Fraser, and his lady, Christina Baillie; Hugh Fraser,
younger of Clanvacky, and Andrew Fraser in Leys; also John and William
Fraser in Leys. This ship rode at anchor in the river mouth of Nairn,
when the battle of Auldearn was fought in view. Captain Scott enlarged
the ship afterwards, as a frigate, for war, and sailed with her to the
Straits, his brother William with him. William was made a colonel, at
Venice, and his martial achievements in defence of that state against
the Turks may very well admit him to be ranked amongst our worthies.
He became vice-admiral to the Venetian fleet, and the bane and terror
of Mussulman navigators. Whether they had gallies, galloons, or
galliasses, or great war-ships, it was all one to him. He set upon
all alike, saying, the more they were the more he would kill, and the
stronger the rencounter should be, the greater should be his honour,
and the richer his prize. He oftentimes so scourged the Archipelago
of the Mussulmans, that the Ottoman power, and the very gates of
Constantinople, would quake at the report of his victories; and he
did so ferret them out of all the creeks of the Adriatic Gulf, and
so sharply put them to it, that they hardly knew in what part of the
Mediterranean they should best shelter themselves from the fury of his
blows. He died in his bed of a fever, in the Isle of Candy, in 1652. He
was truly the glory of his nation and country, and was honoured, after
his death, with a statue of marble, which I saw, near the Rialto of
Venice, April 1659.’--_Fraser of Wardlaw’s MS., 1666._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1648.