James Broich, skipper of Dundee, was proceeding in his scout to Norway with a small parcel of goods, and a thousand pounds Scots wherewith to buy a larger vessel. In mid-sea he fell in with a French privateer, who, after seizing cargo and money, having no spare hands to leave on board, proceeded to cut holes in the vessel, in order to sink her, proposing to put the unfortunate crew to their boat, in which case they must have perished, ‘there being then a great stress.’ By the prayers and tears of the skipper and his people, the privateer was at length induced to let them go in their vessel, but not without first obtaining a bond from Broich, undertaking to remit six hundred guelders to Dunkirk by a particular day. As a guarantee for this payment, the rover detained and carried off the skipper’s son, telling him he would hear no good of him if the money should fail to be forthcoming. Poor Broich got safe home, where his case excited much commiseration, more particularly as he had suffered from shipwreck and capture four times before in the course of his professional life. He was penniless, and unable to support his family; his son, also—‘the stay and staff of his old age’—had a wife and small children of his own left desolate. Here was a little [Sidenote: 1689.] domestic tragedy very naturally arising out of the wars of the _Grand Monarque_! Beginning in the council-room of Versailles, such was the way they told upon humble industrial life in the port of Dundee in Scotland. It was considered, too, that the son was in ‘as bad circumstances, in being a prisoner to the French king, as if he were a slave to the Turks.’ [Sidenote: SEP. 2.] On the petition of Broich, the Privy Council ordained a voluntary contribution to be made for his relief in Edinburgh, Leith, Borrowstounness, and Queensferry, and in the counties of Fife and Forfar. In a contemporary case, that of a crew of Grangepans, carried by a privateer to Dunkirk, and confined in Rochefort, it is stated that they were each allowed half a sous _per diem_ for subsistence, and were daily expecting to be sent to the galleys.[24] [Sidenote: OCT. 10.] It was now acknowledged of the glass-work at Leith, that it was carried on successfully in making green bottles and ‘chemistry and apothecary glasses.’ It produced its wares ‘in greater quantity in four months than was ever vended in the kingdom in a year, and at as low rates as any corresponding articles from London or Newcastle.’ The Privy Council therefore gave it the privileges of a manufactory, and forbade introduction of foreign bottles, only providing that the Leith work should not charge more than half-a-crown a dozen. [Sidenote: DEC. 2.]