In the late evening of 4 October 1549, five sailors from Hamburg conducting trade in Aberdeen attacked a local man, William Portuis, disturbing the Scottish burgh ‘under silence of the night’. It is not clear what precipitated the attack, but the court records indicate that the sailors violently assaulted Portuis, bound him, taunted him and carried him off to their ship ‘without ony ordour of law or justice’. What's more, the skipper's children stripped Portuis of his sword and bonnet while he was bound and powerless to defend himself. This physical assault combined with the verbal abuse he endured undermined the sense of security Portuis should have felt within the limits of the burgh. As the records make very clear, the attack also posed a direct challenge to the authority of the magistrates whose responsibility it was to insure the safety and welfare of the burgh's inhabitants. Furthermore, the humiliating act committed by the skipper's children underscored the depth of the victim's sense of powerlessness. Although it was likely that Portuis had the means to legally seek restitution for this attack through the burgh court, and that such action would have been welcomed by the magistrates, Portuis chose to act on his own, to right the wrong committed and to regain some of the power that was taken from him.