1818 in Scotland

Events from 1818 in Scotland.

Incumbents[edit]

4 February - The Honours of Scotland are put on display in Edinburgh Castle after being discovered in store there;^[1] Walter Scott, one of the prime movers in the discovery, is rewarded with a baronetcy in 1820.
3 March - Construction of the Union Canal begins at the Edinburgh end.^[2]
Mid-May - Paddle steamer Thames makes the first steamboat passage from the Clyde to Dublin.^[3]
13–14 June - Rob Roy makes the first steamboat passage from the Clyde to Belfast.^[4]
New road bridge at Spean Bridge completed to a design by Thomas Telford.^[5]
First public supply of gas in Glasgow.
Robert Barclay founds the engineering company in Glasgow that will become marine engineers Barclay Curle.
Shipbuilder Thomas Morton of Leith invents the patent slip.
Robert Stirling builds the first practical version of his Stirling engine.
Restoration of the great house at Rosehall begins, to assist which a private canal is dug.^[6]
The post of Regius Professor of Botany, Glasgow, is established by King George III, Robert Graham, MD, being the first holder; Thomas Thomson takes up his appointment as first Regius Professor of Chemistry here.

21 February - George Wilson, chemist (died 1859)
10 March - William Menelaus, mechanical engineer (died 1882 in Wales)
17 May - William Hay, architect (died 1888)
11 June - Alexander Bain, philosopher and educationalist (died 1903)
22 June - Donald Mackenzie, advocate and judge (died 1875)
22 July - Thomas Stevenson, lighthouse designer and meteorologist (died 1887)
5 August - Thomas Elder, pastoralist, businessman, racehorse breeder, politician and philanthropist in Australia (died 1897 in Australia)
23 August - John Cairns, Presbyterian divine (died 1892)
25 September - Helen Macfarlane, radical writer (died 1860)
3 October - Alexander Macmillan, publisher (died 1896)
24 October - William Forsyth, writer (died 1879)
7 December - John Blackwood, publisher (died 1879)
Andrew Leslie, shipbuilder
Alexander McLachlan, poet (died 1896 in Canada)

13 February - George Dempster of Dunnichen, advocate, agricultural improver, banker and politician (born 1732)
15 March - Hector Macneill, poet (born 1746)
6 November - Malcolm Laing, historian (born 1762)
7 December - Mary Brunton, novelist (born 1778)

June - English poet John Keats begins a walking tour in Scotland, including a visit to Burns Cottage.
18 July - Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian, set during the Porteous Riots of 1736, is published (as Tales of My Landlord, 2nd series, by 'Jedediah Cleishbotham', in 4 volumes); a shipload from the Ballantyne publishing business is sent from Edinburgh to London.^[7]
18 September - The original Theatre Royal in Glasgow becomes the first theatre in Scotland to be lit by gas.^[1]^[8]
James Barr composes a musical setting of the late Robert Tannahill's "Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea" which will later become the basis of the tune "Waltzing Matilda".^[9]
Ludwig van Beethoven composes settings of Twenty-Five Scottish Songs.

^ ^a ^b "Chronology of Scottish History". A Timeline of Scottish History. Rampant Scotland. Retrieved 2014-05-18.
^ "History of Edinburgh". Visions of Scotland. Retrieved 2014-05-18.
^ Spratt, H. Philip (1958). the Birth of the Steamboat. London: Charles Griffin. pp. 95–7.
^ Moody, T. W. et al., ed. (1989). A New History of Ireland. 8: A Chronology of Irish History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-821744-2.
^ "Spean Bridge". Canmore. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. 2007. Retrieved 2014-08-09.
^ Forbes, N.; Howat, J. M. T. (2002). "The Rosehall Canal: The Most Northerly in Great Britain?". Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society 34: 38–9.
^ Sutherland, John (2014). How to be Well Read. London: Random House. p. 214. ISBN 978-1-847-94640-9.
^ London theatres had been gaslit the previous year. "Theatres Compete in Race to Install Gas Illumination - 1817". Over The Footlights. Retrieved 2014-05-20.
^ O'Keeffe, Dennis (2012). Waltzing Matilda: The Secret History of Australia's Favourite Song. Sydney: Allen and Unwin. ISBN 978-1-74237-706-3.