Billy McWatters: Chris Veitch - The False Alarm of 1804

Thu, Sep 20th 2018 at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Weekly meeting with guest speaker


The speaker at last week's meeting of the club was Mr. Chris Veitch from Jedburgh, Chris in his early years was a management trainee with Turnbull Dyers in Victoria Road, he held various other positions, but as the industry was contracting he decided to train as a teacher of Chemistry, Maths, and Computing, eventually becoming Principal Teacher of Computing at Jedburgh Grammar School where he worked for 33 years. His family home was at Inchbonny near Jedburgh and he gave a detailed history of James Veitch 1771 - 1838 who despite having no special education, became an inventor of clocks, telescopes, microscopes, kaleidoscopes, and he was an expert in astronomy. James became very well known to scientists and astronomers of his day.

In 1804 there was a fear in Britain that Napoleon Bonaparte might invade with his great armada of ships, and beacons were made ready on many high points over the country. In Jedburgh the beacon was on the Dunion, and in Hawick on Crumhaughhill. Things began to go wrong when the duty watch at the beacon situated at Hume Castle, near Kelso, was sure that they viewed a beacon being lit South of Berwick, so they lit up their own, and within a short period other beacons were lit, and men began to marshall in the various villages and towns in the Borders. However it did not take too long to discover that the beacon seen by the Hume watch was actually charcoal burners at Shoreswood Colliery in Northumberland. So messages were sent cancelling the operation. Chris further explained that as he understood the alarm system of beacons at that time, it was meant to be two beacons that were to be lit by each watch, yet Hume had only lit one. So it became one big "false alarm" in 1804. It was a well presented talk. Chris dealt with a number of questions from Rotarians. A vote of thanks was proposed by President Mairhi Trickett.

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