Suzi-

Wonderful to be in contact with you.

Is there a summary that you could pull together of your grandfather's life that could be posted to this thread? How are you related to Pauline Robertson?

This is what I harvested from the New Zealand website:

Angus Cameron Robertson

Dec. 2002. Pauline Robertson has kindly allowed poems written by her Great Grandfather to be posted on this web page. Thank you, Pauline.

This condensed biography was gleamed from the biography from the front of the book Echoes from Beyond the Wave by Angus Cameron Robertson, master mariner and author, printed in about 1910 in Dunedin, New Zealand. When they say the Bard they are referring to Angus Robertson.

The author of these few poems, and many others, was born in Broadford, Isle of Skye, in the County of Inverness, Scotland to Neil Robertson (of Straun) and Ann Cameron (the daughter of Angus Cameron, of the Lochiel clan) - were married in the Presbyterian Church, Broadford, Isle of Skye, by Rev. Dr. Donald MacKinnon, M.A., Strath. He (the Bard) is one of nine of a family. He ran away from Home, was only in the second standard, but even at that young age won a five pound prize for long distance swimming and in after years saved many a life from drowning. Some years afterwards he won nine prizes out of eleven athletic events on the Mydam in Calcutta, the same year his ship came to New Zealand on a New Years Day.

About that time he also trained at sea to wrestle and box, and became very dexterous in the use of the cutlass with either hand. He followed the sea for some seventeen years, ten of which were in sail and the other seven years in steamships. By grit and perseverance he worked himself up the position of chief officer in the first class sailing ships and steamships, as his papers, clearly testify. He holds first class certificates and testimonials for all his seafaring career. He landed in NZ as chief officer of a sailing ship in July 1899 with the previous understanding with his captain that he would be discharged in NZ.
On his arrival in Dunedin he went to see Captain Cameron, the late and highly respected Marine Superintendent of the Union Steam Ship Company, who was very pleased with his papers, and promised him the first vacancy should he wait for a while. But having waited in Dunedin for some three weeks without anything turning up, he went up to Otago Central with a number of young men to build gold dredges as a welcome change from such a long career at sea. Whilst here the South African war broke out, and he was among the first to volunteer to go to Africa with the first contingent, but, not being a horseman, could not get away. At the same time, he composed a poem to the New Zealanders who went to Africa, which appeared at that time in Mount Benger Mail and which, we believe was instrumental in sending a few more away. The poem in question begins as follows:
New Zealand Forever!

Ye sons of New Zealand, march onward to fame,
Aspiring to glory, victorious thy name,
'Neath banner of Freedom, wherever it be,
On veldt, rocky mountains, or flying at sea, etc etc.,

After this he left Roxburgh and went up to Alexandra, where he procured employment in building, dismantling, and shifting dredges up and down the River Molyneux. It was here he met Mrs. Robertson, who was at that time an officer in the Salvation Army. He has been for the last three or four years a citizen of Dunedin. His love for that beautiful city and its people is shown in his many fine poems about Dunedin. A verse from one we give hereunder:

Here in the fading twilight angels pose,
And softly fan their wings o'er fern and rose;
Dunedin flourish ever fair and bright,
Effulgent with the glow of heavenly light.

He is Hon. Bard to the Gaelic Society of New Zealand, and a honerable member of the Dunedin Pipe Band, he is also a member of the Burns Club, Dunedin and a worthy member of the Masonic Order. Another poem of his entitled "King Edward the VII Funeral March."
There is a modem craze for verse,
And some are better, some are worse,
But not all verses tell a tale.

Could you clarify when Robertson died for the record?

Charley Noble