CSS Rob Roy

The CSS Rob Roy was a Confederate blockade runner which, commanded by Captain William Watson, ran to and from Bermuda, the Bahamas and Cuba from 1862 to 1864, during the American Civil War.

Watson, who had immigrated from Great Britain several years before, had originally enlisted in the Confederate Army as a sergeant before being wounded at the Battle of Corinth, and discharged due to his injuries. Hiring out a schooner, commissioned as the Rob Roy, Williams would bring in desperately needed supplies into blockaded southern ports, specifically Galveston, Texas before selling the ship after financial disagreements with business associates. Williams would later write about his wartime naval career in an autobiography The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner in 1892.

Further reading

• Watson, William. The Civil War Adventures of a Blockade Runner. Texas A & M University Press, 2001. ISBN 1-58544-152-X Glasgow University have linked this directly to Magaret Mitchels Gone with the Wind WILLIAM Watson lived, loved and fought and was gone with the wind long before anyone heard of Margaret Mitchell and her epic novel of the American Civil War.

And, frankly, my dears, the Ayrshire man was apparently not nearly as handsome as Clark Gable, whose most celebrated role was that of Rhett Butler in the film version.

But in 1887, in Skelmorlie, Watson, a former sergeant in the army of the ConfeADVERTISEMENTderacy and Texas blockade runner, in command of a "doon the watter" Clyde steamer, sowed the seeds of a unique relationship with one of fiction’s best-known characters.

Watson had two books, published in 1888 - Life in the Confederate Army: Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South During the American Civil War and The Adventures of a Blockade Runner. He was by this time back home in Scotland and the books were a huge success in the United States, where they were regarded as social documents describing Southern society before the war.

Enter Mitchell in the 1930s, a woman convalescing from illness, who used her enforced leisure to create Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, whom scholars believe she based around Watson. His autobiographies were Mitchell’s main historical reference source, and scholars believe she decided to make Rhett a blockade runner, based on Watson’s second book.

Now, 115 years on, Watson’s Life in the Confederate Army . . . is being reprinted by Louisiana State University.

Marian Aspinall, a specialist on US history, said: "Watson’s books were required reading by students of the war and Mitchell relied on them.

"Rhett and Watson wouldn’t have been too far apart."

Thomas Cutrer, a professor of American Studies at Arizona State University, added: "It’s a vivid, honest account of the life of a Confederate soldier. He provides one of the best descriptions on record of the life of a Confederate soldier, and it offers much more in providing an excellent depiction of a southern society undergoing the crisis of secession and the tumultuous years of the Civil War.

"Watson’s status as an ‘alien’ made him keenly aware of the social, political and intellectual culture and the first 12 chapters stand alone as a superb primary account of antebellum southern society. "

Mitchell drew heavily on that insight in her depiction of a society crumbling under the weight of an outmoded, unjust value system.

Watson, who died 30 years before Mitchell’s book was published, was born in 1826, the son of a landscape gardener. At 20, he went to sea, but by 1860 had settled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

When war between the states appeared inevitable, Watson joined a volunteer rifle corps. After Abraham Lincoln declared war, Watson stayed with his corps, formed part of the Army of the West under the leadership of General Ben McCulloch, a former Texas Ranger killed soon after at the Battle of Oakhill, Missouri.

Watson wrote: "To have resigned from [the company] in the hour of danger would not have been very creditable to myself . . ."

Watson was made First Sergeant and fought with "extreme courage", wounded twice and captured by Union soldiers. During the war he managed to return to Louisiana where he became famous for running the Union blockade of Southern ports - in a former Clyde steamer, the Eagle, a model of which is in the Transport Museum, Glasgow

After the war, he made his fortune and returned to Ayrshire, where he married and founded a shipyard and boiler-making business.

Ms Aspinall added: "So that’s where Rhett got to. We’ve wondered where he went after he told Scarlett he didn’t give a damn."

References

• Linedecker, Clifford L., ed. Civil War, A-Z: The Complete Handbook of America's Bloodiest Conflict. New York: Ballentine Books, 2002. ISBN 0-89141-878-4

WILLIAM Watson lived, loved and fought and was gone with the wind long before anyone heard of Margaret Mitchell and her epic novel of the American Civil War. And, frankly, my dears, the Ayrshire man was apparently not nearly as handsome as Clark Gable, whose most celebrated role was that of Rhett Butler in the film version.

But in 1887, in Skelmorlie, Watson, a former sergeant in the army of the ConfeADVERTISEMENTderacy and Texas blockade runner, in command of a "doon the watter" Clyde steamer, sowed the seeds of a unique relationship with one of fiction’s best-known characters.

Watson had two books, published in 1888 - Life in the Confederate Army: Being the Observations and Experiences of an Alien in the South During the American Civil War and The Adventures of a Blockade Runner. He was by this time back home in Scotland and the books were a huge success in the United States, where they were regarded as social documents describing Southern society before the war.

Enter Mitchell in the 1930s, a woman convalescing from illness, who used her enforced leisure to create Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, whom scholars believe she based around Watson. His autobiographies were Mitchell’s main historical reference source, and scholars believe she decided to make Rhett a blockade runner, based on Watson’s second book.

Now, 115 years on, Watson’s Life in the Confederate Army . . . is being reprinted by Louisiana State University.

Marian Aspinall, a specialist on US history, said: "Watson’s books were required reading by students of the war and Mitchell relied on them.

"Rhett and Watson wouldn’t have been too far apart."

Thomas Cutrer, a professor of American Studies at Arizona State University, added: "It’s a vivid, honest account of the life of a Confederate soldier. He provides one of the best descriptions on record of the life of a Confederate soldier, and it offers much more in providing an excellent depiction of a southern society undergoing the crisis of secession and the tumultuous years of the Civil War.

"Watson’s status as an ‘alien’ made him keenly aware of the social, political and intellectual culture and the first 12 chapters stand alone as a superb primary account of antebellum southern society. "

Mitchell drew heavily on that insight in her depiction of a society crumbling under the weight of an outmoded, unjust value system.

Watson, who died 30 years before Mitchell’s book was published, was born in 1826, the son of a landscape gardener. At 20, he went to sea, but by 1860 had settled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

When war between the states appeared inevitable, Watson joined a volunteer rifle corps. After Abraham Lincoln declared war, Watson stayed with his corps, formed part of the Army of the West under the leadership of General Ben McCulloch, a former Texas Ranger killed soon after at the Battle of Oakhill, Missouri.

Watson wrote: "To have resigned from [the company] in the hour of danger would not have been very creditable to myself . . ."

Watson was made First Sergeant and fought with "extreme courage", wounded twice and captured by Union soldiers. During the war he managed to return to Louisiana where he became famous for running the Union blockade of Southern ports - in a former Clyde steamer, the Eagle, a model of which is in the Transport Museum, Glasgow

After the war, he made his fortune and returned to Ayrshire, where he married and founded a shipyard and boiler-making business.

Ms Aspinall added: "So that’s where Rhett got to. We’ve wondered where he went after he told Scarlett he didn’t give a damn."