Scots came early to Portugal's River Douro with at its mouth Porto on the north bank and Vila Nova de Gaia on the south. And to know your Port wine is to savour their story. On the Vila Nova side there were the Sandemans, the brothers, George and David from Perth, who had arrived in 1790 with George being solely in charge from 1798, when David returned to Edinburgh to found in 1810 The Commercial Bank of Scotland. It merged with the Royal Bank, whilst Sandemans became Portuguese and is today part of a wine-importing company with world-wide interests. And on the Porto side in 2010 Symington Estates bought Cockburn's, founded in the city in 1815 by Robert and John of that same name and Leith wine-merchants. Furthermore the original Symington's arrival in the city of Oporto in 1882 had been to work for another of the famous houses, Graham, formed in 1820 by William and John Graham, which the Symingtons too were to acquire in 1970.
That original Symington, Andrew, was the son of a Glasgow-born, Govan merchant, also Andrew, and a mother, Mary, born on Unst in Shetland, and he, having left Graham's became an independent shipper in 1887 and was to establish himself as the most powerful of the Port wine houses. In 1891 he married Beatrice Atkinson, from an Anglo-Portuguese Port wine family that had been in the trade since 1814 and had further family connections back to the start of it all in the 1650s. Moreover, in 1905 he had also taken control of Warre's and had from 1912 a shareholding in Dow's, which again the family was to extent to full ownership in the 1960s.
But wine was far from the only area of interest of the early Port dynasties, particularly the Grahams. In fact William Graham, the founder of a Glasgow trading company operating worldwide, was not in wine production at all. It was he, who came to Portugal in 1809 with an idea to import local wines in general, and who in 1814 then sent his nephew, John, to set up the trading house, W. & J. Graham. Port wine specifically only came about because a quantity of it was accepted as payment of a debt and then moved on, shipped to the Merchant City, where it literally went down well. If fact the company was mainly a textile merchant, remained so and remained Scots. Ten family members served in The Great War, mainly in Scottish regiments, two died, one was awarded the Victoria Cross.
However, as so often is the case with football, it and cloth are irrevocably entwined. Porto was no exception but it was a story that actually started in Lisbon. In 1880 the Graham company bought a dye- and print-works in Portuguese capital and soon after it was decided to build a new factory to be sited in Porto in Boavista. Known as the Graham Factory or the English Factory it was in fact Scots, was opened in 1889 and was sited just to the west of what is now Boavista F.C.'s Estadio do Bessa, Boavista being Porto's other club In fact the factory, in effect, had two starts. It burned down in 1897 and was rebuilt, requiring re-equipping and for that technicians were needed from Britain, with whom came a passion for the round-ball game.
Organised sport in Porto had begun with the foundation in 1855 of the Oporto Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club. Founder members included Sandemans, Dows and Warres as well as Reids, Taits and Sellars. Boavista F.C. was not founded until 1903 and then as The Boavista Footballers by two English brothers, Harry and Dick Lowe, and mainly Portuguese textile workers with the support of local businesses including the Graham Mill. In fact the name change to simply Boavista came about in 1910 because William Graham withdrew financial support for the original club after a dispute in 1909 on religious grounds as to when games should be played. The Protestant British wanted Saturday and to keep Sundays free. The Catholic Portuguese wanted to play on Sundays. The British were outvoted, many left the club and still more did so in 1914 to enlist never to return. Which leaves the city's other club, FC Porto. It was formed in 1893 as the Foot-ball Club do Porto by 20 year-old António Nicolau de Almeida, a Port-wine merchant, who had seen the game on his travels to England. However, after an initial flurry including the fixture against The Foot-ball Club Lisbonense in March 1894 and following his marriage in 1896 to the sister of fellow Porto footballers, the Rumseys, the founder turned his attention to tennis. Football faded and was only revived at the club in 1906 after another member also returned from a trip to London. In the meantime the game had remained simply as it had begun, a past-time of the Port city's footballing Britons.
A few of those early footballing Britons are known. In October 1893 twenty-two members of FC Porto played an internal game. Nugent and Mackechnie were the captains. Antonio de Almeida and his brother took part, as did Walter MacConan, the Kendall brothers and A. Johnston. A second, internal match followed that same year this time with Edward Kendall and Mackechnie now the captains and Mackechnie, Kendall and Nugent were all in the Porto team that played Lisbon the following year. Nor was that the last of Mackechnie, in name at least. He reappeared for FC Porto in 1906 and was referee for the game in 1910 that was the first victory, 2-1, by a Portuguese club, once more Porto, against a foreign one, Real Fortuna de Vigo from Galicia.
However, although the Mackechnie of 1893-4 and the one in 1906 and 1910 may have been the same person, equally he may not. Indeed, they could have been brothers. George and Ernest Mckechnie were both Diasporan Scots, born in London, in 1874 and 1877 respectively. Both too were wine merchants, the sons of Peter Mckechnie, also an English-born wine merchant, and no doubt with business connections to de Almeida. But their grandfather, Alexander McKechnie, the name also of Ernest's son, was a Scottish doctor, an Army surgeon and later the Inspector General of Hospitals. Furthermore, although both McKechnie brothers lived in England, they can be seen travelling to Portugal until the 1930s and may well have stayed there for periods. George, who would be buried in the Scottish Borders in 1942, was in the UK in 1891 but not 1901, would have been nineteen in 1893/4, perhaps 32 in 1906, possibly playing on both dates, and again perhaps at thirty-six a referee in 1910. Ernest on the other hand was in the UK in 1901, would have been only fifteen or so in 1893/4 so unlikely to have been involved but at twenty-eight in 1906 and thirty-two in 1910 might well have been.
Nor would Mackechnie be the only Scot taking part in that game in 1910, the one that was the first Portuguese club victory against foreign opposition. Playing in the Porto side was a certain Alex Caw. Caw is a very Scottish name but one that is rare and therefore easy to trace. There was only one Alexander Caw in the era and his Portuguese stay seems to have been brief. He had probably arrived in the city in late 1909 or early 1910 and in 1911 he was gone. He had been born in 1884 just outside Perth, the son of a grocer, David, and Helen and other Caws too were associated not with the wine business like the Mackechnies but with the William Graham company's other Portuguese interest. At seventeen Alex Caw had in 1901 already been a clerk in a bleach-works. He was in textile production and therefore more likely than not in Porto to have found work at the Graham Mill. Indeed in earlier times Caw might have been expected to turn out for Boavista but as it was just as William Graham withdrew his support so the Caw association with FC Porto is perhaps explained as it being at the time the only footballing show in town. However, there is another possibility. In 1905 Coats the Paisley thread-maker had started to built a mill just the other side of the river to Porto, in Vila Nova da Gaia. It was opened in 1908 and had Alex Caw been employed there FC Porto at the time would have been the obvious rather than the second choice.
Moreover, if 1910 had seen Porto's first win against foreign, footballing competition, it was not its first fixture against the same. That had been against the same opposition, Real Fortuna de Vigo, on 15th December 1907. And on that day too there had been a "Scot" on the field and once more for the Portuguese side. His name was Douglas Grant and he would be there for the same fixture in 1912 but where he was in between is currently unknown, as is where he came from and where he went, at least after taking part in the tournament to open Porto's then new ground, the Camp de Constitucao, in 1913. Nor would Grant be the last "Scot" to feature on the Porto footballing stage. A player simply known as Hamilton arrived at the club in 1915, departed in 1917 to return to the UK to enlist, survived the War and returned to the city, turning out for several more seasons not for his original club but Vilanovense a club that also still exists and plays in the local Porto league. It had founded in 1914 in Vila Nova da Gaia, which perhaps suggests a Sandeman connection, if he were in the wine trade, or perhaps Coats, if he were not.