In November 1666, the Burgh Council of Edinburgh asked Robert Baird to consult on Captain Tennent's bill to transport vagabonds to Virginia.Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, 1665 to 1680 (Edinburgh, 1950), pp. liii, 23. In 1669 Robert Baird was a partner with the architect William Bruce and others in a planned voyage to New York with two ships, the Hope and the James of Leith. The owners of the Hope planned to transport "strong and idle beggars, vagabonds, egyptians, common and notorious whores, thieves and other dissolute and loose persons" voluntarily recruited from prisoners held in the tolbooths of Scotland. They would be settlers in Virginia, having opted for a form of penal transportation. The Hope was wrecked at Cairnbulg, at the "watermouth of Philorth" on 9 October 1669.Peter Gouldesbrough, 'An Attempted Scottish Voyage to New York in 1669', Scottish Historical Review, 40:129 (1) (April, 1961), pp. 56-62: Ian Adams & Meredyth Somerville, Cargoes of Despair and Hope: Scottish Emigration to North America (John Donald, 1993), p. 21.
