Carsethorn

The village was started by Danish Vikings as a fishing and coastal trading port, the sandy shore giving a hard where it was safe to beach ships at mid-tide on a falling tide, unload or load them from carts at low tide, then float them off on the next rising tide. At a time when roads inland were rutted tracks, most freight and much passenger traffic was by sea. This was only to change with the road improvers like Telford and MacAdam in the early 1800s.

The channel of the River Nith moved closer to Carsethorn over time, until the deep water channel was near the shore. Carsethorn is first mentioned as a port, in 1562, when a ship was loading for Rochelle and Bordeaux. Later, the 'Carse', as it is fondly referred to, acted as an outport for Dumfries, with the larger ships anchoring in Carse Bay, before unloading their cargo. There was a great deal of trade through the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s, chiefly coastal to ports either side of the Solway, to Ireland and to the Isle of Man.

During the late 1700s and early 1800s there was a very high level of emigration to the American and Australian Colonies and newspaper advertisements show emigrant ships sailing regularly from Carsethorn. In 1775 the ''Lovely Nelly'', Captained by William Sheridan, took 82 emigrants to Lot 59 on Prince Edward Island. The reason for the families going was given as being 'to get more bread' - in Scotland they were almost destitute.
A rather grimmer export trade emerged with the transportation of convicts to Australia. They were marched down from Dumfries and housed in the barracks (later a warehouse) at the river's edge. The whitewashed building remains to the south of the bus-stop in Carsethorn.

The coastal trade reached its peak in the late 1840's with almost 25,000 tons entering the river and steamboats such as the ''Countess of Nithsdale'' maintained long established links with Liverpool. It is said that in 1850, 10,000 people emigrated to North America, 7,000 to Australia and 4,000 to New Zealand through the 'Carse', leaving from the jetty which was constructed in 1840 by the Nith Navigation Commission and used by the Liverpool Steam Packet Company. The remains of that jetty still stand beside the deep-water channel at the north end of Carsethorn; apparently it was a triangular structure, whose longest face allowed the steamers a good pierhead to come alongside.

During the 1870s and 1880s the local Captain, John Robson, traded in the ''Defiance'' to Archangel for timber, but this was in the face of a general decline. The coming of the railway in 1850, along with the ongoing costs of the many improvements needed to the navigable channel started a slow decline in the seaborne trade and by the early 1900s very little trade was left.

http:--www.steamboatinncarsethorn.co.uk-
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