THE MELVILLES

Robert Melville, who became one of the wealthiest and most influential

men in Fife, was the son of the Reverend Andrew Melville of Monimail. He

was born in 1723 and in 1744, after having completed his education at Leven

Grammar School and the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, he began

his distinguished career in the army. He first saw active service in Flanders

in the War of the Austrian Succession, and in the West Indies in the Seven

Years War where, beginning with the rank of major, he was soon promoted

to lieutenant-colonel for the part he played in the capture of the French

island of Guadeloupe in 1759. In 1763 he was made Governor of that island.

He was second in command of the forces which captured Dominica, and he

took part in the capture of Martinique in 1762. He was then promoted to

Brigadier-General and in 1763 appointed Governor-in-Chief of all the French

islands in the West indies seized during the War and retained by the Treaty of

Paris (Grenada, The Grenadines, Dominica, St. Vincent and Tobago). He

retained the post for seven years, and it is reported that he showed ‘great

judgement and humanity’ and that ‘much advantage to the islands’ resulted

from his regime. However, it has also been said that he was less sympathetic

towards the French Roman Catholic inhabitants than was the British Govern-

ment and other British officials, although there is no suggestion that he was in

any way oppressive.

General Robert Melville had extensive economic interests in the West

lndies, and in 1767 he was given a royal grant for 300 acres on Dominica,

which he named Melville Hall Estate, where he developed an extremely profit-

able plantation producing sugar and rum based on slavery, the established

labour system in the West Indies at that time.

With the wealth he amassed in the West Indies he extended the lands he

had inherited from his father, which enabled him to become one of the most

influential landowners in Fife.

General Melville, like many other landowners of the time, was interested

in farming methods and in different species of plants. In 1765 he established,

on St. Vincent, the first Botanical Garden in the New World, which was to be

used for the propagation of plants of medicinal and commercial value and

also as a nursery for valuable tropical plants.

lt was to obtain rare species of breadfruit for this Garden that Captain

Bligh set out for the South Seas in H.M.S. Bounty in 1787. A subsequent

voyage made by Captain Bligh five years later landed over 500 rare plants from

Otaheiti at St. Vincent for the Botanic Garden

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