On a visit to Scotland in the early nineteenth century Melville's father was able to trace their Scottish roots to a Sir John Melvill of Carnbee, the 16th-century owner of Granton Castle, which once stood on this rocky point at the edge of Edinburgh. You have to climb some fences and pick your way through mounds of rubble to find this spot today, but the reward is a beautiful view of the River Forth and the sea beyond. It seems especially fitting that a great novelist of the sea would have this inspiring location in his family history.
