William McGregor

William McGregor was a seaman based in Leith although, as a sailor, he would have spent time at sea or at other ports and this sometimes makes it difficult to pin down his movements.  We don't know what his everyday name was although I feel confident that it would probably have been one of the many Scottish variations like Wull or Billy.  He is referred to as William in every record but that would be the case whatever he called himself.

The records tell us that he was in the Merchant Herring fleet in his earlier days and a ferryman in his later years.  The ferry could have been the one from Leith to Kinghorn or Pettycur, as described in Grant's Old and New Edinburgh (written in the 1880s so reference to "earlier this century" means the early 1800s, his lifetime).  I wonder if William McGregor was one of the "strong, rough and quaint fellows" with a blue bonnet referred to in the text.  Although the Hill and Adamson photo below is not of our man, he would have dressed in a similar fashion to these contemporaries from Newhaven.

Or these.  The boy is wearing one of the bonnets favoured by the sailors of the time.

Hill obviously liked the "Hello Sailor" pose for his photographs.

The herring fishing would have meant moving with the shoals on their seasonal migrations and it was a dangerous business, as the photo of Wick harbour in 1865 shows.  These open boats were not designed to withstand some of the storms which could suddenly descend.  He was missing from the 1841 and 1851 censuses, from Leith anyway, and the name is so common as to be difficult to discriminate between the dozens of possibilities in ports up and down the east coast, including England.

Considering the type of work he was involved in he lived to a good age, 71, although with chronic bronchitis and a diseased heart it would have been a hard one as well.