Thread by @cocteautriplets

flickr.com/photos/1262683… HMS Killecrankie, Leith docks, 1963.
"Killiecrankie" was the training tender for the Leith & Edinburgh Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) station at HMS Claverhouse on Granton Square.

"Killiecrankie" was built in 1952 as the Ton-class minesweeper Bickington, but was named HMS Curzon before commissioning as the Suffolk RNR tender. When she moved to the Forth she took up the name associated with Bonnie Dundee who also have his name to HMS Claverhouse.

She served as the Forth from 1962 - 1676, before renaming to HMS Bickington and being transferred to the Fishery Protection Squadron

HMS Claverhouse was a shore base, it's Royal Navy practice to name shore bases as if they were ships. But how did this particular name with its strong connotations with a certain period of Anglo-Scottish history become associated with Edinburgh and Leith?

The first HMS Claverhouse was a surplus WW1 coastal monitor (a sort of small, slow ship for carrying big guns to shoot at the shore with) M23 (pictured = M15). In 1922 she was sent to Dundee as an RNVR (Volunteer Reserve) drill ship and named HMS Claverhouse

I suppose someone had a sense of humour to name the Dundee drill ship after "Bonnie Dundee" (John Graham of Claverhouse, 1st Viscount Dundee, or "Bluidy Clavers" to his opponents), given the divisive (and ultimately fatal) part he played in 17th century Scottish history

For her ship's crest and motto, the first HMS Claverhouse took these directly from the 1st Viscount Dundee, a phoenix rising out the flames and "Gang Forrit" (which either is literally to "go for it", or a euphemism for to take communion)

At the start of WW2, with war looming and the need to suddenly train up volunteers and reserves, HMS Claverhouse was shifted to a permanent shore base on Granton Square, in the requisitioned Granton Hotel.

The new HMS Claverhouse took the crest and motto of the little ship from Dundee, which was kept on as a drill vessel. At Granton, merchant seamen were given training in defensive techniques (how to fire guns!) and as an HQ for the local coastal defence forces

When the war ended, "Claverhouse" was not returned to civilian service but was kept on as the HQ for the newly formed Forth Division of the RNR. Again, the motto and the crest followed.

Tay Division of the RNR was based on the old wooden frigate HMS Unicorn in Dundee, so it took as a crest a unicorn.

The old monitor M23 stayed at Granton as a Claverhouse drill ship until 1958 when she was sent for scrap. But the post-war naval reserves were primarisly concerned with minesweeping, so she was joined in 1948 by a small war-surplus motor minesweeper MMS.1089

MMS.1089 took the name HMS Forth, but was soon renamed HMS Killecrankie. Again someone had a sense of humour, as if you don't already know the Battle of Killecrankie was where Viscount Dundee met a very pyrrhic end when a musket ball went through him at the moment of victory

The little MMS.1089 / "Killiecrankie" was too small and obsolete for the realities of Cold War minesweeping, so was sold in 1957 and replaced with the newer and bigger HMS Bickington/Curzon. She took the generic ships crest of all the Ton-class minesweepers.

In 1976, when "Killiecrankie" was returned to being plain old HMS Bickington, she was replaced by her sister HMS Kedleston, but the latter kept her own name (seen here in Leith in 1980). flickr.com/photos/1538736…

In 1986, "Kedleston" was replaced by the new minesweeper HMS Spey as the Forth RNR training ship. This lasted until 1993 when a defence review withdrew the entire RNR fleet and moved it to other purposes. "Spey" spent 4 years in Northern Ireland before being sold to Brazil.

So in 1994 as an economy, the RNR Forth Division of HMS Claverhouse and the Tay Division of HMS Camperdown were merged as HMS Scotia and relocated to Rosyth.

Rosyth as it turned out wasn't that smart an economy measure, as although it looked good on paper, shifting your volunteer base away from the centre of population it draws from doesn't help with recruitment, and the RNR re-established separate Forth and Tay divisions in 2000

The new Forth Division only lasted until 2004 before being wound down as another economy. The old HMS Claverhouse on Granton Square is now the "Claverhouse Training Centre" for various cadets and reserves units.

So anyway, that's the long version of how two rather geographically and historically unusual (you might even say inappropriate) names came to be used for military establishments in Edinburgh