| Description | Council meeting, 18 May 1803
[Sederunt given]
The Council granted the application from the Aberdeen Whale Fishing Company for continued occupation of the Block House and other houses used by them in the whale fishing trade, on condition that they pay £30 rent to the Treasurer, and that they vacate the houses at Whitsunday 1804. (122r - 122v)
The Council considered the report by Professor Patrick Copland and Dr Robert Hamilton, Rev Mr James Ross, Baillie Alexander Galen, Mr Alexander More, late Dean of Guild, and Mr William Duncan, on the candidates for the post of teacher of writing, arithmetic, book keeping, navigation and geography in the public Writing School, vacated by the resignation of Mr William Duncan. The Council appointed Mr George Cruden, schoomaster at Old Deer to the post; the other candidates were Rev Mr John Stephen, Episcopal minister at Cruden, William Paton, schoolmaster at Kirkcudbright and James Thomson, residenter in Aberdeen. The Council authorised the Treasurer to pay an annual salary of £25 to Mr Cruden, subject to his observing certain conditions. [Conditions given.] (122v - 123v)
The Council remitted to the magistrates to arrange the sale or feu of the tenement of foreland on the south side of Castle Street which had been used as a common military guard house, but had become ruinous following the removal of the Town's guard to the Barracks at the Castle Hill. (124r)
The Council approved the magistrates' employment of John Busby, an experienced miner from the north of England, and authorised his continued employment, to make bores to discover whether there was a clay bottom to the interior part of the harbour, particularly at the entry, and westwards towards Footdee along the flood mark. Mr Renny, engineer, had asserted that, if the harbour did not have a clay bottom, the new docks could not be built. (124r - 125r) |