While nourishing his intellectual interests, Bruce also attended to his more basic instincts. In the next few months he contrived to witness a battle and to fight a duel, challenging his as yet little tested courage. Happily both conflicts were resolved with no loss of Bruce blood. They did though give the budding explorer his first taste of danger. The history of the duel is rather murky, probably due to the absurdity of the episode. In the 1750s duelling was going out of fashion in Britain, and yet more so on the Continent. Two decades later he faced ridicule for challenging someone to a duel; at this time, however, it was deemed only slightly silly. F. B. Head, who had the story from Bruce’s daughter, described the incident in his otherwise laudatory Life of Bruce:
On the second day after his arrival [in Brussels] he happened to be in the company of a young man, a perfect stranger to him, who was rudely insulted. Bruce foolishly remonstrated with the aggressor, who sent him a challenge, which he accepted. They met; Bruce wounded his antagonist twice, and in consequence left Brussels immediately.
He took advantage of this forced departure (he feared a manslaughter charge) to see an army in action.
For at least another fifty years war was to remain a spectator sport which could be watched with relative impunity, even by citizens of the warring factions. In fact, it was a popular pastime for people who wanted a taste of adventure and danger without incurring too much risk to their person. Though of course fictional, it did not seem strange to Tolstoy’s readers when Pierre in War and Peace observed the Battle of Borodino (1812) from his grassy knoll:
Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets, that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They were all looking at the field of battle as he was, as it seemed to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before.
And thus it was nothing out of the ordinary when Bruce and several shiny-faced fellow Englishmen, then serving with the Dutch army, embarked on a short trip to northern Germany where they watched the Germans and French fight each other at the Battle of Crevelt.
Soon after the excitement of the battle, Bruce received in Brussels the worst of news from home. His father had died in May, joining the long list of Bruce’s recently dead friends and relatives. The twenty-eight-year-old was left with a much reduced inheritance and myriad responsibilities. His many half siblings had drained the family coffers and, coupled with the complications of dividing the estate, Bruce found himself unable immediately to fulfil the ambitions to travel that his Grand Tour had inspired. It was not until December 1762 that he finally resolved the issue by settling with his half-brother, David, who had joined the army. He did well out of the arrangement for it soon emerged that his land was a great deal more valuable than had previously been believed. Kinnaird – ‘a house to be lived in not looked at’ (according to Nimmo in his A General History of Stirlinghsire. The house no longer exists) – was built upon a rich seam of coal that was to make Bruce’s life a financially comfortable one. He was extremely fortunate, however. But for an extraordinary coincidence the money would not have flowed until the next generation.
If, in 1759, coal had been found almost anywhere else in the world it would have languished for another fifty years and thus have been of no use to a hard-up young adventurer. The Bruce family miners (there was an almost serf-like class of people who mined coal in Scotland and were bought and sold with land) had been digging in a desultory way for years but no one had made a decent profit out of the excavations. The Industrial Revolution was not yet under way and there was none of the insatiable demand that was so to enrich such later mine owners as the Lowthers just over the border in Westmorland. In nearby Carron, however, there was a small company part-owned by one of the most brilliant practical scientists of the age. John Roebuck was the first partner of James Watt and had set up a firm at Carron with the businessman Samuel Garbett. The Carron Company was to pioneer a method of smelting iron ore that would transform industry. It involved coke made from coal rather than charcoal and Bruce was the closest supplier of coal. The Carron Company became major cannon makers in an era with an enormous demand for arms and Bruce made a fortune supplying them with fuel. Today, one can still see iron letter boxes made by the Carron Company on the streets of Britain.
It was a heaven-sent opportunity for the young Scot and, although he behaved extraordinarily badly in all his dealings with the company, suing them and disputing their every action on his return from his travels, this association more than any other allowed him to travel the world at his own expense and to have all the adventures that make up the most interesting part of his life. Without the discovery of this new use for coal and the accident of Bruce having it on his land, he would have been compelled to retire to Scotland and live the life of a Scottish laird.
By now almost thirty, Bruce was at last in a position to do something with his life. Since leaving Harrow fifteen years earlier he had amassed a great store of knowledge which he constantly supplemented. Botany had become an interest through his work as a vintner and friendship with the dilettante and patron of naturalists, Daines Barrington; he had studied law, military architecture, astronomy, the Bible, art, Arabic and masonic lore. A great talent for languages meant that he was not confined to English reading matter and this had aroused in him a thirst for news of the world outside Europe. The death of his father and the resulting inheritance would enable him to use all his learning to a more productive end. Thus it was that Bruce embarked on his thirtieth year, prepared for informed exploration but still lacking a mission. One was about to present itself.
One man was to be the catalyst for Bruce’s new life – the politician, civil servant and former traveller, Robert Wood. Wood had the ear of all the great men of the age. Pitt, Egremont, Halifax, Bute, Grenville and the king himself, all listened to the man who had explored the ruins of Palmyra and Baalbek before going on to forge a brilliant career in the service of the crown. As eighteenth-century political alliances were made and dissolved, as administrations rose and fell, Wood, who purposely avoided great office, was one of the few men who consistently kept close to power. Ministers came and went but he managed to outstay them all until his death in 1771. His first significant job had been as Pitt’s secretary at the Irish office where he soon became known as ‘Mr Pitt’s Wood’, but from there he had moved on to greater things, always managing to keep out of the way when governments fell and always reappearing when the new ones arose. It is not certain how the two men met but, although there are no records of either claim, Wood said that he had been to Harrow and Oxford. Although they were not contemporaries, Harrow may well have been the link between him and Bruce. Wood recognized the spark of talent in the unfulfilled Scot and ensured that it was kindled and fed. It was through Wood’s efforts that Bruce’s abilities were put to more productive use than that of enlightened land owning.
The two were already friends when British relations with Spain declined drastically once more and it occurred to Bruce that the scribblings he had made in Ferrol a few years earlier might be of some use to the country. He formulated a plan for the capture of Ferrol; from this seemingly impregnable port where he had spent a few days with Matthew Stephenson in July 1757, an invasion could be launched. The plan offered two things Bruce sought: advancement and the opportunity to wage war upon a Catholic country. He wrote to Wood and ‘offered to fix an ensign upon the landing place in the first boat that went on shore’.
Wood took the plan from Bruce and arranged an interview with William Pitt. Secretary of State Pitt – who had yet to become either Prime Minister, Chatham, or elderly – was impressed by