HOW did a gardener’s son from Kelso become one of the most successful blockade runners of the US Civil War – and who was he anyway?

And where does someone who profited from gun-running for leaders intent on preserving slavery sit in Scottish history?

Joannes Wyllie’s life and times – mystery, adventure, shark attack and shipwreck – could be the work of fiction, with the Borders-born captain even once erroneously declared dead. But historian John Messner, a curator at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum, has painstakingly pieced together the seaman’s story for the first time. In doing so, the Michigan-born history expert has also been able to reveal new insights into the civilian sailors involved in one of his home country’s most pivotal periods.

“Wyllie’s name appears a few times in records of the Civil War,” Messner says, “this was a chance to do a lot more research. You pull a thread and it keeps on going and going and going.”

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Messner’s investigation began while he examined artefacts in the museum’s archives in 2014, coming across a painting of the steamer Ad-Vance. Captained by Wyllie, who owned the painting, it was one of many Clyde-built steamers to sail across the Atlantic and play a key role in supplying guns, clothing, liquor and more to the Confederate states during the four-year US civil war. The bloody and brutal conflict saw northern and southern states fight over diverging economic and political interests and the existence of slavery, with the debate becoming so polarised that 11 southern states seceded from the union.

After fighting between Confederate and Union forces broke out, Abraham Lincoln moved to blockade 12 major ports and 3500 miles of coastline to stop southern trade, cripple the economy and gain military advantage. That’s where Wyllie and thousands of other Scots and Englishmen came in, Messner says, crewing quick vessels past the Union navy from neutral ports like Nassau and Bermuda for a handsome paycheck.

In his new book, A Scottish Blockade Runner in the American Civil War, he reveals how former St Andrews University student Wyllie changed career from teaching to seafaring after being wrong declared dead in his local newspaper. “A trick was played on him,” says Messner, and shortly afterwards Wyllie left the classroom for the cabin, going to Liverpool to become an apprentice on a ship bound for Bombay at the age of 24 – very old for someone in that position. “Was he running away from something?” Messner wonders. “Was there a black mark on his name?”

Shipwreck and shark attack followed, all of which Wyllie related in later life giving lectures in Fife, where he returned after the civil war – during which his earnings had risen to a cool £100-a-fortnight, That was far beyond the £8-per-month he’d earned in his previous job.

Built in Greenock as the Lord Clyde and purchased for the Confederate cause on the orders of Governor Zebulon Vance, the Ad-Vance was perfect for blockade running, capable of carrying loads of cargo past Union guns at speed and into the shallow river mouths that fed many southern ports.

Eventually captured off the Carolina coast, it was one of around 1500 blockade-running vessels to fall to the Union side.

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Wyllie made around 10 successful runs in the steamer and was captured more than once, evading the American authorities through what Michigan-born Messner calls “an ingenious and at sometimes unbelievable” escape to Scotland.

After two further years at sea, he eventually resettled outside Kirkcaldy as a tenant farmer.

Some other Scottish blockade runners brought their money back and set up in big houses in places like Dunoon. But by later life, the money Wyllie had made in carrying contraband appears to have gone – while most of Wyllie’s public talks on his wartime experiences were given to benefit local good causes, the proceeds of his final address – the biggest he’d given – were all for him.

Messner, whose work is praised by Civil War expert Dr Stephen R Wise, pieced the picture together from snippets found in a variety of archive sources, including a lengthy article in an 1880s edition of People’s Friend found through the National Library of Scotland. None of these, however, serve to set out Wyllie’s attitude to slavery. “I wouldn’t call him a hero,” he says.

“He was more than likely doing it because it was a big pay check. This is a person like thousands of others who saw an opportunity. Ultimately, what these guys are doing is running supplies to a nation which had enslavement of people as an industry. You can’t discount that.

“These conflicts are still happening, there are still people who will see opportunities. Is that something that’s positive or negative?”