1806 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Sir James Montgomery, Bt; then Henry Erskine
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Robert Blair; then John Clerk

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Succoth
• Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Granton

  Events

• 20 May – new wet dock at Leith opened.
• 20 June – the Glasgow, Paisley and Johnstone Canal is authorised.
• 31 August – new harbour at Ardrossan begun.
• 25 December – Stotfield fishing disaster: all 21 able-bodied men of the village of Stotfield are drowned when all three of their fishing boats are overwhelmed by a storm in the Moray Firth.
• Henry Dundas is impeached, on the initiative of Samuel Whitbread, for the misappropriation of public money at the Admiralty but is acquitted. This will be the last impeachment trial ever held in the House of Lords.
• The first Spey Bridge at Fochabers, designed by Thomas Telford, is completed.
• Fraserburgh's first rescue lifeboat is placed on station.
• Napoleonic Wars: Defensive gun batteries placed on the island of Inchgarvie in the Firth of Forth.
• New building of Rosneath House to an 1803 Romanesque Revival design by Joseph Bonomi the Elder is finished.

  Births

• 1 February – George Harvey, genre painter
• 19 March – John Coldstream, physician
• 26 March – James Hogg, publisher
• 15 April – Alexander Duff, Church of Scotland missionary to India
• 4 June – Daniel Macnee, portrait painter
• 5 July – James Dawson, Guardian of Australian Aboriginals
• 20 July – John Sterling, author
• 19 September – William Dyce, painter
• October – William Atherton, lawyer and liberal politician
• 10 or 12 October – David Scott, historical painter
• 10 December – David Robertson, marine biologist
• James Graham, missionary photographer

  Deaths

• 30 January – David Smythe, Lord Methven, judge
• 20 February – Lachlan McIntosh, military and political leader
• 17 March – David Dale, businessman and philanthropist
• 5 April – Benjamin Bell, surgeon
• 24 May – John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll, field marshal
• 29 December – Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, politician
• Mungo Park, explorer

  The arts

• Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, begins to ship the Elgin Marbles to Britain from Greece.
• Walter Scott's Ballads and Lyrical Pieces is published.