The Peterhead Harbour of Refuge Railway

In the mid-19th century the east coast of Scotland was notorious for the large number of ships wrecked and the lives lost every year on its rocky coastline caused by storms that could arise with little warning but much ferocity. At the same time the Admiralty was concerned about the lack of shelter for Naval vessels, a Royal Commission was set up and in 1852 it recommended that a National Harbour of Refuge be built at Peterhead, a busy whaling and fishing port with ambitions to expand. Because of the massive costs, of which two-thirds would be sought from the local harbour board, the project did not proceed.

Meanwhile, south of the border major public works were being undertaken using convict labour at locations such as Chatham Dockyard, Dartmoor, Portsmouth, and on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. Following the appointment of a new Board of Commissioners for Prisons in 1877, John Hill Burton, the Scottish representative, noted that although his country contributed to the costs of maintaining convicts, England had the entire benefit as over 600 Scottish prisoners were employed there. The proposal to build a Harbour of Refuge in eastern Scotland was accordingly revived and in 1882 another commission was set up to look at various potential locations from Eyemouth to Wick. Two years later it reiterated that Peterhead Bay would be the most suitable and a site was selected for a new prison to house the potential labour force, this being about 1½ miles south of the town centre.

The Treasury gave the go-ahead for the project and the Admiralty appointed Sir John Coode as the first Engineer-in-Chief. The Peterhead Harbour of Refuge Act was approved by Parliament in 1886 and preparations began. According to the traditions of the time, the initial contractors built the first cell block for about 200 men, the perimeter wall and various extraneous