Fortis in arduis (strong in adversity) is a particularly appropriate motto for the Findlays of Boturich, a family which has, at times, enjoyed great wealth but at others suffered considerable losses, more than once as a consequence of historic accidents of fate. Today, Robert Findlay, 8th of Boturich, Dunbartonshire, the eldest Findlay male and the family historian, humorously describes his own family as "stranded gentry" - a delightfully evocative term.

With the help of the family Red Book or Leabhar dearg, Robert Findlay has traced his family line back to one Findla (or Findlay) Mhor, a giant of a man with great strength who, bearing the royal banner, was killed at the battle of Pinkie in 1547. According to the 1849 edition of Burke's Landed Gentry, Findla Mhor "was buried in the churchyard of Inveresk, at a short distance from the field of battle. No monument was erected to his memory, but the place was long known in that parish by the name of the Long Highlandman's Grave"...

"In those days", notes Robert, "Scotland was not a wealthy land and for most it was enough to subsist from the fruits of soil or sea. This imposed severe limitations on enterprise; foreign trade was almost non-existent. Any spare taxable wealth was usually needed to pay, or fight, the English."

By the seventeenth century, the Findlays had become prosperous merchants in Kilmarnock, a somewhat restricted activity geographically at that time because the Scots were effectively barred from trading with the English colonies. Hence the Act of Union in 1707 gave a considerable fillip to the family fortunes. Robert Findlay explains that "the union of the parliaments of Edinburgh and Westminster was strongly debated and opposed at the time. But soon after this, the new Edinburgh arose to be called the Athens of the North, while Glasgow's new trade brought previously undreamed-of wealth flowing into the country as adventurous Scots were suddenly able to compete on equal terms with English traders under the powerful protection of the Royal Navy.

"The entrepreneurial younger sons of the Scottish gentry, who were not constrained by the duty of looking after family estates, sailed away to set up trading ventures with the colonies, making their names as Virginia merchants and in the Caribbean, and then as East India merchants and in other far-flung destinations including South America and China. While, in those days, such ventures often meant long and arduous sea journeys, fraught with dangers, the potential prizes were irresistible."

The Findlays initially turned their sights westwards, towards America.

Sixteen-year-old Robert Findlay sailed for six weeks across the Atlantic in 1764, to join two uncles in Virginia. When he returned home, having amassed a considerable fortune, he bought a town house at 42 Miller Street in Glasgow, then one of the best houses in the merchant city, where his son, also named Robert, was born. He also bought a country house called Easterhill, a few miles up the Clyde, which from 1784 to 1895 was a Findlay home. Today, sadly, it no longer exists. The house at 42 Miller Street continued its existence as a townhouse and has recently been restored to its original state as a typical tobacco merchant's house of the time.

The revolt of the colonists and the American Declaration of Independence led to ruin for many wealthy Glasgow citizens, but not all... One of Robert Findlay's uncles cannily "did the rounds" of the ruined merchants, buying their Glasgow tobacco stocks from them at double the original cost. The merchants were happy at this, until the market price soared well past that level - with supplies no longer available. The fortunate speculator built himself a magnificent mansion house, said to be the finest in the land at the time. This house still stands today inside the front part of Glasgow's Royal Exchange.

The Findlay family then turned its sights eastwards, becoming timber merchants in Burma, and establishing trading posts in Manila in the Philippines. Little is known about the business in the Philippines, although trading continued until shortly after the First World War.

The Burma operation, T D Findlay and Son Ltd, East India Merchants, was set up in 1839, being founded by and named after the current Robert Findlay's great-grandfather. "It was a private family company, the smallest of the five British teak firms in Burma", explains Robert, "but when it was nationalised in 1948, it was Britain's oldest existing trading connection with Burma. The company felled trees in the Shan States and the Pegu Yomas, after ringing them to dry out on stump for a few years. To ensure future supplies, for every tree felled, five saplings were planted.

"A couple of hundred contractors' elephants then dragged the logs to the nearest floating stream to await the rains which would carry them to the main river. Here they were turned into rafts large enough to carry a whole family downstream to a railhead or to the base in Moulmein where the logs were sawn into saleable products, latterly including fine tongue-and-groove parquet flooring.

"But T D Findlay's finest achievement was the creation of the Irrawaddy Flotilla, a fleet of over 600 shallow draught ships, built in Dumbarton by T D Findlay's co-founder Peter Denny, whose statue still stands in that town. The ships were specifically designed to navigate the Irrawaddy and they became the lifeblood of the nation's prosperity, ensuring trade up and down the great rivers, and aiding Burma's transformation into the rice-bowl of Asia."

But this exotic industry was to come to an abrupt end when the Japanese invaded Burma in November 1941. The company scuttled its flotilla to prevent it falling into the hands of the Japanese, "and this action", notes Robert Findlay, "brought Burmese trade and transport to a standstill. The flotilla had been the greatest-ever fleet for river transport in the world. The teak business paid off its employees, and dispensed with the elephants. In 1945, following the liberation of Burma by the 14th Army, the family endeavoured to build up the Burma business once again, only to see it nationalised by the new, independent Burmese government in 1948" - a catastrophe for the Findlay family which saw its capital decimated.

Read part 2