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T H E

C A M P B E L T O W N

S T E A M E R S

Their History and Successors

P. Donald M. Kelly

© 2004 P. Donald M. Kelly

© 2004 P. Donald M. Kelly

The right of P. Donald M. Kelly to be identified as Author of this bookis hereby identified by him in accordance with The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Introduction

ochranza Pier, Tuesday, July 30, 1889, the end of the Glasgow Fairand the end of the July monthly house lettings and, though most peoplehad returned home the previous day, there are many who waited anextra day in Arran to avoid the usually well overcrowded boats at the end

of the month.

As the advertised up-river sailing is scheduled to leave at 9 a.m., the pier hasbeen crowded since about 8.45 a.m., “pa’, ma’, the weans” and all their goodsand chattels litter the but year-old wooden pier. You can’t see the steamer tillthe last minute when it comes round the corner from Kilbrannan Sound andthere’s no point trying to go down the road to see if it’s coming because you’dnever get back to the pier again before it sailed !

Near twelve noon and the little “Kintyre” finally puts her nose round the cornernow three hours late and seemingly not a square inch of space left for anyone oranything !

Sheep right up to the bow and, packed in behind them, pigs and bullocks. Thewhole foredeck too is piled high with innumerable herring boxes and there’sanother two hundred of these to load from Lochranza and even the afterpassenger saloon is full of ‘2nd class sheep” !

An hour later, at one o’clock, the passengers luggage is thrown on board, allhelter-skelter and the “Kintyre” casts off, not as expected, for Greenock, butinstead for Dunoon where she makes a special call to land a company ofVolunteers and eventually, at twenty-minutes-to-eight in the evening, shereaches Glasgow with her now exhausted passengers, including one who willwrite next day to ‘The Glasgow Herald’ !

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At midnight on March 3, 1937, The Campbeltown & Glasgow Steam PacketJoint Stock Company and its two remaining ships, the Davaar” and the“Dalriada”, were taken over by Clyde Cargo Steamers Ltd. which company, onMarch 29, 1937, then changed its own name to The Clyde & CampbeltownShipping Company Limited.

OVER THE SEAS . . . . .

This book, quite literally, centres around the history of the Campbeltown ownedpassenger - cargo steamers, the first acquired in 1826, the last two withdrawnin 1940.

As a ship can neither conveniently load or discharge her passengers or cargowithout having a safe berth, the obvious place to begin is at the beginning withthe story of Campbeltown’s quays, first proposed in 1712, the very same yearthat Newcomen’s steam engines first appeared in use in coal mines and a fullcentury before Henry Bell’s “Comet” entered service on The Clyde.

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I was brought up in the Ayrshire village of Skelmorlie, beside and overlookingWemyss Bay. The Clyde’s Steamers and ships were then very much part ofeveryday life and, my father, the Customs and Excise’s Landing Officer atPrince’s Dock in Glasgow in the 1950’s, had me well schooled in the ways ofthe ships from an early age.

Our house, built by my parents, directly overlooked the start of Skelmorlie’sMeasured Mile and Wemyss Bay’s Pier and Railway Station and, in winter, withthe leaves fallen from the trees, I could see the very spot where the little“Kintyre” had sunk in 1907, the year before my mother was born.

As events transpired, I bought my very first car from ‘the (then) schoolboy’,Ninian Stewart, who had rowed out in a boat and rescued John M’Kechnie, theskipper of the “Kintyre”, after she had been sunk by the “Maori”.

One of the “Kintyre’s” white porcelain toilet pans, in near pristine conditionand brought to the surface in recent years, now has pride of place in ArmitageShanks historic collection in Staffordshire.

My earliest knowledge of the Campbeltown steamers came from a “non-blood”aunt who had served, in the fruit stalls, on both the old “Davaar” and the“Dalriada”.

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Wemyss Bay was no stranger to the Campbeltown ships, a regular port of callon Monday mornings and too a main berth in World War I and at the start ofWorld War II. There were other connections between Skelmorlie and Kintyre.

Skipness House’s owner was a cousin of Skelmorlie Castle’s tenant and whennew sandstone was required it was sent by ‘puffer’ from the quarry at Skelmorlieto Skipness and then there was the ‘smuggling’ connection.

One John McConnachie of Carradale who used to take whisky from the ‘SmaStill’ in Arran to one Henry Watson, the gardener at Skelmorlie Castle !

One of Henry’s sons, William Watson, an engineer by profession, wassomething of an adventurer, having grown up with the family of their nextneighbour, A. D. Campbell of ‘Ashcraig’, a sugar planter

Campbell was a contemporary of those West Indian planters, WilliamMcKinlay, Francis Farquharson, Charles McNeill, Robert Orr, William Finlay,John Montgomery, Ronald and John Campbell, William Stewart and JamesMcVicar, who all had Argyll and Kintyre connections.

William Watson eventually settled for a while in Louisiana in the 1850’s but hisadventurous spirit led him to join The Confederates, first the army and thentheir navy, initially on the “Rob Roy”, blockade running schooner. WilliamWatson, by virtue of his engineering knowledge and upbringing on the shoresof The Clyde, had some part in procuring and operating the Clyde Steamerswhich were quickly sold to The Confederates as blockade runners and it was atthis time that he met up with one Henry Morton Stanley, later to find fame forseeking out Dr David Livingstone in Africa.

Having now digressed this far ‘off course’ - and there will be no doubt further‘digressions’ in these pages - it is worth recording the seeming story of Watsonand Morton for it seems to be unreported elsewhere and, it involves both aClyde Steamer and the Burns family who had many shipping interests in ourown home area.

Too the story should be continued because of Campbeltown’s Africanconnections through both Archibald MacEachern, who foundedCampbeltown’s shipyard and William Mackinnon, later of Balinakill House,who founded The British East Africa Company, an important pioneer and

whose own story will be later recorded in these pages. So, to Henry MortonStanley.

He was born John Rowlands, son of unmarried parents, in the Welsh town ofDenbigh, note Denbigh. John Rowlands sailed as a cabin-boy for New Orleanswhere he was adopted by a merchant named Stanley, which persuaded hischange of name to Henry Morton Stanley.

Stanley joined The Confederate Army and then, after being taken prisoner,joined The Union's navy !

In 1867, Henry Morton Stanley joined the staff of “The New York Herald”and was sent off, via London, to join Lord Napier’s Abyssinian expedition.

Too in 1867, one Dr James ‘Paraffin’ Young bought Kelly Estate, overlookingWemyss Bay’s Pier and Railway Station, opened on Monday, May 15, 1865.

Young would soon have met his neighbours, George and, his son, JohnBurns, of G. & J. Burns and the Cunard Line, who lived less than a mile awayin Wellesley House and Castle Wemyss, respectively, and in the course ofconversation would no doubt have made them aware of his close friendshipwith Dr David Livingstone, the African explorer and missionary.

By sheer coincidence that year of 1867, young Henry Morton Stanley tooappeared at Wemyss Bay, as a house guest at Castle Wemyss and, with‘Paraffin’ Young in the company, would ‘meet’ Dr Livingstone for the firsttime !

No doubt too, Stanley also had the opportunity again to see and visit WilliamWatson, his father living just ‘down the road’ beside Skelmorlie Castle too. Itmight even be that Stanley and Watson even crossed The Atlantic together thatyear ?

In any case, there can be little doubt that H. M. Stanley, “The New YorkHerald” reporter, already knew a great deal about Livingstone even before hiseditor gave him his legendary assignment and that, when the they eventuallymet, their conversation would inevitably turn to their mutual Wemyss Bayfriendships.

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When Livingstone’s body was brought back home for burial, in Westminster,his two African servants, Susi and Chuma, came to Wemyss Bay to stay with‘Paraffin’ Young at Kelly House. They built a replica of Livingstone’s hut in theestate grounds and it lasted in fairly good condition until the 1930’s beforebeing swamped by undergrowth.

Here ends the first ‘digression’ - there will be more, quite a few more, as we‘sail’ through the pages ahead.

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Acknowledgements

n compiling the story here, it was inevitable and necessary to refer to manypublished ‘standard’ references, not least that written by “The CampbeltownCourier” editor, Alex. J. MacLeod, the “Campbeltown SteamboatCompany”, published in 1927. Other ‘standard’ references included the

various editions of Duckworth and Langmuir’s “”Clyde River and Other Steamers”and their “West Highland Steamers”, Alan J.S. Paterson’s “The Golden Years of TheClyde Steamers (1889-1914)”, Brian Patton’s “Scottish Coastal Steamers 1918-1975”,Fraser G. MacHaffie’s “The Short Sea Route”, Fred M. Walker’s “Song of The Clyde”and to many other corroborative items in the pages of “Ships Monthly” and “SeaBreezes” and to many old and local newspapers and to a miscellany of steamerenthusiast sources and references. A special note of thanks to my late fatherwho developed my interests in shipping and to Duncan MacMillan of Kintyre’sAntiquarian and Historical Society without whose generosity and support littleof this work would have been possible, to Duncan Ritchie of Carradale, toHamish Mackinven of Edinburgh, to Captain John Leesmoffat, to the late IanShannon and to the many other, some long departed, friends that I madethrough our mutual interest in ‘steamers’.

Donald Kelly, Kintyre, 2004.

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C o n t e n t sOnce Upon A Time 1The Smoking Stacks 4Rule “Britannia” 5The “Duke of Lancaster” 7The New Steamer Service 9Early Excursions 10The Reconstituted Company 11The Company 12 . . . . . and Its Chairmen 12The Company Colours and Flags 13Steamer and Railway Tickets 14Farmers’ Rules 14Company Accounts and Early Profits 15The “St. Kiaran” 16The “Duke of Cornwall” 17The “Celt” 18Sale of the “St. Kiaran” 18Puffer, Ahoy ! 19The “Druid” 20The Campbeltown Steamer Ferries and Piers 20Farm Flittings, Trial Jurors and Excursions 25Royal Apathy 27The “Carradale” and The “Swan” 27The “Carradale” and The “Machrihanish” 28Keeping Time with Princess Louise 28The “Duke of Cornwall” Scrapped 29The “Gael” 31The Houghly “Celt” 32The Disposal of The “Druid” 32The Wee “Kintyre” 32The New Railway 33Daily Sailings - June 1877 34The “Kinloch” 35The Tale and Sales of The “Gael” 36The Stately “Davaar” 38“Davaar”, Aground 40Crews’ Wages 43The Argyll Steamship Company 44The Railway Steamers 46

C o n t e n t sThe Naughty ‘90’s 49The Turbine Steamers 51The “King Edward” 53The “Queen Alexandra (I)” 57The Steward’s Department 60Breakfast, Luncheon, Dinner & Tea 62“Good Spirits” 63Neil Mitchell & The “Davaar” 64The “C. M. L. R.” Passenger Trains 66The 1907 Steamer Timetable 69The Stranraer “Princesses” 71The Loss of The “Kintyre” 72The Skelmorlie ‘Measured Mile’ 75The “Queen Alexandra (II)”/ “Saint Columba” 77Carradale’s “Medea” 78World War I, 1915 79The “Dalriada” 79The Sale of The “Kinloch” 81Company Managers and Agents 81The Captains 82The “King George V” 86The End of The Railway 871935 Fleet Changes 88The “Duchesses” of Argyll 90Change of Colours 93Home and Away at War 94“Finished With Engines” 96“Wimaisia” and “Taransay” 97“Halcyon” Days 98The “Duchess of Montrose” and The “Hamilton” 98Ayr Ways 101From “Queen” to “Knooz” 101Keeping Up Steam 103What’s In A Name ? 104First and Last ? 105Tickets Please 106Full Circle 106

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Once Upon A Time . . . . .

ong, long ago, there was a little girl called Elizabeth Tollemache. She wasborn in England about 1660 and would have been around five or six years oldwhen London was struck by The Great Plague and then by The Great Fire.

Elizabeth, one of eleven children, was the daughter of Sir Lionel Tollemache ofHelmington in Suffolk and, although born in England, she was almost certainlybrought up in Scotland by her mother Elizabeth Mornay, Countess of Dysart, who,on the death of her husband Lionel, remarried the notorious Duke of Lauderdale.

Untouched by her step-father’s ways, young Elizabeth developed, despite somefaults, into a generally decent, reputable and moral young woman and, despitebeing no particular beauty, she married Lord Lorne, the eldest son of the 9th Earlof Argyll, in 1678.

Elizabeth’s step-father, Lauderdale, took good care of her marriage contract, dulysigned too by the King, conveying to Elizabeth most of the Argyll estates in Kintyreas jointure. The contract also directed that a suitable house was to be built inKintyre for Elizabeth and thus Limecraigs, at Campbeltown, was built.

Life was by no means uneventful for Elizabeth. Her father-in-law, the Earl ofArgyll, was to be imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle. With the help of his step-daughter, Lady Sophia Lindsay, he managed to escape to Holland where his father,the Marquis of Argyll, had purchased a small estate for refuge in times of trouble.The Earl was outlawed, his estates confiscated and Boyle of Kelburne placed incharge of the Kintyre part of the estates.

Lord Lorne, Elizabeth Tollemache’s husband, then living in London, protested hisown loyalty to the King and was eventually granted a pension of £1250 a year out ofthe Argyll estates.

Four years later, in 1685, the Earl of Argyll made his unsuccessful attempt tooverthrow King James II and ended up being executed in Edinburgh. Lord Lorne,still living in London, again protested his own loyalty to King James but wasalarmed to find his pension now but £800.

With the shadow of the scaffold looming across his path, Elizabeth’s husband madetracks for Holland where he was hospitably received by William of Orange and hiswife, Mary. It is reasonable to suppose that Elizabeth and the children too

accompanied him as they might well have become King James’ hostages had theystayed behind.

In 1688, Lord Lorne was one of the exiles who accompanied William and Marywhen they successfully invaded England and, when they took the throne, Lornesuccessfully claimed and took possession of the honours and estates of the Argylls.

In 1701, Lorne was created 1st Duke of Argyll and Elizabeth, no doubt to hergreat satisfaction, was created Duchess of Argyll.

The Arms of The Royal Burgh of Campbeltown, itself but then a year old, too weredrawn to include the arms of Elizabeth’s own family, the Tollemache’s, in thefourth quarter of the shield which shows a black “fret”, a geometrical device, on awhite ground.

With the return of worldly prosperity, domestic troubles quickly ensued betweenElizabeth and her husband and they separated. Elizabeth was an imperious, quick-tempered woman and her husband fond of gambling and horse-racing. Trouble toowas bound to increase when he further installed a young lady in his house at Chirtonin Northumberland, where he died in 1703. Elizabeth, now widowed, began toinvolve herself in local affairs in Kintyre.

Campbeltown was the centre and seaport of a rich agricultural district and even inthese times had a developing export - import trade. The quay, a small stoneconstruction was, in these days, where Mafeking Place now stands - this, ofcourse, was long before the land at the head of Campbeltown Loch was reclaimedfrom the sea.

In 1712, the very year that Thomas Newcomen and Thomas Savery’s first practicalworking atmospheric steam engine began working in coal mines and a full hundredyears before Henry Bell’s “Comet” appeared, Elizabeth advised the Town Councilthat she had agreed with one John Cheddison, an Ayr mason, to build a newcommercial quay opposite Gortnaquocher, on the shore of Campbeltown Lochbut, “chronically hard up”, Elizabeth was not able to follow through.

Elizabeth, whose income from the Kintyre estates was considerable and whoseestablishment at Limecraigs in keeping with her position, complained frequently ofher ‘poverty’ and the unfairness of having to provide for and keep her nieces, thedaughters of her brother-in-law, Lord Charles Campbell, who were both to marry

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Campbeltown Collectors of Customs, one a Fraser of Strichen and the otherFarquarson of Finzean, all buried in Kilkerran.

Elizabeth’s own daughter, Lady Anne, married the Earl of Bute and her sons, Johnand Archibald, were to be successively Dukes of Argyll but left no male heirs. The4th Duke of Argyll, a cousin, was not related to Elizabeth, the LimecraigsDuchess.

Even though Elizabeth had been unable herself to fund the construction of a newquay, she continued to pursue the matter with the Town Council and, in 1715,proposed that a weekly packet service should be established to and from Glasgow -she even offered, despite her ongoing expenses and ‘poverty’, to bear one-third ofany losses that might be incurred in operating the service !

Eventually, in 1722, a few enterprising individuals began the construction of whatwe know today as The Old Quay. Like the Duchess, they soon found out that thecosts well quite beyond their own capabilities and, as Council Minutes record, “totheir considerable damage” and, the following year, the Council was asked to takeover the construction works.

Nothing much more happened till 1727 when the Council, realising the fullbenefits of a new commercial quay, ordered every adult male to do two days’ forcedlabour per year on the building work, the alternative being a fine of one shillingsterling. Every vessel, large and small, belonging to the town was also ordered tocarry one cargo of stones a year from the quarry to the quay or to pay a fine of tenScots shillings per ton of their registered tonnage and the fines collected were all devotedfor the costs involved in building the new quay where work went on slowly butsurely, year after year.

In 1736, the year after his mother Elizabeth had been buried at the old LowlandChurch, John, now the 2nd Duke of Argyll, had prompted Alexander Campbell ofStonefield to meet the Town Council to begin a second quay, The New Quay,opposite “The Kirk Roof” of the Old Gaelic Church, to form, with the stillbuilding Old Quay, “an enclosed basin or harbour for the preservation and safetyof ships loading and unloading thereat.”.

Work at the New Quay, begun in 1754, now proceeded along with that at The Old.Ten years later and work on the two quays now nearing completion, the TownCouncil found themselves becoming involved in a long and protracted dispute withthe Laird of Saddell about landing rights in Campbeltown Loch.

The Town Council always claimed the exclusive right of exacting dues on all goodslanded and shipped anywhere on Campbeltown Loch, but that claim was neveradmitted by the Laird of Saddell who then owned Dalintober and now set aboutbuilding a quay there too !

Much to the disgust of Campbeltown’s Town Council, he too encouraged thelanding and shipping of goods at ‘Maggie Bann’s Hole’, a pool on the shore, justbelow where St. Clair Terrace now stands.

It would not be until well on in the nineteenth century and only after prolonged andexpensive litigation that Campbeltown Town Council established, for all timecoming, its exclusive right to levy dues on all goods landed or shipped anywhere onthe shores of Campbeltown Loch, from McCrinan’s Point - it being properlyrecorded as ‘McNinian’s Point’ in the old minutes - right round the shores to theOttar Buoy.

Thus we find that all three of Campbeltown’s quays, The Old, The New andDalintober, were completed in 1765 and in that same year came one CharlesMacDowall of Crichen, in Wigtonshire, to tenant the working of the coal mine, itsrights let to him by the Duke of Argyll.

The Smoking Stacks“The Deil himsel’ coming doon all in smoke - Guid save us ! “

robably few could have realised the significance of the new order of things ofwhich ‘the smoking stacks’ were a sign. It meant the end of comparativeisolation to countless communities and the beginning of a new age, of‘steam’.

Rule “Britannia”

n 1814, two men, Lewis M’Lellan and Alexander Laird, entered partnershipand began to take a prominent interest and an active part in the development ofthe steamship business, their enterprise was backed by Archibald Mactaggart,an open-minded Campbeltown distiller.

Rothesay, Tarbert, Inveraray and Campbeltown were all ‘faraway places’ served bysailing smacks and gabbarts and M’Lellan and Laird seem to have realised at an earlystage that The Clyde itself would soon become crowded with competitors and

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determined to extend the benefits of steam navigation to places where the comingof the steamship was but an echo.

In 1815, they placed an order with John Hunter of Port Glasgow for the 73¼ ton“Britannia”, 93’ 4” long, 16’ 5” beam and 8’3” in depth, engined by D. McArthur& Company. With Captain Wise in command, her first trip, in 1816, fromGlasgow to Campbeltown took just 14 hours, a very notable change from thesailing packets’ sailing times.

The arrival and departure of the sailing packets were at irregular intervals. When aboat was ready to set out on a particular day, the fact was announced throughoutthe burgh by the ‘town crier’ who usually described such sailings as “about to startfrom The Neb,” the term then applied to The Old Quay.

It was a quaint tradition handed down to very recent times that these vessels, thesailing packets, went so leisurely that the skipper could get planting his potatoes inArran or Bute on the outward journey and dig them up on the return trip. Thepeople in Campbeltown two hundred years ago were evidently as much inclinedthen, as they are to this very day, to poke fun at the public services by means of alittle exaggeration.

The fact seems to be however, that it normally took the sailing packets one weekfor the outward journey and another week for the return. The voyage to Glasgowwas looked upon as ‘very hazardous’ by many people and while twelve days wasconsidered a tedious passage, the journey in stormy weather often took very muchlonger.

Sometimes, it is said, that goods were ordered from Glasgow, duly shipped withbills at three months drawn from the day the vessel sailed and the bills had become duebefore the goods were even in sight of the town let alone delivered. Suchexperiences, one would fancy, were the exception rather than the rule and mostlikely in winter when the storms ensued.

Such was the success of the “Britannia” that, almost immediately, in 1816, thepartners placed a second order with John Hunter in Port Glasgow for the 90-ton“Waterloo (I)”, 72-feet long and 16-feet in beam, this time the engines weresupplied by one James Cook.

The two steamers now plied regularly, about three times a fortnight, betweenGlasgow and Campbeltown and every Saturday during the summer one or other of

them would sail from The Broomielaw to Greenock, Rothesay, Tarbert, Ardrishaigand Inveraray, returning from Inveraray on the following Monday for Glasgow.

Again the M’Lellan, Laird partnership had hit success and in 1819 the first“Waterloo (I)” was sold off and the 200-ton “Waterloo (II)”, 100-feet long and 16-feet in beam, ordered from Scott & Sons of Greenock, again James Cook was tosupply her machinery, two independent 30-horsepower engines.

M’Lellan and Laird’s success, encouraged the Campbeltown ‘worthies’ to take stockof their position and to form themselves into a company which might serve the areain an even better and more intimate way than hitherto.

When Alexander Laird’s son joined the business, the partnership would acquire twonew steamers, the “Clydesdale” and the “Londonderry”, for a new tri-weeklyservice linking Campbeltown with Londonderry and, no doubt anticipating suchkind of developments, the Campbeltonians felt that any such expansions mightdetract from their own direct links to Glasgow.

As events too were to turn, the “Waterloo (II)”, renamed “Maid of Islay (I)”,would extend her run - and via Stranraer too - to Islay in 1825, a fact which mayfurther have had bearing on the thinking of the Campbeltown ‘worthies’.

Another, perhaps worrying, element in the equation was an announcement in ‘TheGlasgow Chronicle’ of March 15, 1825 that anyone trying to send whisky on the onlytwo Greenock - Liverpool steam packets would be prosecuted !

The “Duke of Lancaster”

he year is 1826 and at its beginning two Campbeltown seafarers, CaptainsColville and Harvey, were despatched to Liverpool to look after the purchaseof a suitable steamer to take up a service from Campbeltown to Glasgow.

In February, they bought the wooden hulled “Duke of Lancaster” from JamesWinder and others, of Liverpool.. Built by the Liverpool firm of Mottershead &Hayes in 1822. 103’ 5” long, 17’ 0” beam, 9’ 5” depth and 91 net tons, she had atwo independent 2-cylinder side-lever engines of 25 net horsepower each and couldaccommodate 120 passengers. She cost £3,800 and a further £400 was spent on thenecessary alterations which would be completed before another Campbeltown man,

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Captain Mathieson, was appointed master, to deliver her from Liverpool and takecommand of her when she entered service.

It only took a couple of trips for Captain Mathieson to find out that her draft was,at that time, too great for going up-river to Glasgow. This set-back considerablydampened the ardour of her new owners and, a meeting being held, they decided,by a majority, to sell the ship. She lay for some time at anchor in CampbeltownLoch and several ineffectual attempts were made to sell her.

Faith in the ultimate success of a project of this kind was not however to beextinguished by the ship’s seeming unsuitability for sailing ‘up-river’. The sight ofthe ship, lying forlornly at anchor in ‘The Loch’, kindled minds and a few of theoriginal shareholders - a ship is divided into 64-shares, no doubt frustrated by herlack of movement, through in their hand with Messrs Kirkwood, Beith and Colvilleand others, acting on behalf of a new company and the ship became theirs for the‘knockdown’ price of just £990, a bargain, she had been valued at £1,280.

In October 1826, a general meeting was held and it was agreed that John Colvillejunior, afterwards to be the agent for The Clydesdale Bank, should be appointed asthe ship’s agent. John Beith junior, David Colville, James Grant, William Watson,Alexander Kirkwood and Daniel Mactaggart were all appointed to the Committee ofManagement and Trustees.

The deed of co-partnery records that “the Company is formed for the purpose ofcarrying passengers between Campbeltown and Glasgow and other places; that the “Duke ofLancaster” was bought for £990 but was worth £1,280 and that the shares were divided into64ths, worth £20 each, giving a capital of £1,280.”

The ship would be registered at Liverpool on February 28, 1827 and the co-partnery deed, a lengthy one, was written on stamped paper by David Colville,writer in Campbeltown and was inscribed by the following individuals and firms forone share each : -

Dan. Mactaggart Mrs F. Campbell John ColvillAlex. Kirkwood F. Campbell Donald AndrewAlex. Kirkwood jnr. Nathaniel Harvey John DunlopJames Grant Alex. Love John M’KersieRobert Sawyers James Taylor Robert WatsonJohn Mactaggart John Colvill James HarveyMargaret Ralston William Robert Ralston

William Watson and Edward Stewart John F. EwingWilliam Watson jnr. Lamb, Colville & Co. Wm. M’EwanDuncan M’Corkindale James Dow Alex. CampbellM’Murchy, Ralston David Colville & Co. Matthew Greenlees & Co. John Colville jnr. John CampbellAlex. Colville J. A. Campbell Charles Campbell

In November 1826, following the general meeting, Captain James Napier, then inthe Londonderry trade, was appointed master of the “Duke of Lancaster” at a salaryof £8. 8s per month. His appointment was in preference to a number of applicants,including Captain Johnston who had commanded the “Henry Bell”, engaged in theGreenock to Liverpool trade and Lieutenant John Campbell of The Royal Navy andformerly captain of the steamboat “Ben Nevis”.

It would seem that ‘The Campbeltown Company’ were not perhaps over- payingtheir men as an 1837 crew bill for another company and a boat of similar size to the“Duke of Lancaster” shows : -

Captain £250.00 p.a. Engineer £109.20 p.a.Mate £ 58.50 p.a. Firemen (2) £ 50.70 p.a.Seamen (4) £ 34.12½ p.a. Steward £ 34.12½ p.a.

Here then begins the history of ‘The Campbeltown Steamboats’

The New Steamer Service

he first chairman of the now reorganised company was Daniel Mactaggart ofKilkivan and now the Committee issued sailing instructions to their officials.

“The steamer is to sail from Campbeltown on Monday, remain at Glasgowto receive goods on Tuesday, sail from Glasgow on Wednesday, discharge and loadat Campbeltown on Thursday, sail that night, Thursday night, or early on Fridaymorning, so as to be in Glasgow in time to discharge on Friday after- noon andthen sail to Campbeltown with passengers on Saturday.” In winter time, it becamethe common practice to run the steamer only ‘thrice a fortnight from each end’.

In the beginning, the “Duke of Lancaster” sailed directly to Glasgow, herdeparture times from Campbeltown varying to enable her to catch the effect of theflood tide going up-river to Glasgow.

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Even in May 1837, a Company notice advised intending passengers that the steamerwould leave Campbeltown at 5 am on Thurs. May 4th; 7 am on Tues. 9th; 9 am onSat. 13th; 10 am on Thurs. 18th; 7 am on Tues. 23rd and 10 am on Sat. 27th. Onoccasion adverse weather and delays at ferries might lead to a 5 am departure onlyarriving in up-river in Glasgow at 10 pm.

As the service settled down, ferry connections became established at Saddell,Torrisdale, Carradale and Lochranza, none being served by piers in these earlydays and calls too were made for a time at Rothesay.

Beds, at a shilling each, were provided for the passengers as the trips were madenearly as often overnight as during the day, yet these voyages were considered agreat event by the jovial and easy-going inhabitants of Campbeltown.

The steward was “strictly prohibited” from having any other whisky on board otherthan the ‘best Campbeltown’, it may be accepted that the prolonged sail had itscompensations, especially as the price of the primest ‘entertainment’ wasround about 5 pence per gill.

The steamer timetable would only become regularised with the building of therailways, particularly the Glasgow and Greenock Railway which opened its CathcartStreet terminus, some short distance away from Greenock’s Custom House Quay,in 1841.

Fares, in the early days of the service were : -Campbeltown to Glasgow Cabin 7s Steerage 3s 6d “ “ Greenock “ 6s “ 3s

“ “ Rothesay “ 4s 6d “ 2s 6d

Early Excursions

he 1815-built “Argyle”, which normally plied between Glasgow andInveraray, was despatched from Glasgow for Stornoway on February 7th,1822 and had called at Campbeltown making her the first excursion steamer.

In the following year, 1823, she called again on an ‘excursion’ from Glasgow toDublin and Plymouth, an enormous undertaking in those early years of steam.Excursions were then to be an early feature of the new enterprise. In the days of the“Duke of Lancaster”, boat races in Campbeltown Loch were an occasion of publicfestival and of tremendous importance to the town’s inhabitants.

No doubt with the object of giving the timid a taste of steamship sailing andinducing them to risk the longer voyages for which The Company had been broughtinto existence, the townpeople were treated to free sails down the loch to witness theboat races.

In August 1827, the “Duke of Lancaster” ran an excursion to Ayr and, in thefollowing year, 1828, ran trips in April, to Inveraray; in May, to Sanda. Then, onAugust 21, 1828, to Belfast - departing Thursday, returning Saturday, the fareswere 10 shillings cabin, 6 shillings steerage. In June 1831, with a trip to Ailsa Craigand in August 1834, to Peninver Regatta.

The Reconstituted Company

n November 1833, the company was reconstituted, the capital and share valuesremaining unchanged and the shareholders : -

MacLennan & Grant, distillers Thomas Ralston, merchant Andrew & Montgomery, distillers Harvey & Hunter, distillers Colvill, Beith & Co., distillers Robert Armour, coppersmith James Ryburn, baker Kelly & Sinclair, grocers William Barton, apothecary Mathew Greenlees, merchant Stewart, Galbraith & Co., distillers Duncan Mackinnon, distiller Hugh Mitchell, flesher Wm. M’Kersie, distiller Alexander Montgomery, merchant John M’Nair, malster M’Murchy, Ralston & Co., distillers Alexander Giffen, merchant Archd. Colville, merchant John M’Eachran, agent Charles Rowatt Mactaggart, distiller John Beith, clothier Reid & Colville, distillers John M’Callum, hairdresser

By 1835 the “Duke of Lancaster” had become inadequate for the trade which haddeveloped. New shareholders were added and in December 1835 the order for thenew ship given to Robert Duncan & Company, Greenock.

The number of shares were increased, from 64 to 100 and these valued at £31 10/-each, giving a capital of £3,600, the old shares being equalised and newshareholders taken in : -

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Neil Brolachan, cooper John M’Lean, writer William Hall, grocer James Brown, grocer David Anderson & Co., distillers Samuel Muir, baker James M’Murchy, baker Wm. Harvey, tanner Archd. Colville jnr. & Co., Hugh Ferguson, banker cartwrights Captain James Napier Archd. M’Murchy, writer Robert Beith, baker Matthew Huie, baker John M’Callum & Co., drapers Archd. Colville, distiller Wylie, Mitchell & Co., distillers Templeton, Fulton & Co., distillers Colville, Beith & Co., distillers Mrs William Greenlees, merchant David Colville, writer James Dunlop, distiller Alexander Marshall, Excise Captain W. Hutchison William Stewart, wright Wm. Galbraith, merchant John Russell, agent, Glasgow George C. Harvey, writer John Giffen, watchmaker James Kennedy, stationer, Glasgow Captain John M’Lean Glenramskill Distillery Co. David Greenlees, malster Edward Langlands, Glasgow John Colville, saddler

The Company

s has been stated, the original shares of the company were, in 1826, dividedinto 64-ths of £20 each, giving a capital of £1,280 and, in 1833, the capitalwas increased to £3,600, when new shareholders were admitted.

Eleven years later this £3,600 was in turn more than doubled and by 1846 had beenfurther increased to £9,000. In 1867, The Company, The Campbeltown and GlasgowSteam Packet Joint Stock Company, was registered under The Companies Act of 1862as an unlimited company.

Its shares were then again increased, to 1,800, in 1879 and there was a re-issue ofshares in 1883 when the firm was registered as a limited company and its namechanged to make it now The Campbeltown and Glasgow Steam Packet Joint Stock CompanyLimited.

. . . . . and Its Chairmen

Dan Mactaggart 1826, 1829 and 1830John Fleming 1827, 1828, 1831, 1833, 1834, 1836 and 1837John Beith jnr. 1832, 1844, 1850, 1853, 1856, 1859 and 1870Nathaniel Harvey 1835, 1838, 1840 and 1841John Beith 1839David Colville 1842, 1845, 1848, 1851, 1854 and 1858John Colvill jnr. 1843 and 1846John Grant 1847David Greenlees 1849, 1852 and 1855John Galbraith 1857, 1863, 1866, 1867, 1871, 1879Samuel Greenlees 1860Alexander Love 1861A. M’Corkindale 1862John M’Murchy 1864James Stewart 1865, 1869, 1873, 1877 and 1881Thos. Brown 1868Matthew Andrew 1872Charles Mactaggart 1874 and 1878Duncan Colville 1875 and then 1886 to 1893Chas. C. Greenlees 1876, 1880 and 1884James Campbell 1882John M’Kersie 1883Ex-Provost Greenlees 1884James Dunlop 1885 and 1886Provost Duncan Colville 1887 till 1901Provost John M’Kersie 1902 till 1904John Muir 1905Ex-Provost Duncan Colville 1906 till 1910Ex-Provost John Colvill 1911 till 1924Ex-Provost Hugh Mitchell 1924, 1925, 1926 and 1927 - ?

The Company Colours and Flags

hen the first steamships appeared, their funnels were painted in colourschosen by the builders - not the ship-owners, a bit like the way that the carmanufacturers chose to ‘badge’ their products ! The company funnel

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colours may indeed have been chosen by the “Duke of Lancaster’s” Merseybuilders !

Whatever the case, the funnels were to be painted black with a deep red band, fromthe stay-ring below the black funnel top, running to mid-way between the funnel-topand deck level. Hulls were black with a thin white band at the waterline and pinkanti-fouling. While deckbouses were varnished teak, the lifeboats and some parts ofthe superstructure were white-painted. The ships flew two house-flags, a whitetriangular pennant, bearing, in red, an “Iona” cross - representing The Cross thenin Campbeltown’s Main Street - and, below, flew a second triangular pennanthaving red-over-white-over-blue horizontal stripes. Each ship too flew a ship’swhite triangular ‘name’ pennant. Awarded the mail contract, the words ‘Royal’ and‘Mail’ were added in red on either side of the ‘Iona’ Celtic Cross.

Steamer and Railway Tickets

arly tickets were laboriously hand stamped and then in 1837 one ThomasEdmondson (1792-1851), a clerk on The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway,invented a machine for printing consecutively-numbered and standard-sizedcard tickets which could be automatically date-stamped in a machine-press.

He patented his machines and then persuaded the railway companies, first TheManchester & Leeds, to lease his ticket dating machines at 10/- (50p) per route mileper year - and there were literally tens of thousands of ‘route-miles’ !

Farmers’ Rules

ith the coming of the railways, came, often complex, fares and freighttables and rules ! It was easy for the Campbeltown steamer-men tounderstand their rates but officials must have been bewildered onoccasion.

Even if it is easy to count cattle and sheep ‘by the head’, farmers and butchers hadto value animals more precisely. Some railway stations introduced weigh- bridges,but why not stick to an old fashioned measuring tape like the butchers. Measureround the beast, the cow, close behind its shoulder and square the result; measure itsback from the fore-part of its shoulder-blade to the bone at its tail and multiply thislength by 5.

These results, measured in feet, are multiplied together and that result is divided by 21 togive the beast’s weight in stones, 14 lb units - this is the total weight of the fourquarters of the beast which will be slightly less than half the total weight of the liveanimal.For very fat cattle, add 5% and, conversely, subtract 5% of the weight if very lean.About 5-6% of the beast’s total live weight is in the hide and some 8-9% in thetallow.

Farmers also used tapes to measure the weight of haystacks. Multiply the length ofthe stack by its width; measure the height of the stack to the eaves and then measureone-third of the height between the eaves and the top of the stack.

Multiply these results together and divide the answer by 27. If the hay is less than 3 months oldthen multiply again by 6; if older than 3 months, by 7 and, for the oldest hay, by 8. Theresult gives the corresponding weight per cubic yard, in stones.

Company Accounts and Early Profits

ugust 31st was made the end of the financial year and, as The Company didnot start operating until the beginning of 1827, the first year’s returns arefor eight months only, shillings and pence have been omitted.

Year Freights Passengers Total Profit1827 864 574 1,438 4481828 1,660 812 2,473 9461829 2,030 974 3,005 1,2421830 2,302 881 3,184 1,1211831 2,422 877 3,299 1,279

At the October company meeting of 1831, a dividend of £30 per share wasdeclared. From January 1830 to January 1831, the ship had carried 4,099passengers between Campbeltown and Glasgow. The shareholders in fine fettle,they agreed to treat themselves to a dinner on board the ship, reportedly insumptuous fashion !

In the following year, 1832, the dividend was down, at £18 per share and, twoyears later, in 1834, had increased slightly to £21 per share.

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Putting things in perspective, the ship’s 10-man crew cost just £700 per year andthese were the days when no sinking fund was thought of. For their prodigality withdividends in the early years of the company, the shareholders would smart in theend.

Year Freights Passengers Total Profit Remarks

1832 2,424 637 3,062 955 Duke of Lancaster continues alone

1833 2,303 702 3,006 3511834 3,138 804 3,943 1,4551835 2,994 692 3,686 1,2431836 3,382 825 4,208 785 Joined by St.Kiaran1837 5,063 1,114 6,177 8991838 5,372 1,096 6,469 1,2711839 5,828 1,495 7,324 1,7661840 6,173 1,462 7,635 9911841 6,354 1,681 8,036 2,3451842 5,108 1,461 6,569 1,730 Third ship, Duke of

Cornwall began1843 5,571 1,433 7,004 1,4091844 5,276 1,454 6,731 1,4151845 5,862 1,503 7,365 2,1481846 5,862 1,692 7,554 2,1861847 5,632 1,485 7,118 4051848 5,881 1,355 7,236 1,605 St. Kiaran sold and

Celt begins1849 6,137 1,486 7,627 1,5301850 6,298 1,771 8,070 1,7131851 6,303 1,534 7,838 6541852 6,577 1,494 8,071 3781853 6,712 1,541 8,254 1,232

The “St. Kiaran”

he Company’s second ship, the first built new for them, came from the yardof R. Duncan & Co. in Greenock. A wooden ship of 128 net tons, 115’ 10”long and 19’ 1” in breadth, with a depth of 11’ 11”, very similar inappearance to the “Duke of Lancaster”. Her 110 horsepower engine, twice

the size of the old “Duke of Lancaster’s”, was supplied by J. & W. Napier.

Registered on December 23, 1835, she made her maiden voyage in June 1836under the command of Capt. Archd. McLean and then allowed the “Duke ofLancaster” time off to be given an extensive £1,500 overhaul before the start of thefollowing season.

On her return, the “Duke of Lancaster” began calling at Ayr in the 1837 seasonand, as the trade between Glasgow and Campbeltown was yet scarcely sufficient tojustify the regular running of two ships, the Company decided to extend theirsailings to Larne and Islay. The Company’s captains did not care about the Islaytrips and submitted a joint report stating that “the voyage to Islay is hazardous at allseasons and in winter is particularly so.”

Ultimately, after giving the calls at Ayr a ‘fair trial’, these were dropped as it wasproving that the gross receipts for Ayr traffic were scarcely covering the harbourand port charges. The Larne and Islay calls too were dropped in 1841.

The “Duke of Cornwall”

he Company’s third ship, their first iron ship, the 211 ton gross, 127 net ton“Duke of Cornwall” built by Caird & Company in Greenock. At 122’ 9”long, she was seven feet bigger than th “St. Kiaran”. She was however, inthe light of experience, slightly narrower at 18’ 2” beam and shallower in

depth, at 9’5”. The “Duke of Cornwall” would be the first to call at Pirnmill.

With her single cylinder, 45” x 45”, 90 nhp engine, again from J. & W. Napier,she quickly established a notable record for speed, sometimes doing the trip toGlasgow in about six hours. Registered in Glasgow on August 25th, 1842. Caird’shad charged £2,978 for building the 211-ton ship.

On January 31, 1855, The Glasgow & Stranraer Steam Packet Company’s 1847-built “Briton” struck an uncharted, but locally well-known, rock off Ballantrae andthe company had the “Duke of Cornwall” on charter till the end of March.

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The “Celt”

he “Duke of Lancaster”, The Company’s first steamer, had been sold forscrap on May 30, 1845 and now a new steamer was ordered from DennyBrothers at Dumbarton, the very first paddle-steamer that they had built.

This was a two-masted clipper-bowed iron steamer, her funnel again aft of herpaddle-boxes, ornamented by a gilt figure of a hand holding a dirk. The “Celt” wasa bigger ship than any yet owned by The Company, 155’ 9” in length, 20’ 9” inbeam and 10’ 3” in depth, 252 tons gross, 153 tons net. A 140 nhp single cylinder,62” x 56”, engine of supplied by T. Wingate & Co.

Registered on June 21, 1848, she was greatly admired and immediately enhancedthe Denny yard’s reputation for quality workmanship with her superior furnishingsand appointments.

Almost exactly ten years later, on June 13, 1858, the 1.011-ton steamship “NewYork”, outward bound to New York with 222 passengers and 80 crew, under thecommand of Captain McWilliam, himself a native of Campbeltown, went ashore at12.15 a.m. on the rocks at Rubha Clachan, to the east of The Mull of Kintyrelighthouse, when the ship became engulfed in a dense fog bank and sight of theSanda Island light was lost - a defect in the ship’s compass was later faulted for theincident.

As the night was calm, the crew waited until morning and, rigging a number oflines to the shore, succeeded themselves in transferring all the passengers to safetyby boat. As the passengers of the “New York” watched her settle by the stern andsink below the waves, the “Celt” appeared on the scene at mid-day and took onboard some 130 of the stranded passengers before the weather deteriorated andforced her to leave the remainder to begin the arduous trek overland to safety.

Sale of the “St. Kiaran”

ith the 1842-built “Duke of Cornwall” and the new “Celt” in service, TheCompany now sold the 1836-built “St. Kiaran” to J. Davidson of Leithwho used her for a couple of years on sailings to Copenhagen By 1850the “St. Kiaran” was back on the Clyde under the ownership of R.P.

Stephens. She was soon sold again, this time to Joseph Ibbotson of Goole -nothing more of her is known.

Puffer, Ahoy !The supreme marine achievement of man’s invention !

mongst the host of small cargo-carrying Clyde sailing craft were the gabbarts,some schooners but most ketches of about 50 registered tons, 60-feet long,15 to 17-feet in beam and about 7 to 9-feet in depth.

Their shallow draft, flat-bottomed hulls, suitable for grounding on beaches wherethey could discharge their cargoes, were full-bodied with a good sheer, had generallyrounded, though some were square, short counter sterns and outside rudders andall of a size able to fit the locks on The Forth and Clyde Canal. All were cutter-rigged with gaff main and topsails, jib and staysail.

More than fifty years had passed since the “Charlotte Dundas” had shown theviability of steam-power on the canal, a technical success which was not thenfollowed through by the canal proprietors who feared the effect of the steamer’swash on the canal banks.

Now, in 1856, James Milne, the canal engineer, fitted a twin cylinder, 10” strokeand 6½” bore, atmospheric engine, powered by a 3’ diameter boiler working at 35lbs pressure, into the “Thomas”, a ‘standard’ canal barge at a cost of £320.

With a four-foot pitch ‘screw’ and the engine turning at 130 revolutions per minute,the “Thomas”, capable of carrying some 70 or 80 tons of cargo, was able to dosome 5 mph and ‘the puffer’ was born, her atmospheric engine ‘puffing’ merrily alongexhausting steam directly into the atmosphere and sky !

As an ordinary canal barge, she had been worked by two boatmen, a horse and ahorseman, now the “Thomas” needed just two crew.

The following year, 1857, at Kelvin Dock, the Swan brothers, David, John andRobert, built and engined the “Glasgow”, the first purpose-built ‘puffer’ and in thesame year one James Hay set up business at Port Dundas as a shipping agent. Tenyears later, as J. & J. Hay, James and his brothers John and Robert, both engineers,took over Crawford & Company’s boatyard at Kirkintilloch to build ‘puffers’, mostgiven ‘tribal’ names, for themselves.

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The “Druid”

n 1857 too, the Campbeltown Company ordered another new steamer, four-feet longer and 10 hp more, but 25-tons less gross capacity than the “Celt”,from Barclay, Curle & Company. Registered on June 20, 1857, she was thefirst of the fleet to have a straight stem and no figure-head.

Of 229 tons gross, 125 tons net, the ship, with a 150 nhp 2-cylinder, 44” x 52”,engine also this time supplied by the builders themselves, was 160’ 1” long, 20’ 6”beam and 9’ 7” in depth. She was never the favourite in stormy weather as she hada tendency to ship water in heavy seas but was otherwise was a reliable ship.

The Campbeltown Steamer Ferries and Piers

here had been a regular through ferry link, via Arran, from Kintyre toSaltcoats from around November 1770 onwards. Duncan Sillar, operatingfrom Imachar on the west side of Arran, crossing to Carradale or Grogportlinking with Hans Bannatyne’s ferry running from Brodick to Saltcoats. Too,

between 1684 and about the 1820’s, a ferry based at Dunagoil Bay in Bute ran toLochranza, the ferryman being paid thirty-six shillings Scots for each return crossing- the pound Scots, which had been of equal value to the pound sterling around 1360,was worth only 1/8d (8½p) by the time of The Union of The Crowns in 1707.

In the 1820’s, a regular steamer service then linking the east Arran ports to themainland, the tenants around Blackwaterfoot, in addition to their rents, also paidan extra charge to subsidise a ferry from Blackwaterfoot to Arran, a linkoccasionally revived as an excursion in the 1900’s and last provided by a convertedship’s lifeboat in the early 1950’s.

The steamer calls at Pirnmill, for a time Torrisdale and Saddell, were met withopen rowing boats, pulled by two or three oarsmen, to ferry up to 20 passengers andgoods ashore. Other companies’ ships also used ferries at Blackwaterfoot and MachrieBay.

The call at Pirnmill lasted right up to World War II when the Campbeltown shipswere withdrawn after the last service on Saturday, March 16, 1940.

The Pirnmill ferry was operated by the Cook family, related to other Cooks in

Campbeltown, and Charlie Robertson. The Cooks operated Pirnmill’s Post Officewhich had first opened in June 1872. Under the regulations of the day, the post-master was obliged to go out in the ferry to meet each steamer and ‘exchangeoutgoing and incoming mails’ ! These were franked as “Greenock”.

Though it was 1918 before women, over the age of 30, were given the right tovote, Pirnmill was at the forefront of campaigning for women’s right to vote.

One of the Cook family grand-daughters, Flora Gibson who, although born inManchester, in 1869, went to school in Pirnmill and had then gone on to The CivilService College in Glasgow, had worked at Pirnmill’s Telegraph Office and then,having passed her examinations to become a post-mistress, Flora, at just 5’ 1” tall,had been thwarted by a newly introduced regulation that all post office staff must beat least 5’ 2” tall !

Flora promptly took up with the suffragette movement in protest and became oneof their most extreme activists earning herself the name of “The General” and evenwearing a badge so inscribed !

Through Flora, the indomitable leader of the suffragettes, Emily Pankhurst, cameto visit Pirnmill before the beginning of The Great War in 1914. She was drivenabout the island by Robert Anderson whose family were the Pirnmill carriage-hirersand blacksmiths - Robert’s son, John, was a keen photographer and publishedlocal picture postcards.

By 1907, Andersons owned a number of horse-drawn carriages and were evendoing “Round The Island” tours of Arran using a horse-drawn charàbanc.

Then, in 1913, John issued an ultimatum to his father that, if nothing were done tomodernise the family business, he would go off to Canada to join his uncle. TheAndersons did ‘modernise’ and obtained the first motor car and lorry dealership onthe island and were soon and for long selling ‘Model T’s’ and other Ford vehiclesthroughout Arran and Argyllshire.

During the 1914-1918 war, young John Anderson was a mechanic-motor engineerin France and worked on AEC open-topped double-decker buses used as trooptransports - He nearly brought back a double-decker bus to Arran !

Flora Drummond was imprisoned on nine occasions for her suffragette activities.In 1930, she presided at the gathering when Stanley Baldwin unveiled a statue to

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honour Mrs Pankhurst.

Flora eventually returned to Scotland, to Carradale, to look across the water, fromher windows at ‘Duncrannaig’, to her old home village of Pirnmill. She died onJanuary 19, 1949 and is buried at Brackley Cemetery, just outside Carradale, wherea memorial has now, more than half-a-century after death, been erected in hermemory.

In the 1920’s, the Cook’s son-in-law, Charlie Robertson, took over, running a bigrowing ferry and, about 1930, the iron-wheeled gangway used to let passengersboard the ferry-boat was replaced by a jetty, built with voluntary labour. ArchieCurrie, with two big rowing boats and a 24-foot ex-ship’s lifeboat powered by a 7.9h.p. petrol/paraffin engine and a lugsail, took over the ferry just before World WarII. When the wind was southerly, the ferry would sail northwards to meet the shipfrom Lochranza and be towed back to Pirnmill as passengers and cargo wereexchanged. The ships’ engineers were also pleased to see the arrival of the ferries aswith them too came the refreshing bottles of whisky, delivered to the engineers byferry-boys running along the ships’ rubbing strakes !

During World War II, Archie Currie continued to cross on the hour-long trip toCarradale to connect with the Campbeltown buses and give Arran residents thechance of a day’s shopping in ‘The Wee Toon’ and his ferry too was well used forthe annual Machrie Sheepdog Trials.

The ferry at Torrisdale was operated by Alexander Ritchie and his family.Alexander and his wife, Isabella, were married at Ayr in 1811 and had 14 children.He was boatman for a number of years at Torrisdale Estate and the southernheadland at Torrisdale Bay, to the south of Carradale, is named after him, Ritchie’sHead. The family took up the tenancy of Sanda Island in 1845 and on December26, Boxing Day, 1850, Alexander and his 21-year old son, William, were drownedwhen returning from a church service in Southend.

When the first pier was built at Carradale in 1858, it was natural then that theRitchie family too become involved in its operation but, unable to accommodatesteamers except at certain states of the tide, a new location was sought, just to thesouth of the present harbour. The new pier, the first iron pier built in Scotland andthe only pier on the Clyde to be built on two levels, the higher level to berthsteamers and the lower level, for fishing boats, connected to the upper pier by asloping ramp. A punt, a small rowing boat, hung in davits on the pier and intended

for emergencies, it frequently rescued sheep, fallen into the water as they werebeing shipped on board steamers.

The pier was opened in 1870 with John Ritchie being duly appointed its piermasterand given a rent-free house and a comfortable salary by the then Laird of Carradale,Col. D.C.R.C. Buchanan of Drumpelier, who had come to Carradale House in thesummer of 1861 and was the owner of some 18,000 acres of estate in Argyll.

One of the Carradale piermaster’s jobs was to issue gale warnings to passing ships.A black tarry cone-shaped bag was hoisted on a tall mast, its foundations andtabernacle fitting still to be seen, the cone pointing upwards for northerly gales,downwards for southerlies. Too there was a mercury-filled barometer in the pier’swaiting-room which had to be reset daily to warn of any impending storms.

It was the weather which led to John Ritchie’s fate for his wife had a chronic asthmacondition, he was never allowed her to smoke inside the house and one night, Johnas usual had taken his pipe outside to have a smoke while checking the fishing boats’mooring lines. A few minutes later, it had suddenly grown dark as a south-westerlysquall hit the village, the rain hurling itself viciously at the windows and shaking thevery chimneys of Pier House. No trace of John Ritchie was ever found, except forhis pipe, firmly wedged between the pier’s wooden decking planks.

John’s son, Duncan Ritchie, then a first mate with the British India ships, was nowcalled home to take over as piermaster. He came home to find Pier House nowbulging at the seams with his mother, his post-mistress sister Maggie and hisfishing-boat skipper brother John and his wife and their eleven children and itwasn’t long before Duncan, in 1886, married ‘the- girl-next-door’, Lillias Kerr, thedaughter of Captain Thomas Kerr, master of one of the Campbeltown steamerswho too was then building Ardcardach House, above Carradale Pier.

Later, in January 1898, the Post Office, with the village’s then only telephone, wasopened beside Carradale Pier and The Met Office would then confirm gale warningsby telegram. Carradale’s Pier Post Office, run first by John Ritchie’s daughterMaggie, closed in June 1941, more than a year after the departure of the finalsteamer call on Saturday, March 16, 1940.

On November 20, 1894, the birth of Duncan’s daughter, Elizabeth, came at thesame moment that one of the Campbeltown steamers arrived and the babywelcomed into The World her ears resounding to the sounds of the steamer’swhistle and the ringing of the steamer and pier bells.

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The new quay at Carradale opened in September 1959 and the “Rhum”, on charterto The Clyde River Steamer Club, called on Saturday, May 15, 1982. On Sunday,September 29, 1991, the twin-screw “Balmoral” made the first real passenger shipvisit for half a century and on Sunday, September 27, 1992, the paddle- steamer“Waverley” called at Carradale’s Harbour, probably the last occasion when asteamer will ever be seen there.

The Saddell ferry, in the 1900’s, till it closed at the end of the 1929 summerseason, was in the capable hands of Lachlan Galbraith whose brothers John andNeil were captains of the Campbeltown steamers. Saddell fery was a ‘pain-in-the-neck’ for the mates of the steamers as there were occasionally large cargoes fortrans-shipment into the ferry boat, a motor-boat in later years. Wool cargoes fromHigh Ugadale farm, often 25 large and very full bags and Ifferdale Farm, 45 woolbags - these were each as big as a man !

On one occasion, Lachie, the Saddell ferryman, thinking himself helpful, told theship’s mate that he would have a big wool consignment for the ship next day.“She’ll be loaded up to the funnel tomorrow,” laughed the mate. “Well, you canjust put it all down the funnel then,” replied the ferryman !

Getting aboard the steamer from the ferry could be a pretty dodgy affair. Lachie’sapproach at Saddell, was to row madly across the steamer’s bows as she swept downtowards him and then, when she was almost on top of the ferry-boat, he wouldlevel off alongside her, grab for the mooring heaving line and slide alongside thesteamer to snub off the line on the boat cleat and bring her up, all-standing, rightbeside the steamer’s big double ferry loading doors on her main deck. With thestrong practised of the steamer’s seamen, standing on both sides of the ferry doors,the passengers felt a sudden lift as they were whisked aboard the ship, twentypassengers in often fewer seconds. Despite sometimes big sea swells and sometimesreally heavy weather, there were few reported, if any, accidents.

Lochranza Pier, approved by Parliament in 1886, was opened on Thursday, April26, 1888 with the arrival of the “Scotia” There were two other ferries furtherdown the west coast of Arran, at Machrie Bay and Blackwaterfoot. Both ferries, usedonly by opposition steamers, had come into operation just three years before the pieropened at Lochranza.

Though calls at Blackwaterfoot ceased after 1893, the ferry at Machrie Bay lasted, inpeacetime only, till the end of 1920, though there had been a break between 1902and 1908 inclusively when the first turbine excursion steamers appeared.

Wemyss Bay Pier opened on Monday, May 15, 1865. Greenock’s Princes Pierdid not open till May 1894. Wemyss Bay was the first up-river call on the Mondaymorning ‘Death Run’ and a regular call on summer Friday evenings, especially on‘Fair Fridays’ when The Company would offer special cheap-rate ‘evening cruise’tickets as the ship on the ‘down’ run would return again up-river that same evening.

Farm Flittings, Trial Jurors and Excursions

n the early days it became quite customary for farmers moving in and out ofKintyre to charter a steamer for the conveyance of their stock, goods, chattelsand families to their new farms.

1840, May James Dunlop, Big House, Dreghorn sailed from Ardrossan1842, May Mr Cuninghame sailed too from Ardrossan when

moving to Kilkivan Farm1844, June The Hunter family from Tronn to Machribeg Farm1844, June The Patersons from Ardrossan to Cattadale1845, Nov. Charles MacConechy, from Rothesay to Kintyre1846, May The Skeoch family (a Rothesay surname), left Uigle for Largs1861, May The Nicolsons, a well-known family in the world of athletics,

‘Nicolsons of The Kyles’, left Backs and sailed to Kames inThe Kyles of Bute.

1861, May Thomas Semple at Smerby went to Tobermory1862, May The Fishers at Killellan went to Kirkcudbright1863, May David Paterson at Cattadale went to Troon, the Paterson

family had come to Cattadale by steamer in June 18441863, May Edward Fisher at Ballyshare moved to Largs and Dan Taylor

went to Rothesay1871, May The M’Conechy family left Lintmill for Port Askaig

Trial by jury at Inveraray was an almost annual occurrence in the early part of the1800’s and the steamers were chartered to convey Kintyre jurors to Inveraray, thenthe ‘county’ town - Argyll is a ‘Shire’ as it does not bear the name of its ‘county’town. The charge for transporting the jurors was about 12 shillings each, for going,waiting the course of the trial and for their return.

On Friday September 26, 1851, the “Celt” sailed to Inveraray in connection withthe Autumn Circuit of The Court. The return run, from Inveraray to Campbeltown,

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a distance of about 70 miles, was covered in 4 hours and 18 minutes, an averagespeed of about 14.2 knots just over 16 mph.

Emigrants left Kintyre in June 1850, to join the “Charlotte Harrison” lying atGreenock and too in 1850, the “Celt” was chartered by The Highlands and IslandsSociety to take emigrants from Portree, in Skye, to Campbeltown, to join H.M.S.“Hercules”.

The “Hercules” did not sail immediately from The Clyde but instead made forRothesay and then, a fortnight later, again returned to Campbeltown before finallyleaving.

The Company continued its excursions, Larne in November 1836; Troon, for TheEglinton Tournament, in August 1839; a trip to Staffa and Iona in June 1841; Peelin The Isle of Man in September 1846; Tarbert Fair in June 1849; Portrush inAugust 1850; The Dublin Exhibition in June 1853; The Giant’s Causeway in June1855; Stranraer in August 1856 and a Queen’s Birthday Holiday excursion toCarradale in 1860, the new pier there having only opened in 1858.

The trips to Stranraer, Belfast, Tarbert Fair and Inveraray Games were to becomean annual feature of The Company’s timetables.

Royal Apathy

n the occasion of Queen Victoria’s visit to The Clyde in 1the 1840’s, anopportunity was given to Campbeltown’s inhabitants to display their loyaltyby joining in the welcome to The Queen in the upper reaches of the river.The directors seem to have over-estimated interest in the event and putting

on two steamers, they sold all of 40 tickets !

If Campbeltown did not go to greet The Queen, Victoria would go to to the townherself, the Royal Yacht, the first “Victoria and Albert” anchoring in the loch onenight in 1847. The town was illuminated, bonfires blazed in the hills, the town’sProvost and Magistrates sent the Town Crier round the burgh ringing his bell,“Notis ! The Queen is in the loch !”

None of the royal party landed, the gossip had it that Victoria was repelled by theappearance - and the odour ! - of Campbeltown Loch’s old Mussel Ebb whichthen was a tidal foreshore running right up to the Lochend dyke - The head of theloch was reclaimed and filled in between 1877 and 1882.

The “Carradale” and The “Swan”

little iron steamer, the “Carradale”, appeared in the West Highland trade in1860 - her owners and builders are unknown. She was 61’ 6” in length and15’ in beam, powered by two tubular boilers, her twin funnels athwartships,as one now finds the funnels in modern CalMac car ferries.

Two- masted, she had a side-lever engine to drive her paddle-wheels, a bridge-platform running across between her paddle-boxes and a large steering wheel at herstern. Seemingly fitted with two cabins, she too could be beached like a puffer.

She was advertised for sale in August 1861 and then, in 1866, ran aground on theisland of Luing. Salvaged, her paddles were removed and she was last heard oftrading on the Forth, as a propellor-driven scow.

There were numerous small ships in the West Highland trade, one, the “Swan”,was owned by John Lorne Stewart of Campbeltown, was advertised in March 1871as running from Glasgow to Mull, Tiree and Skye via The Crinan Canal.

The “Carradale” and The “Machrihanish”

f other ships which bore Kintyre names are the two 3-masted full-riggedships “Carradale” and “Machrihanish”. The “Carradale” set up someastonishing records for a full-rigged ship and had to her credit an especiallyfine run when, under the command of Captain Alexander Smith, she raced

second to the “Falls of Afton”, from San Francisco to Queenstown in 1896.

Built in 1883 by Duncan & Company for Hugh “Hungry” Hogarth’s fleet, the“Machrihanish”, a very handsome “main-staysail-yarder”, had some exceedingly fastpassages to her credit

Keeping Time with Princess Louise

he life-boat “Princess Louise”, which took up the Campbeltown station in1876 was named after John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Marquis ofLorne’s wife, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter ofQueen Victoria.

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Largely because of his marriage to Louise, The Marquis was Governor-General ofCanada from 1878 to 1883. Lorne travelled through The Prairies in 1881 and thefollowing year was asked to name one of the new territories. He chose the nameAlberta, one of his wife’s Christian names and similarly gave name to Lake Louise.

Little known, rather than forgotten, is the fact that he also was very friendly withone Sandford Fleming, the Kirkcaldy-born Chief Engineer of The Canadian PacificRailway Company. Sandford Fleming was instrumental in persuading the adoptionof today’s ‘World Time Zones’ with Greenwich, England as The Prime Meridian and the‘24-hour clock’ system. Fleming’s principles and enthusiasm were applauded by OttoStruve, the Royal Russian astronomer.

It was largely due to The Marquis of Lorne’s influence that The InternationalMeridian Conference was convened in 1884 to agree the adoption of Fleming’sproposals and too the route of The International Date Line which also divides TheBering Strait.

It is again little known, rather than forgotten, that, at the beginning of the 1800’s,many Russian dignitaries and officers visited Inveraray and, while there, joined thelocal Masonic Lodge ! Argyll himself was a member and near a century later suchpersuasions may have helped promote the adoptionsof Fleming’s system of ‘time zones’.

Fleming, though this too is a long story, was also responsible for the laying of theTrans-Pacific telegraph cable between Canada and Australia. The final linking up ofthe British telegraph cables, encircling the globe, made the telegraph system theprecursor of today’s ‘Internet’ connections - which was completed in 1902. Thereason in Fleming’s mind for this important ‘round-the-world’ link was the constantthreat of the only other British cable route, through Turkey and neighbouringcountries, being cut, tapped and sabotaged and Britain’s ability to defend herselfbeing severely impaired.

Nobody remembered Fleming’s, nor indeed The Marquis of Lorne’s, contributionswhen they celebrated at ‘The Millennium’.

Had it not been for Fleming’s foresight in fighting for ‘The Pacific Cable’, Britainwould not necessarily have had a ‘secure’ communication system in place before themomentous events of ‘The Great 1914 - 1918 War’.

The “Duke of Cornwall” Scrapped

n 1866, one James Little put a new steamer, built by Caird & Co. of Greenock,on to the Campbeltown run. The 446-ton “Herald”, her paddles driven by atwo-cylinder oscillating engine, also built by Caird’s, was 221’ 7” long and, witha beam of 22-feet, had a depth of 10’ 5”.

The only way that the Campbeltown company’s much smaller “Celt” and “Druid”could compete with the opposition ship’s greater size, speed and luxurious fittingswas through an attempt to start a price war ! This and the news that theCampbeltown company were ordering a new ship quickly led to Little selling off the“Herald” to The Barrow Steam Navigation Company for their then proposed newservice between Barrow and The Isle of Man.

At the end of the 1866 season, on October 20th, the “Duke of Cornwall” wassold for scrapping at Bowling as her successor, the “Gael”, took shape atRobertson’s yard.

Just sixteen years earlier, on Saturday, October 26, 1850, the “Duke of Cornwall”,in fine weather and a calm sea, had been Campbeltown-bound when, near theCloch Light, she came in sight of the inward-bound Inveraray steamer “DuntroonCastle”. About 150 yards away from the Cloch, the “Duntroon Castle” suddenlydecided to swing inshore across the bows of the “Duke of Cornwall” and she andthe “Duntroon Castle”, putting her helm to port at the same time, were involvedin a violent collision, the “Duntroon Castle” going right through the after hold ofthe “Duke of Cornwall”. Fortunately, the hold was full of grain, meal and flourand the impact deadened, the ladies in their adjacent saloon, just a woodenbulkhead away, having a narrow escape.

A nearby trading sloop was quickly alongside to take off the “Duke’s” passengersand first off, regardless of the women and children passengers, was a “Black Coat”,from Southend in Arran, sermon bag in hand. Keeping her engines ‘full ahead’,the “Duntroon Castle” managed to push the now sinking “Duke of Cornwall”safely on to a little sandy beach beside the Cloch.

Captain M’Lean of the “Duke of Cornwall” was tried in The High Court and thevery first witness was Captain Macdonald of the “Duntroon Castle” who admittedthat his better judgement had ‘foolishly given way to the emphatic order of one of the ship’sowners on board at the time’. The jury unanimously acquitted Captain M’Lean of the“Duke of Cornwall”.

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The “Gael”

he 347-ton paddle steamer, built by Robertson & Co., was 211-feet in lengthand, with a beam of 23’ 3”, had a depth of 10’ 7”. She was given a two-cylinder oscillating engine from Rankin & Blackmore, the same engineerswho supplied the machinery for the present-day “Waverley”, which gave her

a speed of 18-knots - and a heavy fuel consumption into the bargain !

The “Gael” was registered on Wednesday, April 17, 1867 and on the same day,under Captain Thomas Kerr, the commodore of the fleet and the then doyen of theCampbeltown skippers, loaded 300 passengers for her maiden voyage toCampbeltown.

The “Gael” made the run from Custom House Quay, in Greenock, toCampbeltown in just 3½ hours at a speed of 16-knots and was greeted by greatcrowds of cheering people who occupied vantage points on the quays and aroundthe loch shores. At Kilkerran Battery, where the guns were in full vigour, a salutewas fired as she made her way towards the quays and Captain Kerr returned thesalute with his own little brass cannon mounted on the “Gael”.

Later, a dinner was held on board and the guests included ex-Provost Galbraith,chairman of the directors; James Stewart, Dean of Guild and ex-companychairman; ex-Baillie Love; Messrs Charles Mactaggart, Sam Greenlees, MatthewAndrew, David M’Dougall, Alex Giffen, Samual Muir, Charles C. Greenlees,Charles M’Ewing, J. D. Macdougall, James M’Murchy, Robert Beith, Archd.Andrew, John Greenlees, Captain M’Diarmid of the “Celt” and John Murray,company general manager.

An augmented timetable now came into operation for the 1867 season. While“Celt” and “Druid” operated the services from each end, “Gael” now made fourcalls a week at Innellan, Dunoon and Kirn and, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, aconnection was made with the “Sultan” at Innellan for Rothesay passengers.

Given the success of the 1867 season, a new screw-steamer was ordered, this timedesigned more for dealing with cargo than passengers and again the chosen builderswere Robertson & Company of Port Glasgow.

The Houghly “Celt”

n April 8, 1868, shipbreakers bought the “Celt” for £800 and then sold herown to yet new owners who fitted new boilers and then completelyreconditioned her before despatching her to India for use at Calcutta and on theHoughly River as a tug-passenger tender. She called in at Campbeltown as she

left the Clyde in November 1868 and nearly eight months later, in July 1869, shereached Calcutta. Two years later, in 1871, she was back on The Clyde sailing forWm. Robertson & Co. and was known to be sailing for Daniel Macrae of Greenockfour years later, in 1875.

The Disposal of The “Druid”

s part payment for the building of the new steamer, Robertson’s, on August15, 1868, accepted the “Druid”. During the late autumn of 1868, it seemsthat the “Druid”, probably under charter from Robertson’s, was running atrial passenger-cargo service from Belfast to Londonderry and, on

Thursdays, also fitting in a round trip from Belfast to Stranraer. The venture wasshort-lived and, Robertson’s, removing her steam-powered machinery, convertedher into a 3-masted schooner. The last known of her was that she sailed fromIrvine, with a cargo of coal for Lisbon, on October 5, 1880 and was presumed tohave foundered in The Bay of Biscay, lost with all crew. Her final owners were aWelsh coal and iron company.

The Wee “Kintyre”

eckoned to be the prettiest of all the Campbeltown ships, she inauguratedthe ‘fiddle bow’ which would become the trade-mark of the fleet.

The 314-ton “Kintyre” was 184’ 8” long, 22’ 10” beam and 11’ 6” in depth and her2-cylinder, 26” x 48” x 30”, vertical, single-expansion, engine was supplied byKincaid, Donald & Company of Greenock. The engine would be ‘compounded’when the ship was first re-boilered in 1882 - another new boiler was fitted in 1893.

She was launched on June 10, 1868 by Miss M’Murchy, daughter of JohnM’Murchy of Dalaruan Distillery and among those present on the occasion were

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Messrs John Galbraith, company chairman; Alex Giffen, John M’Murchy, SamGreenlees, Thos Brown - all company directors - John Murray, companymanager; John Ross, Alex Love and Alex M’Phail.

She was registered on August 17, 1868, just two days after her builders,Robertson’s, acquired the “Druid”.

The New Railway

he old coal canal, running from the colliery to the Mill Dam and operatedwith three small barges, had opened in 1794 but had fallen into disuse andwas eventually abandoned about 1856. The colliery changed hands in 1875and the new owners, The Argyll Coal and Canal Company, needed a better

way of sending coal to the town and set to build a 2’ 3” narrow gauge railway fromthe pit at Kilkivan to their coal depot at the east end of Argyll Street inCampbeltown, a distance of about 4¼ miles.

Although not directly related to these matters, it is of passing interest that othereyes were on Machrihanish at this time, eight local businessmen having mettogether in Campbeltown’s Argyll Arms Hotel on Saturday, March 11, 1876, toresolve the establishment of a local golf club, Machrihanish being their eventualchoice of ground.

Later that year, during the laying out of the original 10-hole course on the machair,the bones and skulls of many of the Danes and Scots who had fought in The Battleof Machair Innean, fought in the ninth-century, were discovered on the site. Twomore holes were added to the new golf course before the year was out and, in 1879,notable alterations were made to the course on the advice of veteran St. Andrews’golfer Tom Morris who had commented on his first visit “The Almichty had gowff in hise’e when he made this place”. In 1889, the course made up to a full 18-holes and thecourse was redesigned in 1914 by three-times Open Championship winner J. H.Taylor and again, thirty years later, after World War II, by Sir Guy Campbell togive us the course layout of today.

Work on the new railway commenced, at Trodigal and elsewhere along the route ofthe line, on Monday, July 24, 1876. The schooner “W.M.J.” under the commandof Captain Lloyd, arrived from Briton Ferry, in Wales, with 21-foot lengths of railson Tuesday, August 15, 1876. Three weeks later, on Saturday, September 2,1876, the “Levonia” arrived from St. Malo with the sleepers.

On Tuesday, November 7, 1876, the Campbeltown Company’s “Kintyre”unloaded the first locomotive, named “Pioneer” and built by Andrew Barclay &Company of Kilmarnock. “Pioneer” made her first outing on Christmas Day 1876,this was of course an ordinary working day in Scotland till 1958 and construction ofthe line was completed on Saturday, April 21, 1877. On Saturday, May 19, 1877,the “Gael” unloaded the first wagons which were quickly checked over and initiatedthe line’s opening to goods traffic on Wednesday, May 23, 1877.

The line, excluding the cost of embankments, cuttings and bridges, cost about£900 per mile to lay - 63 tons of rails at 40 lb per yard weight; 2 tons 8 cwt of fishplates; 17 cwt of bolts; 2,200 sleepers at 3-foot intervals; 2 tons of spikes; 3,520fencing stobs at 4 pence each; fence wire and staples at £12; forming and ballasting(6’ x 1’ = 2/3 cub. yd. per lin. yd.) at 3/- per yard.

The only other narrow-gauge line to be built in Scotland was Glasgow’s “Subway”.

The line would be extended a further half-mile to Drumlemble in 1881 when theKilkivan pit became exhausted and then would have further extensions added in1906 to take the line on to Machrihanish and to Campbeltown’s New Quay and, forpassenger traffic, along Hall Street to the top of The Old Quay giving the line afinal authorised length of 6 miles and 649 yards.

Daily Sailings - June 1877

n 1996, David Bruce Oman, who lives in Pier House, Carradale, found an oldprinting block beside the back wall of his garden, this wall being the boundarywith Ardcarroch House, once the home of Captain Thomas Kerr, who wasmaster of the “Gael” in 1877.

The block gives the sailings of the “Gael” and the “Kintyre”, Sundays excepted ofcourse, for the period Tuesday, June 19, to Saturday, June 30, 1877 with the shipsperforming a one-way trip each day leaving from Campbeltown at 8 a.m. andGlasgow at 9 a.m. with the exception of Monday, June 25 when, with the Glasgow-based ship presumably on charter, the Campbeltown-based steamer left at 5.30 a.m.for Greenock and then, as soon as she had discharged cargo, returning again toCampbeltown.

Boat trains, leaving Glasgow Bridge Street 11 a.m. and St. Enoch at 11.05 a.m.connected with the outward-bound steamers at Greenock.

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The fares, with return tickets valid to the end of September, are quoted as

Glasgow to Lochranza Singles Cabin 3/- Steerage 1/6dReturns “ 5/- “ 2/6d

Glasgow to Carradale Singles Cabin 4/- Steerage 2/-or, to Campbeltown Returns “ 6/- “ 3/-

Acting as agents for the company manager John Murray were John Macmillan, IndiaPlace, No 1 Open Shore, Greenock and R. M. Dunlop, 22 Anderston Quay,Glasgow.

The “Kinloch”

et again, in 1878, the company turned to Robertson’s in Port Glasgow foranother new steamer, essentially a bigger and stronger version of thesuccessful little “Kintyre”, this time the designer was Robertson’s son.

Launched on May 28, 1878 by Miss T. B. Mactaggart, later Mrs A.H. Gardiner,the 427-ton, 205’ long, 24’ 2” beam and 12’ 8” depth “Kinloch” was the first ship inClyde service to have a compound engine, a two-cylinder vertical compound 29” x54” x 42” proved by A. & J. Inglis which gave her a speed of 13.6 knots on hermaiden trip and, registered on July 4, 1878, she was the first Clyde steamer to havea wheelhouse, b e l o w the ‘bridge-deck’ !

Shortly after the “Kinloch” entered service, she was in a collision with a smallrowing-boat. The accident was blamed on the restricted view of the helmsman inthe ‘new’ wheelhouse and it was quickly removed !

As late as the mid-1960’s, to the very time of their demise, P. & A. Campbell’sBristol Channel Steamers, the “Bristol Queen” and the “Cardiff Queen” - a quasi-sister of the paddle steamer “Waverley” - had no wheel-houses as the owners wereof the belief that helmsmen deserved complete all-round visibility and that thisconsideration far outweighed the case for protection from the elements - these twoships were eventually fitted with radar, housed in ‘hutches’ behind the helmsman’ssteering position, nearly low enough to see over !

Her dining saloon was plushly fitted, both sides having long cushioned seats andfixed tables running towards the after end and swivel chairs, wonderful for childrento ‘birl’ round on, fixed to the deck on the outside of the dining tables.

Her small deck cabin was out of bounds to other passengers when Ina, DuchessDowager of Argyll, travelled on board with her ‘companion’, maid and her dog.

The dog was old and cross and had two false teeth and its dinner was always madeup first by the lady’s maid who then put the meal on a tray and carried it up to thedeck cabin. Then and only then was the lunch for the Duchess set out on a silvertray and carried “up bye” !

The Tale and Sales of The “Gael”

y 1879, the passenger traffic had so developed that the company decided tosend the “Gael” to Inglis’ yard for re-conditioning. The hull was stiffened,new boilers installed, the machinery rebuilt, a surface, instead of a jetpattern, condenser fitted and improved paddle-wheels fitted. Previously

flush-decked, a large deck saloon, extending along the quarter-deck, was providedand the saloon immediately below converted into a dining saloon, the furnishingsthroughout de-luxe.

The alterations did not however come up to expectations, speed was unsatisfactory,coal consumption too was higher than ever and, worse still, she lost favour with thetravelling public. In 1883, she was sold to The Great Western Railway Company -that whose iron railway lines had been used to build the pier at Skipness, opened in1879.

Retaining her name but now registered at Milford Haven, the “Gael” was employedon the cross-channel Weymouth - Cherbourg route during 1884-85 and then,particularly during 1886-89, ran in The Bristol Channel on the Portishead -Ilfracombe service. She also, seemingly on charters, operated both the Weymouth- Channel Islands and Penzance - Scilly Isles services.

Bought by MacBraynes in 1891, her after cargo hold and main-mast were removedin the following year. She was given a new full-breadth saloon aft and also then re-boilered.

She now took up the daylight summer service from Oban - Gairloch which leftOban at 7 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and called at Tobermory,Eigg, Arisaig (Mallaig did not open till 1901) - once a week she too then ran intoLoch Scavaig - Kyleakin, Kyle of Lochalsh (after it was opened in 1897),Broadford, Portree and then to Gairloch.

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The return run to Oban left Gairloch on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.During a few seasons, a Saturday connection with the “Lovedale” at Kyle allowedpassengers to extend their trip to Lochinver, sleeping on board the “Lovedale” onboth Saturday and Sunday nights whilst at Lochinver and then re-joining the “Gael”at Kyle on her Monday ‘down’ run to Oban.

During the first part of World War I, she was laid up at Bowling and then carriedout some of the Clyde sailings, including the Ardrossan - Brodick service which shetoo maintained during some of 1919.

Her forecastle was raised in the early 1900’s and her main-mast again installed in1920 when she was fitted with radio. Finally, in 1922, she was given a deckhouseon the after promenade deck.

She was without any permanent route after World War I and sometimes foundherself on the Ardrishaig mail service and too on the Stornoway - Kyle of Lochalshrun as well as acting as the ‘Directors’ yacht’ when they made their annual summertour.Always a costly ship to run, she was sold to the shipbreakers in 1924 and, byappropriate occurrence, spent her final night resting in Campbeltown Loch.

With the passing of the “Gael”, it is worth recording that, in 1876, while at sea offArran on Monday, October 28th, one of her paddle-shafts broke and she had to betowed back up-river whilst another tug-tender took on her passengers and cargo totheir destinations.

Just two days earlier, on the Saturday, the steamer “Princess Royal” had collidedwith the “Kintyre” off Whiteinch and thus, by remarkable coincidence putting boththe company’s steamers out of service at the same time !

The “Albion” was engaged to take up the run for the “Gael” on the Wednesday andthen the “Holly” too for the Thursday and Friday services.

The Stately “Davaar”

ow, in 1885, the company made another bid for the ever-importantsummer traffic and the 495-ton, two-funnelled, clipper-bowed “Davaar”,another Robertson design, was launched from The London & GlasgowEngineering & Iron Shipbuilding Company’s yard at Govan on Sunday, May

17, 1885. The naming ceremony was performed by Miss Greenlees of ‘Hazelbank’(later to be Mrs Rome of ‘Knockbay’) who was accompanied by Mrs C. Greenleesof ‘Dunara’. Amongst the party from Campbeltown were Hon. Treasurer Dunlop(Chairman), ex-Bailie Campbell and Messrs Robt. Greenlees, Robert Aitken, JohnMurray (Manager), C. A. Murray, Archd. Colville and others.

She was in many ways similar to, but larger than, the “Kinloch” and had a narrowmain-deck saloon, with outside alleyways, aft. Costing £18,000 and registered onJune 22, 1885, the “Davaar” 217’ 10” long, 27’ in beam and had a depth of 12’11”. Her two-cylinder, 29” & 58” x 42”, vertical compound engine gave her aspeed of 14½ knots.

The maiden trip of the “Davaar” was a memorable and notable test her badweather qualities. It had been raining and blowing hard from the south, a heavyground swell topped with broken white water running as she left the shelter ofGreenock.

By the time she reached the Cumbrae Heads she was in a smother of water andconditions grew steadily worse as she ran round the north of Arran and into theKilbrannan Sound. In spite of the storm, everybody was happy and arrived inCampbeltown just 3¾ hours after leaving Greenock, an average speed of 14½knots. A few days later the “Davaar” ran a successful two-day trip fromCampbeltown to Douglas, Isle of Man. In her 1892 season, she was under thecommand of Captain Samuel Muir and purser Samuel Campbell and her programmeof day trips to Campbeltown did not begin until Monday, July 4, her departuresfrom Gourock being at 9.30 a.m. daily except Sundays.

The little “Kintyre” had been given a new engine in 1882 and was reboilered thefollowing year. The “Kinloch” was reboilered in 1890 and again in 1914 and the“Davaar” too, her forecastle deck already extended 12-feet aft and her aft saloonstair covered in March 1896, was fitted with new boilers and a new donkey boiler in1903 and re-appeared with but a single funnel much larger in diameter than the twopreviously carried. The steering-gear engine too was moved further aft and this nowleft a clear space under the ship’s bridge.

At the same time a new saloon, the full width of the hull, was fitted and herpromenade deck extended to the stern. Ladies’ cabin and other conveniences werebrought thoroughly up-to-date, ‘ottoman’ seats were introduced for the first timeand all the upholstery and fabrics in the ship fitted on a luxurious scale. Officers’quarters and the galley accommodation were completely re-modelled and the largeN

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companionways on the forecastle deck were removed to leave the area perfectly freefor passengers.

The completely re-conditioned ship was ready in time to undertake the annual tripto Ayr Show and so great was the interest in her new facilities and appearance thatshe had a full complement that day and many intending passengers had to be leftbehind at Campbeltown. As all agreed, her appearance was considerably enhancedby these alterations and this was one of these happy instances where change actuallyimproved the original design.

“Davaar”, Aground

or many years, annual excursions to Belfast were a feature of holiday times inCampbeltown, the first inaugurated on Thursday, August 21, 1828 by the“Duke of Lancaster”. On that occasion, when she gave her passengers a fullday ashore in Belfast and then returned on the Saturday, the fares had been

ten shillings return for cabin passengers and six shillings for those in steerage.

The Belfast trip was to become a bi-annual event with trips being made on the localJune holiday and too on Glasgow Fair Monday, the “teenth” weekend of July. OnFriday, June 7, 1895, The Queen’s Birthday Holiday in Campbeltown - it actuallyin these days fell to ‘May 24th’ - the “Davaar”, with some 500 passengers onboard, left in almost ideal conditions for the run to Belfast. The trippers, as usual,represented every circle of the townsfolk from civic dignitaries to school childrenand all were looking forward to a day free from care and looking forward to a jollytime in the great Ulster city after their sail.

The “Davaar” was under the command of Captain Samuel Muir, her other officerswere then the Chief Officer John Clark; 2nd Mate John McQuilken; Chief EngineerAulay Bain; 2nd Engineer John Smith. In the dining saloon, the Chief StewardTom Tosh and, in the Purser’s Office, Chief Purser J. Rugger and, then a studentand minister-to-be, A. Wyllie Blue as her assistant purser and too on board, wasRoss Wallace, the company’s new manager, who had just been appointed in March1895.

Without warning, as they neared the Irish Coast, a sudden and dense fog began toform and lookouts were quickly posted, the visibility down to some twenty or soyards. With speed now down to a crawl, the “Davaar” steamed slowly on taking allthe recognised precautions of the day and stopping her engine at regular intervals toincrease the chances of hearing other ships and sound signals.

The sea was a dead calm and, while for a time there was some uneasiness on board,created by the uncertainty of knowing the ship’s exact position and that eerie feelingthat naturally comes to many in a fog-bound ship, there was no real sense offoreboding.

Fog was no stranger in these days and the winter of 1884-85 had become known as‘the year of the great frost’, frequently punctuated with spells of fog. On Friday,February 8, the paddle-steamer “Benmore” had been forced to wait, tied upalongside Bowling, for three hours till the fog cleared to let her get up river andfour days later, on February 12, the “Kintyre” managed to get out of CampbeltownLoch but was five hours late arriving at Gourock - The worst fog of all in the riverwas in 1910 when the “Benmore” was caught off Dumbarton and had to anchorthere for two whole days before it cleared !

As might be expected, the ever sure Campbeltown humour continued to prevailamongst the carefree company off to visit the land of the jaunting car, the landwhose politics kept The House of Commons forever in fervent and the verynorthern province from which had come the founders of the Scottish nation.

Suddenly, from a lookout, “Breakers ahead !” and instantly, “Hard a-port !” cameCaptain Muir’s order. Then, the “Davaar” glided on to the reef, Brigg’s Reef, offGroomsport, to the s o u t h of Belfast Lough, a spot which had an evil reputationfor total wrecks.

She struck with several dull thuds, shuddering and grinding on and then, after a rollfrom side-to-side, stopped with some twenty to thirty feet of her now bruised anddented hull on the reef and her stern in deep water. All the time, the ship’s sirensounded for help and signalling their distress.

People below deck felt the impact most and, to the alarm of those below, waterbegan pouring in - through the still open port-holes ! There was no panic and,though many were pale and quiet, there was a feeling of excitement as life-jacketswere handed out and the ship’s lifeboats quickly swung out from the davits andlowered into the now quickly ebbing waters which now began to cause the ship toslant by her stern and gave some cause for concern that she might suddenly slip offthe reef with disastrous consequences. It didn’t help either that the shore was stillinvisible too.

Suddenly, unseen until almost right alongside, boats began appearing from theshore and everybody soon safely evacuated to dry land. The coastguards too had

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relieved the anxiety of many disembarking passengers by reporting the ship to be inno immediate danger after a cursory inspection of her hull and position on the reef.Whole families had been on board together and few homes in the Kintyrecommunity had not a family member on board and now, with the passengers nowsafely gathered together on the beach, the Rev. A. M. Tolmie, junior minister ofCampbeltown’s Highland Parish Church, held a short service of thanksgiving fortheir miraculous deliverance to safety.

Ross Wallace, the company’s manager, who too had been aboard the now strickenship, worked hard and well to ensure the comfort and convenience of the strandedpassengers and made arrangements for their conveyance from Groomsport toBelfast but their passage home was to be perhaps an even greater ordeal than theirinitial stranding. The plan to use the Belfast & County Down Railway’s “SlieveDonard”, a identical sister to the Clyde’s “Mercury” and “Neptune”, wasthwarted by the Board of Trade office in Belfast, their staff refusing to grant aprovisional passenger certificate to allow the “Slieve Donard” to cross the openwater to Campbeltown.

The stranded passengers were put aboard Messrs Burns’ “Dromedary” and, insteadof the ship diverting to Campbeltown, she landed everyone at 4 o’clock on thefollowing, now Saturday, morning at Greenock’s Prince’s Pier to await the“Kintyre”, coming down-river as usual from Glasgow and not due in Greenock till9 a.m., a crowd of very tired and hungry passengers over-ran Greenock’s coffeeshops were as soon as they opened that morning. Some doubly unlucky passengerstoo had lost their excursion tickets and were forced to pay out again for their fareson both the “Dromedary” a n d the “Kintyre” !

Two days after the mishap, on the Sunday, the “Davaar”, practically undamaged,was refloated with the help of the Belfast tug “Ranger” but, just as the “Davaar”lifted clear of Brigg’s Reef, the “Ranger” came to grief when she struck thesubmerged stern-post of the wreck of the “Emily”, sunk there in 1882. The“Ranger” was fatally holed and sank within half a minute. The “Davaar”, underher own steam, proceeded to Harland & Wolff’s shipyard in Belfast for a properhull survey. So scant was the hull damage that she was able to resume her normalsailings that Wednesday.

In later years, the Rev. A. Wyllie Blue, assistant purser on the day of the grounding,became minister of Belfast’s May Street Presbyterian Church and often travelled theroad skirting the beach at Groomsport where, at low tide, he could see the cruelreef upon which the “Davaar” had grounded. His book, “The Quayhead Tryst”,

now too long out of print, was once of great interest and well known to manyCampbeltonians.

It too may be of interest that, until March 1916, Irish ‘clock time’ was 25 minutesbehind Greenwich Mean Time - Too in 1916, on May 21, Daylight Saving(Summer) Time was introduced to both Britain and Ireland for the first time.

On Thursday, June 26, 1902, the “Davaar” gave a trip from Campbeltown toTarbert and Ardrishaig, arriving at 2 p.m. and giving three hours ashore. There hadbeen some doubt about the trip going head as it clashed with the new king’sCoronation but, as this was postponed until the August, the excursion went aheadas advertised. Many intending West Highland visitors remained in the south till afterthe Coronation and MacBrayne’s noted that the passenger numbers for the“Columba” were well down on previous years because of the change of events.

The “Davaar” was routinely rostered for excursions to Tarbert Fair and InverarayGames - On the day of the 1901 Inveraray Games there was a heavy fog in the areaand, though nothing seems to have been recorded about her own trip that day, the“Duchess of York”, which had left Ardrishaig at 11 a.m., did not reach Inveraray till 3p.m. and, the Games nearly over, the several athletes on board her were unable tocompete.

The incessant rains of July 1907 led one visitor to suggest that a change of name to“Mud Argyll” might be a good idea and the following year the storms hit again,heavy seas causing the “King Edward” to return to Fairlie via The Kyles of Bute onTuesday, August 8, 1908. The weather must have then improved for Tarbert Fairon Thursday, August 30, 1908 when the “Davaar” again was on the run in thecompany of the “Marchioness of Breadalbane” , “Isle of Cumbrae”, Chevalier”,“Duchess of Fife” and the “Isle of Arran”, all lying off the piers and quays variouslyto accommodate the regular daily calls of the “Columba”, “Iona”, “Minard Castle”,the “Texa” and the “Cygnet”.

Crews’ Wages

espite the passing of nearly fifty years, the wages of ships’ crews had verychanged very little, the ships, now double the length of their predecessors,needed double the size of crew but wages hadn’t doubled.

Remembering that an 1837 crew bill for another company and a boat of similar sizeto the “Duke of Lancaster” shows : -

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Captain £250.00 p.a. Engineer £109.20 p.a.Mate £ 58.50 p.a. Firemen (2) £ 50.70 p.a.Seamen (4) £ 34.12½ p.a. Steward £ 34.12½ p.a.

the 1886 wages for the crew of a ship similar to the new “Davaar” are now listedby the same company paying the wage rates above in 1837 as : -

Captain £260.00 p.a. Engineer £163.80 p.a.Mate £130.00 p.a. 2nd Engineer £117.00 p.a.Carpenter £ 83.20 p.a. Firemen (6) £ 65.00 p.a.Seamen (7) £ 65.00 p.a. Firemen (1) £ 57.20 p.a.Steward (1) £ 62.40 p.a. Stewardess (1) £ 26.00 p.a.Steward (1) £ 39.00 p.a. Cook (1) £ 52.00 p.a.Boy (1) £ 26.00 p.a.

and, for a ship laid-up, a watchman and a stand-by fireman would each receive£1.25 per week. Given £1.00 then, one would need £60.00 today so these were not‘exotic’ wages !

The Argyll Steamship Company

he first “Argyll” to call at Campbeltown had been running regularly betweenGlasgow and Inveraray but, on February 7, 1822, she was despatched fromGlasgow to Stornoway v i a Campbeltown. She was re-engined in 1823 andthen, a huge excursion for these days, undertook a trip from Glasgow to

Campbeltown, Dublin and Plymouth and on her return ran out regularly that yearto Staffa and Iona. She was put on the Glasgow - Londonderry run in the followingyear, 1824 and may also have continued to call, at least occasionally, intoCampbeltown.

In September 1823, the “Dumbarton Castle” had dropped one of her two weeklyGlasgow - Stranraer sailings to put on an Ayr - Campbeltown sailing but this wasnot to be repeated in her 1824 sailings.

In 1835, the owners of a ship called the “Glen Albyn” made a request for a pier,“in a plain and simple manner”, to be built at Larne, a destination chosen for itslack of tidal restrictions and so the pier was built, rough timbers driven straight intothe mud ! Now the “Glen Albyn” began a regular service from Glasgow calling atBrodick, Lamlash, Campbeltown, Larne and Oban.

In August 1845, Morrison’s steamer, the “Falcon”, partnered by the “Maid ofGalloway”, instituted a service from Ardrossan, calling at Campbeltown, PortEllen, Oban, Tobermory and Portree, to Stornoway. This service too seems tohave been short-lived for on March 31, 1850, the “Maid of Galloway” wasreported a total loss having been immobilised by a boiler explosion and drivenashore at Babriggan, north of Dublin, whilst sailing in ballast from Liverpool toGoole.

Then, in January 1847, The Glasgow & Stranraer Steam Packet Company’s“Scotia”, connecting with train services at Ayr Harbour, began a twice weeklyservice to Campbeltown. This service seems to have continued until May 1863when the “Scotia”, like so many others, was sold off as a blockade runner to theAmerican Confederates.

The little, ‘last lap’, Confederate blockade runners were generally based at Nassau,in The Bahamas; St. George’s, in Bermuda; Matamoras, in Mexico and also inCuba. Cargoes from Britain and elsewhere would be transferred at these ports andthe returning blockade runners would bring out cotton to be sent to Britain. Withthe fall of Wilmington and Charlestown to the Union forces, the blockade tradecame to an end in the spring of 1865. During its four years, 1,149 runners werecaptured, 210 of them being steamers. Another 355 ships, including 85 steamers,were ‘lost at sea’. A good blockade runner’s skipper could earn himself up to $5,000p e r t r i p and fast ships were worth their weight in gold.

The “Scotia” left The Clyde in August 1863 and managed five very successful tripsbefore being captured, off Cape Fear in North Carolina, by the U.S.S.“Connecticut”on March 1, 1864.

The Ayr Steam Shipping Company began operating a number of small cargo-passenger ships in 1875, their sailings connecting with Glasgow train services. Aservice was introduced from Ayr to Campbeltown and it is interesting to note that italso called at Kildonan, a harbour used in the early days by some of the Saltcoats toArran ferries.

Then in 1886, The Argyll Steamship Company ordered the neat l40-foot longsingle-screw steamer “Argyll” from Duncan’s yard in Port Glasgow. Launched inMay 1886, she ran from Glasgow calling at Greenock, Fairlie and, after makingferry calls at Lochranza (the pier there opened in 1888), Machrie Bay andBlackwaterfoot, on to Campbeltown and across to Stranraer, a weekly service.

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Around 3 a.m. on Sunday, September 17, 1893 and inward bound for Stranraer infog, she ran ashore on Milleur Point, the mate subsequently being blamed for hergrounding. Some 35 tons of her cargo was salved but the ship, despite beingpatched up and refloated, sank again and was abandoned. A replacement, the1884-built “Pirate”, took up the scheduled sailings that Tuesday - The “Pirate”too would become the victim of fog when, on the morning of Friday, August 6,1909, she had been anchored in Loch Ryan and was sliced in two by the outward-bound “Princess Maud”.

The “Pirate” sank some ten minutes later but not before everyone, including a catbelonging to one of the passengers, was rescued. Two Ross & Marshall puffers,the “Sealight” and the “Starlight”, had her raised a week later and, on Thursday,August 19, 1909, the “Pirate” was in steam again and made her own way toGlasgow. Her owners sued but settled out of court for £2,600. The “Pirate”herself resumed the twice-weekly Glasgow - Campbeltown - Stranraer service againon Saturday, September 18, 1909.

The Railway Steamers

he first combined railway steamer venture in Britain was the attempt to linkThe Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock Railway, opened in 1841, with TheBute Steam Packet Company’s “Isle of Bute” and “Maid of Bute”. In 1844, therailway company assumed direct control of the steamer company and

purchased another three ships but, meeting powerful competition from the otherprivately owned steamer companies and incurring losses, the railway sold off theirsteamers in 1846 and made arrangements with the private companies to maintainthrough rail connections at Greenock. In 1850, the ‘G.P.G.’ was absorbed by TheCaledonian Railway Company who again made the mistake of trying to run asteamer fleet and they too then sold off their ships.

The Greenock & Wemyss Bay Railway Company - Wemyss Bay opened onMonday, May 15, 1865 - formed an associate company, The Wemyss BaySteamboat Company, to run four newly built ships but, by September 1869, it toohad run into difficulties and the steamer services were given over to the privateoperators, an arrangement at Wemyss Bay which would last till 1890.

The North British Railway took over The Glasgow & Edinburgh Railway on July 31,1865 and then, in 1866, built two new ships, the “Meg Merrilies” and the “DandieDinmont”, modelled on the 1864-built “Iona (III)” and bid for the same trade

operating to Ardrishaig from Helensburgh - opened in 1858 - via Kirn, Dunoon,Rothesay, Colintraive, Tighnabruiach and Tarbert.

In passing and given the persuasion to re-open the Borders railway between Carlisleand Edinburgh, The North British timetable for 1866 reveals that one could leaveDunoon at 7.40 a.m. and, via the Borders ‘Waverley’ line, be in Carlisle at 4.40p.m., a mere seven hours. In the same year as the new steamer service began, therailway company’s chairman and some of its directors were found to have beencriminally mismanaging its affairs to such an extent that it was virtually bankrupt.Services were drastically curtailed, one of the ships sold and the steamer service,operated by the subsidiary North British Steam Packet Company, restricted to theupper Clyde piers, a state of affairs that prevailed till the 1880’s.

The Greenock & Ayrshire Railway, having built a line through Elderlie, Kilmacolm(originally spelled as Kilmalcolm) to Greenock’s new Prince’s Pier in 1869 and the‘G.A.R.’ was then absorbed into The Glasgow & South Western Railway in 1872.Given the misfortunes of the other railway companies, the steamer services wereleft to Captain Alexander Williamson’s ‘Turkish Fleet’, so called because of theirnames and their owners’ ‘star and crescent’ pennant. But the days of the privateoperators were now numbered. Although The Caledonian Railway had acquiredpart of the foreshore at Gourock in 1869, they didn’t begin plans to extend therailway to Gourock until 1884, the extension opening in 1889.

During 1888, the year that The North British Railway built the “Lucy Ashton”, thepaddle steamer that would The British Shipbuilding Research Association would useas a test-rig for jet engine propulsion trials in 1951, The Caledonian Railwaydirectors set about arranging a regular steamer service from their new railhead atGourock and an invitation was issued to all the private operators encouraging themto call at Gourock. Some didn’t even bother to reply and the railway companydecided to abandon discussions and look at the possibility of running its ownsteamer services.

To this end, The Caledonian Railway (Steam Vessels) Bill was necessarily put toParliament in March 1889 when no less than fifty petitioners objected against it.After hearing evidence from about a dozen witnesses, the committee seemed tohave made up its mind to allow the railway limited powers to operate to Kilcreggan,Cove, Hunter’s Quay, Kirn, Dunnon, Innellan and Rothesay but, on the third dayof the hearing, the committee discovered that the railway company had alreadyorder new ships withoutParliamentary approval !

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The Caledonian Railway directors were now in a very awkward and, with only acouple of months to go before the opening of the Gourock railhead, they wereforced to transfer their newly ordered ships to a subsidiary company, TheCaledonian Steam Packet Company, incorporated on May 21, 1889.

As its secretary and manager, they appointed Captain James Williamson, son ofCaptain Alexander Williamson who owned the ‘Turkish Fleet’ operating inconjunction with The Glasgow & South Western Railway Company which was soonto find its traffic badly hit by the new Caledonian Railway’s extension to Gourock.

The Glasgow & South Western Railway Company now put forward The Glasgow &South Western Railway (Steam Vessels) Bill to remedy the situation but, bearing inmind Parliament’s rebuff to The Caledonian Railway’s Bill, were careful inminimising hostility and, in Clause 4, as a concession to MacBrayne’s, theInveraray and the Campbeltown & Glasgow steamer companies, provided that“powers shall not extend or apply to traffic to or from Inveraray, Ardrishaig,Tarbert or Campbeltown”.

The Duke of Hamilton’s factor on Arran wasn’t too pleased about the west side ofArran too being excluded by the ‘Clause 4 concessions’ for Captain Buchanan’ssteamer, sailing in connection with Sou’ West trains at Ardrossan, had too beenoften in the habit of running to the ferries at Lochranza, Pirnmill andBlackwaterfoot, a service of course without the expense of pier dues.

So, on July 3, 1891, the Sou’ West Railway obtained powers to operate its ownships, subject to the exclusion of Lochranza and the west of Arran and to theexclusion of Glasgow, east of the Prince’s Pier railhead at Greenock and AlexanderWilliamson, son of the owner of the ‘Turkish Fleet’ and brother of JamesWilliamson, secretary and manager of The Caledonian Steam Packet Company,became the Sou’ West’s Marine Superintendent.

The Naughty ‘90’s

n 1891, Campbeltown and the west of Arran ‘out-of-bounds’ to the South WestRailway Company and only the twice-weekly service of the “Argyll” calling atFairlie, its pier opened on July 1, 1882, an arrangement was brought about tobring back the 1866-built “Herald”, now owned by The Barrow Steam

Navigation Company, to run again to Campbeltown. The “Herald” was slow, thepublic less than tolerant of her performance and she was broken up in 1892.

Now, probably encouraged by the South West Railway company, the newly formedThe Scottish Excursion Steamer Company bought the 1886-built “Victoria”, whichhad built for the Wemyss Bay services. Her complicated roster and her frequentlyadjusted timetable saw her service to Campbeltown and the west side of Arranabruptly finished at the beginning of August 1892, just five weeks she had enteredservice for her new owners. The following year, from June 29, 1893, she offeredMonday, Wednesday and Friday sailings from Glasgow to Campbeltown calling atDunoon, Rothesay, Fairlie, Millport, Lochranza, Machrie Bay and Blackwaterfoot.The “Victoria” was withdrawn from the run at the end of the 1893 season,Blackwaterfoot too losing its ferry-boat and, as there was no replacement for the“Victoria”, the 1894 season - the new South West railhead at Prince’s Pier openedon Friday, May 25, 1894 - was left to the Campbeltown steamers and the “Pirate”which had now replaced the little “Argyll”.

By the end of the 1894 season, The Broomielaw trade was sufficiently prospering topersuade Captain John Williamson to build his first new steamer, the paddlesteamer “Glenmore”, his intention being to put her on the Campbeltown run leftvacant by the withdrawal of the “Victoria” at the end of the 1893 season but thisopportunity was lost when, on Saturday, June 1, 1895, the “Culzean Castle”,previously named the “Windsor Castle”, now owned by the new Ayrshire &Campbeltown Steamboat Company and the first triple crank, triple expansionpaddle steamer to operate on The Clyde, left Prince’s Pier at 9 a.m. on what theSouth West Railway Company hoped would be the first regular daily service toCampbeltown.

Calls were made at Dunoon, Largs, Fairlie, Keppel, Lochranza, Pirnmill andMachrie Bay with the steamer arriving in Campbeltown at 12.30 p.m.. All went welluntil Glasgow Fair Saturday, July 13, when the “Culzean Castle” broke down, thecause attributed to problems with the gearing connecting the engine to the paddleshafts. It was to be the first of several breakdowns and the ship’s career on theroute and after the 1897 season she was withdrawn from the Campbeltown routeand moved to up-river services and excursions. In August 1900, she was sold tothe Russian Government and sailed to The Far East as the “Nagadon” and then soldon to The Chinese Eastern Railway Company of Port Arthur. She was capturedthere, during the siege in the 1904 Russo-Japanese War and ended her days as the“Tenri Maru” sailing on Japan’s Inland Sea till being wrecked there in 1931.

Shortly after the opening of Wemyss Bay’s new and beautifully designed railwaystation and pier complex, on Monday, December 7, 1903, it was visited by a groupof Japanese shipping and railway company officials who were invited to stay with

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Lord Inverclyde at the nearby Castle Wemyss. They were so impressed that theytook back copies of the plans to build an exact copy of the complex at home inJapan ! Perhaps the “Culzean Castle/Tenri Maru” was able to lay alongside the‘sister’ pier ?

At the end of 1896, Williamson’s “Glenmore” had been sold, no doubt at alucrative profit, to a Siberian company and Williamson replaced her with anothernew build, the “Strathmore”.

In 1898, the “Culzean Castle” now up-river, the “Strathmore” took over theCampbeltown run from Monday, May 30, the new arrangement being undoubtedlyencouraged by the directors of The Glasgow & South Western Railway Companyand a railway company memorandum, dated June 23, 1899, noted that the“Strathmore” had carried 14,920 passengers to Campbeltown, 1,696 passengers toMachrie and 2,489 passengers to Lochranza, all booked through from Glasgow &South Western Railway Company stations, these in addition to whatever otherpassengers that Williamson had picked up at other piers.

There had been trouble with the boiler of the “Strathmore” at the beginning of the1899 season and the directors of the railway company, concerned at what mighthappen if she had more problems and no spare ship was available for the railwaycompany itself was barred from operating its own steamers to the west of Arran andCampbeltown.

Three solutions were noted in the memorandum 1) to sell to one of their steamersto Williamson’s and then, at the end of the season, buy her back again at bookprice; 2) to pay the interest to Williamson’s, for up to three years, on the cost of anew steamer or, 3) to subsidise, again for a period of up to three years, a (possiblyWilliamson) steamer to run the Fairlie to Campbeltown service.

During the 1890’s, Clyde passenger traffic had more than trebled and upwards of 4million passengers were being carried each year.

Paddle-steamer design had already reached something of a plateau, as JohnWilliamson well knew and if, as it seemed, that The Glasgow & South WesternRailway were going to support him building a new ship, it might well be that aturbine engined ship, capable of higher speeds, offered better value than a newpaddle-steamer which was expensive to operate over speeds of 17 knots.

The Turbine Steamers

he theory of turbines is, like Archimedes’ screw, ancient but the practicalharnessing of the idea is due to the Swedish-born Gustaf de Laval (1845-1913) and to Charles Algernon Parsons (1854-1931), a member of the Rossefamily of astronomical telescope fame from Parsonstown (now Birr) in

Ireland.

In 1881, after his time serving a ‘premium apprenticeship’ at Armstrong’s ofElswick on Tyneside, Charles Parsons joined Kitson & Company of Leeds, buildersof railway locomotives for many overseas companies. There he invented anddeveloped the ‘epicycloidal’ steam engine and also experimented with ‘rocket-propelled’ torpedoes.

In 1884, he joined Clarke, Chapman at Gateshead as a junior partner and tookcharge of their electrical department. His first problem was to design a steam drivenship’s lighting set where the optimum dynamo speed was much in excess of the topspeed attainable by a steam reciprocating engine and his steam turbo-generator,with an output of 7.5kW was soon followed by larger and more powerful machines.From this came Parsons’ 1884 patent giving birth to the steam turbine. In 1889,Parsons severed his connections with Clarke, Chapman and set up The ParsonsSteam Turbine Company and, because his earlier patents were in the name ofClarke, Chapman, he was forced to design a completely new turbine system using‘radial flow’ turbines.

The first of his new generators had an output of 350kW and soon he was producingturbo-generators with up to 200,000kW outputs for power stations.

Despite his interest in producing steam-powered electrical generators - the veryfirst was installed in The Caledonian Steam Packet Company’s 1890-built “Duchessof Hamilton (I)” - Parsons decided to develop his steam turbine design further, asa marine propulsion unit.

Gustaf de Laval, the Swedish engineer whose first turbine patent had been grantedin 1883, a year before Parsons own patent, had also secured a patent for ‘doublehelical reduction gears’ in 1889 and three years later, in 1892, he constructedreversing turbine developing some 15 h.p. and running at some 16,000 rpm, to thisday a most remarkable speed. Using his own reduction gears to drive a propellor ataround 330 rpm, Laval put a small launch on to the waters of Lake Mäleren inSweden, this the first marine application of the steam turbine.

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Two years later, in 1894, Parsons, backed by a group of speculative investorslaunched the 100-foot long, 2,000 s.h.p. 34-knot “Turbinia”, her 9-foot beam beinglittle more that that of an English canal narrow-boat. Today she is preserved and onview to all at Newcastle’s Science Museum.

“Turbinia” ran her first set of trials in late 1894 but the results were disappointing,the high speed of the main propellor creating a vacuum behind its blades causing aconsiderable loss of power, this effect referred to as ‘cavitation’. To measure thetorque on the shaft, created by the turbine, Parsons designed the instrument weknow today as the ‘torsion meter’ and, thanks to this, he was then able to makegreat improvements to the design of high-speed propellors.

Much to the annoyance of The Admiralty - and to the delight of many onlookers -the little “Turbinia” easily out-paced and ran rings round the Navy ships sent tochase her as she ran through the lines of ships at the 1897 Fleet Review at Spitheadand, as a consequence of such a very public demonstration of the potential ofturbine propulsion, The Admiralty ordered the turbine driven destroyer “Viper”and then too took over another, being built “on spec”, which they named “Cobra”.Both were over-lightly built ships and both came to grief. On August 3, 1901, the“Viper” ran aground on Renonquet Reef, in The Channel Islands and was declareda total loss. Six weeks later, on September 17, 1901, the “Cobra” was seen to breakin two in heavy seas off Flamborough Head, never again would Navy ships benamed after snakes !

Denny’s of Dumbarton, who too had built the famous “Cutty Sark”, wereenthusiastic about developing the turbines for merchant ships as were Parsons andtogether they approached the various railway companies looking for contracts butthe railway companies “affected a terrible amount of modesty, each anxious thatsomebody else should make the first experiment” - then along came JohnWilliamson, in the background, The Glasgow & South Western Railway Companyitself barred from operating the Campbeltown service but quite free to guaranteeany loans that Williamson might need and so was born The Turbine Syndicate.

The “King Edward”

he members of The Turbine Syndicate - William Denny & Brothers, TheParsons Marine Steam Turbine Company and Captain John Williamson -each contributed one-third of the £33,000 cost of the new “King Edward”,the first instalment when the hull was framed, beamed, bulkheads in place

and had all internal work riveted; the second, when launched and the third andfinal payment made on delivery.

Considering the very experimental nature of the new venture and not wanting toadd further to its risks, Denny’s chose to adhere to a hull model similar to that ofthe successful 1890-built paddle-steamer “Duchess of Hamilton (I)” and it seems,that had the screw turbine experiment not been successful, the turbine machinerycould have been removed and the hull then fitted with paddle machinery. The hull,costing £24,200, was 250.5-feet long, 30.1-feet in beam and, with a depth of 10-feet, had a draft of 6-feet. Parsons part of the work was estimated to cost £8,000and a further £800 was to be provided to cover the other miscellaneous start-upcosts of the venture, a total of £33,000 divided equally amongst the three parties.

To fund his share of the venture, Captain John Williamson obtained a loan of£2,500 from The National Bank of Scotland, now The Royal Bank of Scotland andin turn, as noted in a Glasgow & South Western Railway Company minute ofJanuary 22, 1901, Williamson’s loan was guaranteed by the railway company oncondition, one that too was included in The Turbine Syndicate’s own agreement,that the new ship was placed on the Fairlie - Campbeltown service.

The new ship, Denny’s Yard No. 651, was launched by Mrs Charles Parsons onThursday, May 16, 1901. For the machinery, Parson’s Engine No. 8, steam, at150 lb per square inch, was supplied by a conventional double-ended boiler. TheNavy ships “Viper” and “Cobra” had Yarrow’s water tube boilers but here, withno need for lightweight construction and such high running speeds, the need wasfor fuel economy which involved a wider range of steam expansions than in the twoNavy ships.

Whereas steam might be expanded between eight and sixteen times in acontemporary triple expansion engine, there were one hundred and twenty-fiveexpansions in the turbines of the “King Edward”. The high-pressure steam,driving the centre turbine, was expanded five times before being exhausted into thelow-pressure turbines driving the outer shafts.

There the steam was expanded a further twenty-five times before being againexhausted, now into the condenser. The separate astern turbines (turbines cannotbe reversed due to the curved formation of their blades) were fitted into the casingsof the outer ‘wing’ turbines - Early turbine ships lacked any great power whengoing astern a deficiency remedied in later engine designsT

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As no gearing was involved, the propellor shafts of the “King Edward”, like that ofthe little “Turbinia”, turned at extraordinarily high speeds and from the start it wasappreciated that the propellor surface area and the high peripheral speed of thepropellor tips would cause cavitational problems. The centre high-pressure shaftcould, in theory, turn at up to 700 rpm and the two outer low-pressure shafts at upto 1,000 rpm and the outer shafts fitted with an extra propellor thus making hereffectively a ‘five-screw’ ship

Her first steam trial took place on Friday, June 14, 1901 and on the followingMonday she reached a mean speed of 18.66 knots in calm weather on a return runover the measured mile at Skelmorlie before heading back up-river to Scott’s yard atGreenock where she was dry-docked for hull cleaning. A week later, on Monday,June 24, 1901, she ran a further series of seven double runs over the SkelmorlieMeasured Mile, the best mean speed now 19.7 knots, still short of the expected 20knots and so she was slipped the following day at Inglis’ Pointhouse yards to changepropellors. Now the 4’ centre propellor was exchanged for one of 4’ 9” diameter,the two outer 2’ 10” propellors replaced by 3’ 4” propellors and on Wednesday, June26, 1901, again on the Skelmorlie measured mile, on a smooth sea and in a lightbreeze, she reached a mean average of 20.48 knots with the centre shaft turning at505 rpm and the outer shafts at 755 rpm, the fastest run that day being 20.57 knots.Test tank calculations estimated her to have 3,500 i.h.p..

Over the following years, there were numerous changes of propellor configurationsand extra endurance trials and a further 34 double runs were carried out over theSkelmorlie measured mile between June 1901 and April 1905, when at last, theextra propellors on the outer shafts were finally removed.

Buried amongst a maze of steampipes on the lower deck, b e l o w the main deck,was the engineers’ control platform, virtually out-of-sight of passengers.

When the main stop valve wheel was opened to the centre, high-pressure ‘ahead’turbine, it too admitted steam to the two outer shaft ‘ahead’ turbines. Whenmanoeuvring, the centre ‘ahead’ turbine was shut down by means of the main stopvalve wheel and the outer ‘ahead’ and ‘stern’ turbines then opened and shut down asnecessary by their own individual stop valves.

The official trial trip of the “King Edward”, under the command of Captain AlexFowler of The Glasgow & South Western Railway Company’s “Glen Sannox (I)”,took place on Friday, June 28, 1901, just a fortnight after she had first raisedsteam. A party of guests too having been ferried out to her off Craigendoran, she

called at Dunoon, Rothesay, Largs, Fairlie and then Lochranza where she foundthe “Duchess of Hamilton (I)”, on charter to The Institute of Naval Architects,ready to race her down Kilbrannan Sound as she headed for Campbeltown.Needless to say, she had no difficulty in overtaking her. Three days later she beganher first season to Campbeltown.

With 50 crew and a capacity for 1,994 passengers, she left Greenock’s Prince’s Pierdaily (except Sundays) at 8.40 a.m., she called at Dunoon and Rothesay beforepicking up the Fairlie train connection at 10.20 a.m.. Proceeding direct toLochranza, where passengers could join horse-drawn charabancs for Brodick andconnections to Ardrossan, she was timed to arrive in Campbeltown at 12.20 p.m..Leaving Campbeltown again, at about 3 p.m., her passengers could, via Fairlie, beat St. Enoch’s Station in Glasgow at 6.18 p.m., a journey time little bettered ahundred years later by the private motor car !

1901 too was the year of The Glasgow Exhibition and the “King Edward” was backat Greenock’s Prince’s Pier in time to do a two-hour ‘musical evening cruise’ withpassengers leaving Glasgow St. Enoch at 6.05 p.m. and returning to Glasgow at10.25 p.m. - the success of these evening cruises led to them becoming an annualfeature of her sailing programme. At the end of September, the “King Edward”was laid up for the winter.

During the 1901 season, the “King Edward”, under her chief engineer H. Hall,had averaged 19 knots on the 160-mile daily return run to Campbeltown and heraverage daily coal consumption, working out at 1.8 lbs per equivalent indicated(i.h.p.) horse-power, had been about 18 tons per day. Chief Engineer Hall’ssuccessor, a man called Stuart/Stewart (?) who had been with the “King Edward”since her building - he retired to Skelmorlie in the 1930’s, held that the average dailyconsumption was actually just 11 - 12 tons of coal for the Campbeltown run and only when‘obliged to race other ships’ did she use 18 tons ! By way of direct comparison with theidentically lengthed-hull paddler “Duchess of Hamilton (I)” which consumed a tonof coal per 8.47 knots when travelling at 16 knots, the turbine-engined “KingEdward” consumed a ton of coal per 8.87 knots when travelling at 18 knots.

In any event, everybody was happy, Williamson cleared his overdraft, formed anew company, Turbine Steamers Ltd., bought the “King Edward” and nowordered a second turbine, the “Queen Alexandra (I)”.

When the new steamer appeared at the start of the 1902 season, the “KingEdward” took up a new run sailing from Fairlie via the south and west of Bute to

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Ardrishaig where it became the custom for her German string band, held superiorto other steamer bands, to land with the passengers and play through the village.

Five steamers then were calling daily at Ardrishaig which itself had a splendid bandof its own, that belonging to the Argyll and Bute Asylum, its members often beingrequested to play on evening cruises from the village.

With the increased traffic at Ardrishaig too that month, there were rumours that anelectric tramway was to be built between Ardrishaig and Crinan, rumours thatproved unfounded. Later, the “King Edward” extended her run to Inveraray, thereturn trip still being through The Kyles of Bute - the Ardrishaig call was droppedin 1908.

Much was made of the swiftness of the new “King Edward” but, in the first weekof July 1902, the “Columba” overhauled her one morning between Innellan andRothesay and would have got alongside Rothesay first but for the fact that shed hadto take the outside berth.

In February 1915, “King Edward” was requisitioned by The Admiralty and spentthe next four years, based variously at Southampton, Dover and Folkestone andcarrying troops to and from The Channel Islands, Le Havre, Rouen, Cherbourg,Dieppe, Calais and Boulogne. Later, as she was returning to The Clyde after a spellof duty as an ambulance transport in the White Sea, based at Archangel, she wasnearly wrecked in a ferocious storm.

Reconditioned, she returned to the Campbeltown run in June 1920, now, fromGreenock and calling at Gourock and Wemyss Bay as well as Fairlie and, with theexception of occasional trips to Inveraray, she remained on the Campbeltown rununtil the end of the 1926 season. From 1927 onwards she sailed mainly in the upperreaches of the river with her 1928, 1929 and 1930 sailing programmes giving heroccasional excursion trips to Stranraer.

During World War II, she was used as a passenger-troopship tender at The Tail ofThe Bank but again returned to peacetime duties in the spring of 1946.

Eventually, on June 6, 1952, she was sold for scrapping and four days later, onTuesday, June 10, 1952, was towed to The West of Scotland Ship- breakingCompany’s yard at Troon, a tow to which the author was witness as he came homefrom primary school ! One of the turbines from the “King Edward” is now onshow at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Museum.

The “Queen Alexandra (I)”

wenty-feet longer than the “King Edward”, the new ship was launched byMiss Dorothy Leyland, her father a close associate Charles Parsons, onTuesday, April 8, 1902, at Denny’s yard in Dumbarton, the new ship, YardNo. 670, cost £38,500. Like the “King Edward”, she too had five propellors

and their configuration would be changed over the course of the next 3 years.

On Monday, May 19, 1902, with a moderate sea and a 20-knot wind, she made sixruns on the Skelmorlie Measured Mile, achieving a best mean speed of 18.56 knots.Three days later, after dry-docking at Scott’s in Greenock for hull cleaning, shemade twelve runs over the Skelmorlie mile, this time with a smooth sea and a lightbreeze. Now her best mean speed had risen to 21.63 knots and her fastest ever tobe recorded run was 21.82 knots and this was done using the first set of propellorsthat had been made for the “King Edward” !

Between then and her final set of speed trials on May 5, 1904, there would be sixdifferent changes of propellors but none helped her get up to the record set back onMay 22, 1902 !

Late in May 1902, a party of guests boarded the new “Queen Alexandra (I)” forher first trip to Campbeltown, out through The Kyles of Bute and then downKilbrannan Sound. The return trip to Greenock, via the east coast of Arran, tookjust three hours, a very creditable performance and on she opened her season onSaturday, May 31, 1902, with a special public excursion from Prince’s Pier andGourock, between The Cumbraes and then up Loch Fyne. Two days later, onMonday, June 2, 1902, she took over the Campbeltown service from the “KingEdward”.

In appearance, the “Queen Alexandra (I)” was very similar to the “King Edward”but, the new ship had a continuous boat deck extending from the bridge to the topof the companionway to after saloon and thus had her lifeboats slightly further aftthan those on the “King Edward” and, although she too would have her boat decklengthened in the winter of 1905-06, the “King Edward” retained a complete breakbetween her boat and navigating bridge throughout here career.

One summer evening in 1906, the “Queen Alexandra (I)” was on charter to carrya party of John Brown’s shipyard employees on a non-landing cruise to Arran. Sotoo, with a party from Singer’s Sewing Machine Company, was the three-years olderNorth British paddle steamer “Waverley (III)”, both ships’ courses converged at

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The Tail of The Bank and a race ensued, past The Cloch and Cumbrae Lighthouses,the old 13.666 nautical mile ‘standard’ ship’s speed trial course and on to the coastof Arran. The “Waverley (III)”, whose best trial speed had been 19.73 knots,passed The Fallen Rocks, at the north end of Arran, a full ship length ahead of thenewer and ostensibly faster turbine “Queen Alexandra (I)” !

Sometime in the early morning of Sunday, September 10, 1911, as she lay at hercoaling berth in Greenock’s Albert Harbour , a fire broke out, burning through theupper and promenade decks and causing such damage that John Williamson decidedit better to sell her and build a replacement rather than effect repairs.

Even before the fire, The Canadian Pacific Railway had been interested in the shipto operate their Vancouver - Nanaimo service. Now, re-named “Princess Patricia” ,after the daughter of the Duke of Connaught who had just become Governor-General of Canada, the fully reconditioned ship left The Clyde under her ownsteam on Wednesday, January 17, 1912.

After what her Chief Engineer Walter Anderson called ‘an awful voyage’ roundCape Horn - The Panama Canal not then open - the ship arrived in Victoria onMarch 18, 1912 - forty-three days actual steaming from The Clyde. WalterAnderson stayed on with the ship and The C.P.R. Co. and he too oversaw the ship’sstorm damage repaired and her conversion to burn oil before she began her newservice from Vancouver to Nanaimo, a two-hour run, on Saturday, May 11, 1912.

Her lack of space for automobile traffic led to her being replaced in 1928 by JohnBrown’s Clyde-built “Princess Elaine” and the “Pat”, as she had become knownwas relegated to excursion and relief work till 1932. In 1935, she became a floatingboarding house during a waterfront strike in Vancouver and was finally scrapped atVictoria in 1937. Her ship’s bell was presented to the City of Nanaimo to mark herlong association with the Vancouver ferry service.

The Steward’s Department

he provision of food on the Campbeltown steamers was not, at least initially,of any concern to the company. In the days of the “Duke of Lancaster”, itwas customary, at Campbeltown, to see women with pitchers of brothawaiting her arrival, bowlfuls being ‘dolled out’ at a small charge to the tired

and hungry passengers. There was of course a more convivial side to be found onboard the better founded “St. Kiaran” and an inventory of her steward’sdepartment found 1½ dozen ‘toddy’ ladles amongst the silver cutlery !

Complaints were constantly being made to the company about the conduct of theirstewards and Captain Napier, one of the early skippers, reported that his stewardwas “not so attentive to his duties as he ought - sleeps in the morning when thevessel is sailing and is otherwise inattentive to the passengers”.

In 1831, after two of the company directors carried out an inspection, finding thesteward’s department “in a filthy state” and that “on comparing the stores with theinventory they had found them very deficient”, a regular stocking was instituted andhenceforth every article needed in the steward’s department was to be of the verybest quality.

The company too then fixed charges of 1/6d for breakfast or dinner, 1/- for tea orcoffee, 5d per gill for whisky, 6d per gill for toddy. Brandy and gin was set at 1/-per gill, Scotch Porter at 5d per bottle, London Porter at 6d and Ale at 8d perbottle.

With the laudable intention of patronising local traders, the company’s agent wasinstructed to get as many of his supplies as possible from Campbeltown even ifthese could be bought on equally good terms in Glasgow or Greenock.

In the early days too, it would seem that the captains of the Campbeltown steamersalso had some interest in the stewards’ departments and the story is told of theskipper who ordered his engineer to “Keep her goin’ easy, Jeck, there’s a gran’ treddoon below” !

The stewards who deserve mention were John Neilson, appointed to the “Duke ofLancaster” in 1827 and Duncan Macdougall who succeeded him in 1828 andserved there till 1832. Roderick Mackenzie followed and then transferred to the “St.Kiaran” in 1836 where he stayed until resigning in 1838. Duncan Wilkinson, whosucceeded Roderick Mackenzie on the “Duke of Lancaster” in 1836, resigned in1842.

Colin Mackenzie ran the catering on the “St. Kiaran” between 1838 and 1841 whenhe was succeeded by Alexander Mackenzie, who then resigned in 1843 to befollowed by Alex Ryburn, who stayed with until 1848 when he took over from John

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Ralston on the “Duke of Cornwall” for a few months before he too resigned -John Ralston had been with the ship since 1842.

John M’Murchy, who took over from Alex Ryburn in 1848, served successively onthe “Celt” and the “Druid” until he retired in 1867. The steward’s department on“Celt” was run by Arch. Turner, from 1843 till 1851; William Sutherland, 1851 to1856 and then by John M’Murchy till Daniel M’Intyre took over for a year in 1861.

George Henderson became the company’s catering superintendent in September1862 and remained in the post until 1885 when he was succeeded by Neil Mitchellwho too became chief steward of the then new “Davaar” until he resigned fromboth posts when she was reboilered in 1903.

Now Tom Tosh, who had served as second steward on the “Davaar” since 1886,took over as her chief steward when Neil Mitchell resigned and too becameresponsible for supervising the catering on the “Kintyre”, he died in September1907, the same month that the “Kintyre” was sunk off Wemyss Bay Pier. TomTosh was succeeded in turn by Mr Stevenson and John Armstrong.

In 1903 too, Thomas Bradfield was made responsible for the catering on board the“Kinloch”. Later resigning to take over a hotel, his post was given to the quiet andefficient Sam M. Campbell who later transferred to the “Davaar” as chief steward.

Breakfast, Luncheon, Dinner & Tea

nder Neil Mitchell’s regime, the catering on the Campbeltown steamers wasraised to a pitch of efficiency not excelled on The Clyde. Though none ofthe Campbeltown steamer menus have survived the passage of time, thetypical selection of fare offered in the dining saloon of the 1890’s being

Breakfast 2/- (reduced to 1/6d if only a single main dish selected) : Ham and Egg, SalmonSteak, Chops, White Fish, Herring, Sausages, Cold Meats, Rolls, Toast,Preserves, Tea and Coffee.

Luncheon - served from 10.30 a.m. till 2 p.m. - 2/- : Soup or Salmon, Roast Lamb,Roast Beef, Corned Beef, Boiled Ox-Tongue, Boiled Ham, Potatoes andVegetables, Assorted Sweets, Salads and Cheeses.

Dinner Table d’Hôte - served from 2.30 p.m. till 4 p.m. - 2/6d : Soup, PoachedSalmon, Roast Lamb with Mint Sauce, Roast Beef, Corned Beef and Vegetables,Pickled Ox-Tongue, Boiled Ham, Potatoes and Vegetables, Assorted Sweets,Salads and Cheeses.

Tea - served from 4.15 p.m. onwards - 2/- (reduced to 1/6d if only a single main dish selected): White Fish, Cold Salmon, Cold Meats, Boiled Eggs, Toast, Preserves, Tea.Plain Tea - served from 4.15 p.m. onwards - 9d : Toast, Biscuits, Preserves, Tea. Forthose simply ‘peckish’ : a plate of soup with bread 6d; a plate of meat andpotatoes, or salmon 1/-; tea, or coffee, with bread and butter, or a pastry 6d;pudding, or tart, or a compôte of fruit 6d; jellies, or creams 6d; biscuits andcheese 6d; sandwiches 4d; pastries, or biscuits 1d each.

“Good Spirits”

he typical 1890’s steamer bar prices were slightly more expensive than ‘shoreprices’, not surprising in view of the fact that they had a ‘captive’ clientele !

Spirits - per glass : Brandy 8d; Whisky, Rum, Gin, Port, Sherry, Cordial (arange of these were available) and Lime Juice were all 4d; Special Whisky : 3d per‘nip’ and Bottled Beers were all priced at 4d each as were aerated ‘waters’.

Liqueurs were 6d per ‘nip’, the most popular of the period being Marachino,Benedictine and Green Chartreuse. A small selection of wines, reflecting the bettersellers of the time, was also carried on board and sold by the bottle - and by thepint ! .

Champagnes all at 10/6d per bottle, 5/6d per pint : Dry Monopole Heidsieck, G.H. Mumm’s, Perinet and Fils and Pommery. Port and Sherry being 5/- per bottle and2/6d per pint. Hocks : Sparkling Moselle at 6/- per bottle, 3/6d per pint;Hockheimer at 5/- per bottle and 2/6d per pint. Clarets : Medoc at 2/6d perbottle, 1/6d per pint; St. Julien at 3/- per bottle and 1/9d per pint.

For those who enjoy the challenge of ‘mental arithmetic’, these simple ‘rule ofthumb’ conversions persuade that there has been little change to restaurant and barprices in the course of a century though, if anything, one might say that one gotbetter value for money in ‘the good old days’ !

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Given £1.00 in the 1890’s/early 1900’s, one would now need £60.00 to have thesame purchasing power. In ‘the good old days’, there were 240d, old pence, to the£. A shilling 1/- (12 old pence) was equal to our 5 p coin and for those whowould convert to ‘euros’, the £ is currently equal to somewhere between about1.45 and 1.63 euros !

Today, in 2002, the 2/- cost of lunch would equate to about £6.00, a ‘nip’ ofwhisky or a ½ pint bottle of beer £1 - the prices for eating and drinking out do notappear to have much changed but then too the 5/- cost of a third class rail andcabin class steamer return ticket for a day cruise from Glasgow would now equate toabout £15 and in fact, in 2002, a day trip from Glasgow on the “Waverley (IV)”costs about £25, up 60% ! High fares ‘drive away’ passengers.

Neil Mitchell & The “Davaar”

hen the “Davaar” was reboilered and reconditioned in 1903, her chiefsteward, Neil Mitchell, who was also the company’s cateringsuperintendent, bought the ship’s original bar counter and fittings, retiredfrom the sea and refurbished what became known as ‘Neil Mitchell’s Bar’

(renamed “The Kilbrannan” in 1965 and sadly, at the time of writing in 2002,closed) at 90 Longrow in Campbeltown.

Though many would long remember Neil Mitchell, dressed as ever in his ‘trademark’ black suit and bow tie and sitting at his beloved piano in the bar, Neil Mitchelltoo might be remembered for his innovative promotion of his business duringWorld War II when Campbeltown became home to H.M.S. “Minona”, the oceanrescue tug base and H.M.S. “Landrail”, the air station at Machrihanish.

These were the days of ration cards and passes and Neil Mitchell distributed his ownfour-page, ration book sized “Free Pass” to all, it beginning “FREE PASS - Thispass is good on all bus roads provided the bearer walks, carries his own luggage,swims all rivers and stops for all tonics and draughts at Neil Mitchell, The Thirst AidSpecialist, 90 Long Row Street, Campbeltown. Consultation Hours Weekdays 11 -3 and 5 - 9.30. Scores of remedies for Relaxed Throats, Jaded Appetites, TiredNerves and, that Sinking Feeling. Advice gratis to all visiting - Water’s a fine drink ifmixed with the right Spirit ! “

Neil’s ‘Ten Commandments’ were - “When thirsty thou shalt come to my house anddrink, but not to excess so that thou mayest live long in the land and enjoy it; Thou

shalt not take anything from me that is unjust for I need all that I have - and moretoo; Thou shalt not expect glasses too large, nor filled too full for I must pay myrent;

“Thou shalt not sing or dance except when thy spirit moveth thee to do thy best;Thou shalt honour me and mine that thou mayest live long and see me again; Thoushalt not destroy or break anything on my premises else thou shalt pay double thevalue and thou shalt not dare to pay me in bad money or ever say ‘Chalk’ or ‘Slate’;

“Thou shalt call at my place daily, if unable I shall feel it an insult unless thousendest a substitute or an apology; Thou shalt not abuse thy fellow drinkers norcause any base insinuations upon their characters by hinting that they cannot drinktoo much;

“Neither shalt thou take the name of my goods in vain by calling my beer ‘slops’ forI always keep the best brewed ales and am always at home to my friends; Thou shaltnot so far forget thy honourable position and high standing in the community as toask the landlord to treat.”

Page three of the ‘pass’ to Mitchell’s Bar then lists - ‘A Few “Thats” That AreInteresting’ - Tennyson could take a sheet of papers and write a poem on it worth£1,300 - That’s Genius; Rothschild can write a few words on a paper and make itworth £1,000,000 - That’s Capital; A navvy can move tons of earth per day andearn three shillings - That’s Labour; A mechanic can take a piece of steel worth £1and make it into watch springs worth £260 - That’s Skill; A man can run a businessfor a time and not advertise - That’s Foolishness; Some tradesmen do not study theircustomers - That’s a Mistake; Solomon had hundreds of wives and slept with hisfather - That’s Wisdom; The Landlord is waiting for his customers to give him anopportunity to supply them with John’s Best Beers drawn from the wood - That’sBusiness.”

Though there is no doubting the fact that Neil Mitchell did indeed run a verysuccessful business, just as he too had run the catering on the Campbeltown ships,but, on the final page of his ‘pass’, is his ‘Copy of Reply to a Request forSettlement of a Brewer’s Account’ - “Dear Sirs, For the following reasons, I amunable to send you the cheque for which you ask. I have been held up, held down,sandbagged, walked on, sat upon, flattened out and squeezed by The Income Tax,Super Tax, Tobacco Tax, Beer Tax, Spirits Tax, Motor Tax and by every ruddysociety, organisation and club that the inventive mind of man can think of toextract what I have, or may not have, in my possession for The Red Cross, Ivory

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Cross, Black Cross and the double cross and for every hospital in town andcountry.

“The Government has governed my business until I do not know who owns it. Iam inspected, suspected, examined and re-examined, informed, required andcommanded to such an extent that I don’t know who I am, where I am’ or why Iam here at all. All that I know is that I’m supposed to have an inexhaustible supplyof money for every need, desire and hope of the human race and, because I willnot go out and beg, borrow or steal money to give away, I am cussed, discussed,boycotted, talked to, talked at, lied to, lied about, held up, rung up, robbed,damned and nearly ruined. The only reason I am clinging to life at all is to try tofind out what the ******* hell is going to happen next. Yours faithfully, NeilMitchell.”

The original bar counter, three “ship’s doors” with round opaque windows in them,two ‘Charles Rennie MacIntosh’ style (perhaps even original) mirrors and about adozen glass-etched company crested window panels p l u s a glass screen with aseries of ‘raised’ sailing ships on it are to be found there, the last resting place of theold original “Davaar”.

An effort should be made to secure these pieces of history should “The Kilbrannan”not re-open again to the public.

The “C. M. L. R.” Passenger Trains

he arrival of the new high speed turbines “King Edward” and “QueenAlexandra (I)” revolutionised the Clyde tourist trade and began bringingupwards of 400 trippers a day to Campbeltown, many being persuaded tovisit ‘the shores of The Atlantic’ at Machrihanish. Early in the spring of

1904, talks took place between Galloways, the colliery owners; Denny’s, theshipbuilders and other parties who might support proposals to upgrade the railwayfor the carriage of tourists and, equally importantly, extend the line not only toMachrihanish but too to The New Quay so that coal could be loaded directly on tothe ships instead of being transferred by carts from the coal yard at the (now)Highland Church and then down to the quay.

A new company, “The Argyll Railway Company” was formed to make anapplication for the necessary Light Railway Order, made in May 1904. An official

enquiry on behalf of The Light Railway Commissioners was held on September 28,1904 and the scheme submitted to The Board of Trade on December 28, 1904.

On May 8, 1905, “The Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway Order1905” was duly approved by The Board of Trade and the company then becoming“The Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway Company” - the “C. & M. L.Ry.”. The 2’ 3” narrow gauge railway between Campbeltown and Machrihanish,having an authorised length of 6 miles 649 yards, allowingthe line to be worked by steam or electric power.

The new company had powers to compulsorily purchase land and buildings in theway of the extension to The New Quay but were forbidden to purchase ten or morehouses belonging to the ‘labouring classes’, these defined as persons having anincome of less than £1.10/- (£1.50p) per week.

The building works, contracted to James Young & Company, were begun inNovember 1905 and the first big engine, “Atlantic”, arrived in June 1906. ‘She ‘ -all railway engines are called ‘s h e ’ until they are coupled up to a train whereuponthey immediately change sex and become ‘h e ’ - was taken by road, on a trailerhauled by a steam traction engine, to Plantation Crossing, set on the rails andalmost immediately fired up to begin work.

By Saturday, July 21, 1906, the line was completed and, the four new 64-seatcarriages having arrived from Wishaw, the first trial trip, with a party of miners,was made over the completed line on Saturday, August 4, 1906.

The line was given its official inspection on Friday, August 17, 1906, by The Boardof Trade officer Lt. Col. E. Druitt, accompanied by various others includingCaptain John Williamson, he who had been instrumental in bringing the firstturbine steamer, the “King Edward”, to Campbeltown and, the return trip fromMachrihanish being made at full speed, the inspection party were able to returnhome that same day on the regular sailing of the “Queen Alexandra (I)”.

Several fare-paying steamer passengers travelled on the train next day and the linewas officially opened on the following Saturday, August 25, 1906. Within threeweeks some 10,000 passengers, nearly all of the turbine steamer’s day trippers toCampbeltown, had travelled on the new train.

A second, sister, locomotive, “Argyll” and two more passenger carriages, one a‘composite’ for passengers and luggage, arrived in time for the start of the 1907

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summer season - The line also then operated some eighteen, rather elderly, coalwagons but by its closure owned about 150 4-ton coal wagons.

The line’s first locomotive ”Pioneer”, in store at the colliery, was not taken outagain and was seemingly broken up for scrap in July 1911. The 1883 “Chevalier”,never much used for passenger working, would work alongside “Atlantic” and“Argyll” till the line closed and “Princess” , built in 1900 and fitted with vacuumbrakes for working passenger trains, more often the single-coach winter trains, waswithdrawn in 1926 and cannibalised to keep “Chevalier” going till the final demiseof the railway.

The locomotives, like those of The North British Railway, were painted olive green- ‘dark gamboge’ - and lined out in black, yellow and vermilion. Coaches wereolive green with white roofs and the coal wagons painted grey.

Both “Atlantic” and “Argyll” were given the Campbeltown coat of armssurrounded by a white ring lettered with the full company name.

The passenger timetable, three returns on weekdays, six on Saturdays and noservices at all on Sundays, would vary timings little over the years, request stopsbeing made as required at Plantation, Moss Road, Lintmill, Drumlemble, Trodigaland Machrihanish. The timetable for July and August 1922, provided that thecolliery too was working, is fairly typical.

The first train left The Old Quay about 6 a.m. and then returned from Machrihanishat 8.10 a.m. on schooldays, otherwise it returned ‘light’ to Campbeltown. Next, the10.20 a.m., returning from Machrihanish at 11 a.m..

In summertime, the turbine steamer would leave Prince’s Pier, Greenock at 8.45a.m., Gourock 9.05 a.m., Wemyss Bay 9.50 a.m., Fairlie 10.30 a.m., Lochranza11.25 a.m., Pirnmill at 11.45 a.m., the passengers being ferried ashore and thenarrive in Campbeltown at 12.40 p.m. where the train, now an ‘express’ would leaveat 1.10 p.m. for Machrihanish, arriving at 1.40 p.m.. The train would then leavethirty-five minutes later, at 2.15 p.m., arriving back in Campbeltown in time for theturbine steamer’s departure at 2.50 p.m..

The ordinary Campbeltown service steamer, carrying passengers and cargo, madecalls at Lochranza 11.30 a.m., Pirnmill 12 noon, Carradale 12.25 p.m. and, ifrequired, at Saddell to reach Campbeltown at about 1.30 p.m., the train passengersthen getting the 3 p.m. to Machrihanish which left there again at 3.45 p.m..

Next, the school run, the 4.20 p.m. which, leaving Machrihanish at 5.45 p.m.,brought the coal miners back home. The final run weekday run was the 6.30 p.m.,it leaving on the return at 7.30 p.m.

On Saturdays too, there was a late run to Machrihanish at 9.45 p.m. and it was notunknown, for those who missed it, to appropriate the linemen’s trolley, push it tothe summit of the line at Tomaig, freewheel out to Plantation Crossing and thenuse a long pole to ‘punt’ themselves home to Drumlemble.

The Glasgow and South Western Railway Company, successful in their connectingarrangements with the turbine steamers to Campbeltown, had an idea of takingover the Campbeltown to Machrihanish railway and building a line up the west sideof Kintyre from Dunaverty to Cour.

The line would have run up Conie Glen to a crossing junction at Drumlemble, on toBellochantuy where a new ‘Turnberry-style’ hotel would be built and a new golfcourse at Killean and then, from Tayinloan ferry, via the Narachan Burn andSunadale to Cour.

The idea being not only for a through passenger route between Ireland and Scotlandbut too a line which would have run coal out for shipment, via Dunaverty, toIreland or, via Cour, to Glasgow.

The ‘Sou’ West’ also proposed running a second, unconnected, line fromRonachan Bay, via Clachan and Glenrisdell, to the new pier at Skipness so as tobetter connect Jura and Islay with Fairlie and of course Glasgow.

A monument to another unexecuted scheme of the Glasgow and South WesternRailway is to be seen at Carrick Castle, at the mouth of Loch Goil where thecompany built ‘a railway station’, the curious looking building beside the pier, for aline to connect into the Oban and Callander Railway.

The 1907 Steamer Timetable

ith the “Kintyre” and the “Kinloch” working single daily trips ‘end-to-end’, the “Davaar” was used as ‘the excursion ship’ in summer giving adaily round trip to Campbeltown from Greenock.W

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The timings gave tourists the chance to sail from Gourock and either spend up to5¼ hours at Lochranza while the “Davaar” went on to Campbeltown or, with theexception of Fridays and using the “Kintyre” or “Kinloch”, leave Gourock at 1.50p.m., sail to Lochranza and, after nearly an hour ashore, return home on the“Davaar”.

OUTWARDSTo Campbeltown Daily Fridays Excepted Fridays OnlyGlasgow, KingstonDock, Shed 8 -- . -- 9.00 a.m. 12.00 p.m.GreenockCustoms’ House -- . -- 12.30 p.m. 4.00 p.m.Prince’s Pier 9.00 a.m. 1.00 p.m. 4.30 p.m.Gourock 9.20 a.m. 1.50 p.m. 4.50 p.m.Lochranza 11.40 a.m. 4.00 p.m. 7.00 p.m.Pirnmill 12.15 p.m. 4.25 p.m. 7.30 p.m.Carradale 12.45 p.m. 4.45 p.m. 8.00 p.m.Saddell (ferry boat) no call as required no callCampbeltown 2.00 p.m. 6.00 p.m. 9.00 p.m.

INWARDSFrom Campbeltown Mondays Only Mondays excepted Daily

Campbeltown 4.30 a.m. 8.00 a.m. 3.00 p.m.Saddell (ferry boat) no call as required no callCarradale 5.30 a.m. 9.10 a.m. 4.05 p.m.Pirnmill 5.50 a.m. 9.40 a.m. 4.30 p.m.Lochranza 6.15 a.m. 10.10 a.m. 4.55 p.mWemyss Bay 8.00 a.m. -- . -- -- . --Gourock - . -- 12.30 p.m. 7.20 p.m.GreenockPrince’s Pier 9.00 a.m. 1.00 p.m. -- . --

On Glasgow Fair Fridays, the 12 noon run from Glasgow also picked up moreGlasgow passengers at Wemyss Bay and then returned direct to Greenock formidnight and then on up-river, the Campbeltown-based ship too turning round forhome again that day. Twice daily excursions were offered from Campbeltown toCarradale and, on Fridays leaving on the “Davaar” at 3 p.m., cheap excursionswere offered from Campbeltown to Pirnmill and Lochranza, the return toCampbeltown being at 9 p.m..

The Stranraer “Princesses”

eorge Watson, the energetic agent for The Argyll Steamship Company’sGlasgow - Campbeltown - Stranraer cargo-passenger service, had begunthe tradition of running annual cruises from Stranraer in 1895, his mostambitious venture being to charter the paddle steamer “Carrick Castle” for

a day trip to leave Campbeltown at 5 a.m. for Stranraer where passengers wouldcatch the 8 a.m. train to Garliestown where they would embark for Douglas, in TheIsle of Man, on Friday, August 18, 1899, the “Carrick Castle”, as the “CulzeanCastle” (ex- ’Windsor Castle’), having first appeared in Campbeltown in 1895. Onthe return crossing from Stranraer, she was delayed by fog and eventually thetrippers returned to Campbeltown at 2 a.m..

In 1907, new ground was broken when the three-year-old turbine steamer “PrincessMaud” gave two Glasgow Fair Holiday afternoon cruises from Larne, onSaturdays, July 13 and 27, round Sanda Island, the 3¾ hour cruises leaving about 2p.m. and returning about 6 p.m.. To balance these, she made another two afternooncruises from Stranraer, on Thursday, July 18 and Saturday, August 10, this time toThe Mull of Kintyre, rounding Sanda on the return passage.

On Saturdays, July 11 and 18, 1908, the 1890-built paddle steamer “PrincessVictoria” repeated these Stranraer to The Mull of Kintyre afternoon cruises, her1892-built sister, the “Princess May” making a further two trips that season, onThursday, July 30 and on Saturday, August 15, 1908.

That same year, 1908, on Tuesday, July 21, the “Princess May” also ran thecompany’s first day excursion to Campbeltown, leaving Stranraer at 9.20 a.m., her300 passengers were given four hours ashore in Kintyre and the 280-foot ship,leaving at 4 p.m., returned to Stranraer at 6 p.m, she would repeat the trip in 1909,on Tuesday, July 20 but, despite the expansion of the Stranraer cruise programmethat year, this would be the company’s only Kintyre cruise.

On Friday, August 6, 1909, the turbine steamer “Princess Maud” , which had beenthe first Stranraer ship to offer Kintyre cruises, collided with the Argyll SteamshipCompany’s “Pirate”, anchored in fog-bound Loch Ryan. The “Pirate”, which hadserved the Glasgow - Campbeltown - Stranraer passenger service since the loss ofthe “Argyll” in 1893, was sunk but soon raised and put back into service six weekslater.

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Again under the aegis of George Watson, the “Olive”, owned by The Laird Line,was chartered, on Thursday, August 4, 1910, to take day trippers from Stranraerto Campbeltown and Tarbert but the ship, badly prepared for excursionists, was hitby bad weather and the following year George Watson reverted to the tested andtried paddle steamer “Juno” to take the Stranraer trippers to Dunoon and Arrochar.

In inter-war years, the Campbeltown company’s ‘new’ “Dalriada” would giveStranraer day trippers a chance to visit Campbeltown, the 1939 return fare being4/9d (24p).

Then, on Wednesday, August 25, 1948, the new and ill-fated car ferry, the“Princess Victoria”, which was tragically lost on Saturday, January 31, 1953, waschartered for a day trip to Campbeltown by The Stranraer & District IndependentRetail Trades Association, the return fare was 12/6d (62½p).

Though the Stranraer - Larne ships did not return to Kintyre again, they would giveannual excursions round Rathlin Island, from 1949 onwards and roundAilsa Craig, from 1954 onwards, until the early 1960’s.

The Loss of The “Kintyre”

he “Kintyre” was running ‘light’, without cargo or passengers, down-riverfor Campbeltown, where she was to pick up a special sailing for the ramsales in Tarbert. Her course lay close inshore to the Renfrewshire coastwhich not only gave her the advantage of the current but also put her on a

virtual straight line from The Cloch Lighthouse to Holy Isle on a beautiful day, on acalm sea and in excellent visibility.

The new, Denny-built, “Maori”, a 3,500-ton turbine steamer for The UnionSteamship Company of New Zealand - their 1901 “Waipori” and 1913 “Kamo”products of Campbeltown’s own shipyard - had just completed her northward runon The Skelmorlie ‘Measured Mile’. Continuing to run at speed, she made for theCowal shore and began turning to head back down ‘the mile’ again on a southerncourse, signalling her turn to starboard with a blast from her steam siren. With herengineers no doubt setting up for the southern run, her speed was, if anything,increasing and, now half a mile distant, the little “Kintyre”, instead of slowing downto let the “Maori” pass ahead of her on to ‘the mile’, gave two blasts on her ownwhistle, turned slightly to port and slightly closer to the Wemyss Bay shore thinkingto give the “Maori” more room to complete her turn southwards.

To have slowed down the “Kintyre” would have left her vulnerable and had the“Maori” attempted to have come across her stern and she might have misjudgedher speed. A collision was now inevitable and, to lessen any impact, the “Maori”put her engines ‘full astern’. At 11.45 a.m. on Wednesday, September 18, 1907, thebow of the “Maori” stove in the starboard quarter of the “Kintyre”, just at theafter hatch and close to the engine compartment.

The two vessels remained locked together for long enough to allow most of thefifteen crew of the “Kintyre” to clamber aboard the “Maori”. Though settlingsteadily by her stern as the water began to fill her engine room and after saloon,Captain John MacKechnie, having ordered her engine ‘full astern’ and with ChiefEngineer William Lennox now beside him on the bridge, tried to run the “Kintyre”on to the shore, to the north of the church and old steamer pier on Castle Wemyssestate but, less than four minutes after the collision, her stern now completelyunder water, there came the hissing sound of escaping steam and a slight ‘report’and some twenty seconds later the “Kintyre” sank, her bowsprit being last todisappear, the two men were thrown into the water and 40-year old William Lennoxdisappeared below the waves leaving a widow and one child. The Rothesay-bound“Marchioness of Breadalbane” and the Millport-bound “Marchioness of Bute” ,having just left Wemyss Bay pier, now put back and lowered boats to pick up theremainder of the crew from the “Kintyre”.

Pulled down by suction and entangled in wreckage, Captain MacKechnie, a strongswimmer, managed to free himself and reached the surface in a dazed conditionwhere he was by school-boy Ninian Bannatyne Stewart and his sister who had setout from the shore less than 100 yards away - Their uncle would have been thesame Ninian Bannatyne Stewart who then owned Keil House at Southend, justbefore it was turned into Keil School. A yacht too had been in close vicinity to thescene of the collision but it was a triumphant Ninian Stewart who then recoveredthe ship’s log and presented it to Captain MacKechnie in the Wemyss Bay Hotelwhere he was being examined by Dr Ronald Currie, himself a native of Arran andthe builder and proprietor of Skelmorlie Hydro Hotel which sat on the cliffoverlooking the northern marker posts of the Skelmorlie ‘Measured Mile’.

“Who on the route did not know her ?” wrote ‘The Campbeltown Courier’ correspondent,“She was inimitable. Her successors were but sorry imitations of her beauty. She was looked onfrom Greenock to The Broomielaw as a joy for ever and, by every man along the quays, she wasknown to be a model steamship and the finest design of screw steamer that ever sailed The Clyde,her like will be no more. She sat squat, yet lightly and snug in the water like no other creation.No feeling of top-heaviness ever entered into ones calculation of her poise. By the stern, whether

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light or loaded, there sat the “Kintyre” with the apparently same draught, ever graceful, eversecure. Forward her beautiful cut-water curving out to the inimitable bowsprit, put her in a classalone and all her lines were in beauteous symmetry.

“In a south-easter, who that ever was but prayed for the “Kintyre” below him. She rose to theonrush like a thing alive : like a knife edge she cleft the mass and, while the spray rejuvenated herdecks, the green seas went aft along her fenders. Ask anyone who ought to know, ‘tis the sameanswer, ‘the finest sea-boat that ever sailed to Campbeltown quay’ ”.

Three months later, in December 1907, the Campbeltown company took Denny’s,the builders of the “Maori” to court in an attempt to the estimated £10,000 valueof the now sunk “Kintyre” but the court, under Lord Salvesen, held that thecollision had been the fault of the “Kintyre” and that her owners should shoulderthe burden of an ‘uninsured’ loss, she was never replaced and the services were leftto the “Kinloch” and the “Davaar”.

Lying within 700-feet of the shore, at about 55° 53.178’ N, 04° 53.974’ W, herclipper bow still rising and pointing due east to the shore, the wreck of the“Kintyre”, in some 150-feet of water, attracts many parties of divers and now,proudly displayed in Armitage Shanks’ Staffordshire works, is one of the ship’soriginal 1868 white porcelain toilet bowls, brought to the surface in the late 1990’s.

Just nineteen years before the “Kintyre” came to grief, on Saturday, June 16, 1888,the new 216-foot long paddle-steamer “Princess of Wales”, built for TheSouthampton and Isle of Wight Royal Mail Company a n d the steamer “BalmoralCastle” collided when b o t h were running trials that day on the Skelmorlie‘Measured Mile’. Though cut in two, aft of the engine room, the “Princess ofWales” managed to launch a lifeboat in time to take the accompanying ladies of thetrial party ashore, the rest of the crew being safely picked up by the “Adela” on theWemyss Bay/Rothesay passenger service. The wreck of the “Princess of Wales”lies upside down, in some 200-feet of water, just off the end of Wemyss Bay Pier at55° 52.525’ N, 04° 54.084’ W.

The Skelmorlie ‘Measured Mile’

hough The Admiralty only started to document steam-ship trials around1840, Clyde shipbuilders had for long been ‘running the lights’, steaming atfull speed the 13.666 nautical mile course between The Cloch and CumbraeHead lighthouses, the run takes 60 minutes 17 seconds at 13.6 knots and 41

minutes at 20 knots. The problem was one of distance. By the time the ship hadturned round to do a second, return, run, the tidal conditions, the wind and theweather could all have changed making any conclusions dubious.

The answer lay in finding a shorter testing distance, that between the old steamerpier at Skelmorlie, just below the site for Skelmorlie Hydropathic Hotel andsouthwards to Skelmorlie Castle, this later to be regarded as the most important‘measured mile’ in Britain - a nautical mile, originally defined as being 6,080imperial feet, has been redefined and accepted internationally as 1,852 metres,about 10 feet less.

Having sought out the agreement of The Earl of Eglinton, who owned the land,John, son of Robert Napier, erected the necessary unlit beacons at Skelmorlie and,on July 4, 1866, George Henry Richards, at The Hydrographic Office of TheAdmiralty in London, sent out “Notice to Mariners No 36, Scotland West Coast,Measured Mile in The Firth of Clyde” to the effect that “Notice is hereby given that beacons toindicate the length of a nautical mile (6,080 feet) have been erected on the eastern shore of TheFirth of Clyde. Each beacon consists of a single pole, 45-feet high, with arms 10-feet long forminga broad ( V and ‘inverted’ V ) angle 15-feet from the base, the whole being painted white. Thetwo northern beacons are erected near Skelmorlie Pier, the outer one being close to the high watershore on the south side and, from it, the inner one (in the recess of the cliff) is 83 yards distantbearing S.E. by E¾E. The two southern beacons stand on level ground near Skelmorlie Castle,the inner one being 100 yards from the outer one in a S.E. by E¾ direction.The courses parallelwith the measured mile, at right angles to the line of transit of the beacons, are NNE¼E andSSW¼W. The shore may be approached to the distance of a third of a mile.” Once the ‘V’and the ‘inverted’ ‘V’ cross-arms were aligned, they became an “X” and stop-watchesstarted, or, conversely stopped, to determine the exact time taken to run thedistance between the beacons and the results read off from a ‘standard’ agreed ‘timeand distance’ table published in almanacs.

Ideally, to bring the ships to a ‘steady state of motion’, ensuring that there were noavoidable changes in steering or acceleration forces on the propellor(s), thesedistorting accurate speed calculations, ships would always run a straight and steadycourse for up to four miles before going through the beacon transits. At the end ofeach run, the ship was turned round and run back over the course at the sameengine power and revolutions so as to ‘neutralise’ any effects of tide and wind andan average speed result then calculated for the two runs. It would be customary tomake at least two return trips over the course to get an agreed ‘average’ and differentmethods of calculating ‘averages’ could find results varying by about ½ of 1%.T

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The importance of Skelmorlie’s sheltered deep-water measured mile becameincreasingly clear in the early 1900’s after The Admiralty began to scrutinise theperformance of the 32-knot destroyer H.M.S. “Cossack” which had been on trialfirst off The Maplin Sands, in The Thames and then been sent to the Skelmorliemeasured mile. At 32-knots in the shallow, but 45-foot deep, waters of TheThames, she had only needed 86,000 shaft horse power to reach the requiredcontract speed but, for the 240-foot deep waters, off Skelmorlie, it took 105,000shaft horse power to push her up to the same speed.

In order to give the new 1934-built Cunarder “Queen Mary” proper turning roomto let her regain ‘a steady state of motion’ at each end of her course, a new ‘doublemile’ was constructed at the north-eastern corner on the island of Arran.

There was a third ‘half mile’ measured out on The Gareloch and The BritishShipbuilding Research Association (BSRA), anxious to carry out resistance tests ona full-scale ship hull without the water being disturbed by propellors, paddles ortugs, bought the old 1888-built Craigendoran paddle steamer “Lucy Ashton” in1949. Stripped down to her main deck level, her boiler, engine, paddle-wheels andsaloon superstructure all removed, four Rolls Royce ‘Derwent’ jet engines werefitted athwartships behind her bridge deck and in 1950, with ear-piercing ‘banshee’screeches she returned to her old home haunts up and down The Gareloch ‘mile’providing the BSRA with valuable new data on the resistance of a ship’s underwaterskin to motion through the water. 1888 may have been an unfortunate year for thepoor “Princess of Wales” sunk off Skelmorlie - ‘1888’ is in fact something of anunfortunate number for it needs 13 Roman ‘letter numerals’ MDCCCLXXXVIII -but nobody then could have ever anticipated that the “Lucy Ashton” would, likeSir Walter Scott’s own novels, would achieve worldwide fame, as a ‘jet-ship’. Hersteam whistle, bought by a Glasgow company, still calls people to work at a factoryin Santiago in Chile.

The “Queen Alexandra (II)” / “Saint Columba”

o replace the original fire-damaged ship of the same name, now sold to TheCanadian Pacific Railway, Captain John Williamson wrote to Denny’s onOctober 7, 1911 and placed a £39,000 order for her successor, Yard No970, the “Queen Alexandra (II)”. She was launched by fellow director

Captain Leyland’s ward, Miss A.M. Chetwynd on Tuesday, April 9, 1912, exactlyten years to the day after the launch of the first ‘Queen’ and a week lees a day beforethe “Titanic” sank !

The “Queen Alexandra (II)” carried out her speed trials, reaching 21½ knots, onSaturday, May 18, 1912 and now, with a 50% improvement in her reversingpower, attained an astern speed of 12½ knots too. In the first ‘Queen’, the asternturbines included six expansions, each of four rows of blades, now there wereseven expansions, each with six rows of blades. In the new ship too, all threepropellors were of the same 3’ 8” diameter, revolving at 800 r.p.m. and the newboilers worked too at a slightly higher pressure, now 155 lb per square inch. Toimprove matters further, she was equipped with a telemotor for operating the steamsteering gear, the first in a Clyde steamer and, she had a bow rudder, anotherfeature new to The Clyde.

Under the command of Captain Angus Keith who had served in the old ‘Queen’,her first public sailing took place on The King’s Birthday Holiday, Thursday, May23, 1912 when she ran outwards from Greenock and Gourock, via The Kyles ofBute, to Campbeltown, returning via the Garroch Head. The following Monday,June 3, 1912, the new “Queen Alexandra (II)” took up the the regular dailyCampbeltown run from Greenock’s Prince’s Pier with calls at Wemyss Bay, Fairlie,Lochranza, Pirnmill and Machrie Bay.

With World War I, she was requisitioned as a troop transport and was fully engagedin this work from February 7, 1915 until May 10, 1919. Just a year and a daybefore she was released, on Thursday, May 9, 1918, when under the command ofher old skipper, Captain Angus Keith and west of Cherbourg, at 49° 49’ N, 01° 40’W, she depth-charged, then rammed and sank the German Coastal Type UB IIIsubmarine “UB 78” at 0050 hours in the morning, none of the submarine’s 35crew survived. Captain Keith received an O.B.E. and a Distinguished Service Crossas a reward for his initiative.

Reconditioned after the war, she was placed on the Inveraray run until 1927 whenshe returned to the Campbeltown run. To conform with the other newer turbinesteamers, her upper deck was enclosed to form an observation lounge in 1932 andthen, on October 3, 1935, she was sold along with the 1926-built twin screw g e a re d turbine steamer “King George V”, to David MacBrayne Limited. Now asrenamed the “Saint Columba” and with a third, dummy, funnel added, shereplaced the grand old 1878-built paddle steamer “Columba”, on the Tarbert andArdrishaig run from Glasgow, in May 1936 and, the following winter, wasconverted to oil-firing.

Requisitioned at the start of World War II, she was used as an accommodation shipfor Boom Defence personnel, lying in Greenock’s East India Harbour from 1939

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till 1946. Reconditioned, she returned to the Ardrishaig run, now beginning herrun at Gourock, in 1947. Apart from grounding in fog at Ettrick Bay, on the westside of Bute in August 1953, her final days were uneventful.

In her final year, 1958, she was finally fitted with radar and then, on Tuesday,December 23, she made her final voyage, under tow, to Smith and Houston’syard at Port Glasgow, there to be broken up, winched stern first on to the shore.

Carradale’s “Medea”

n unexpected gem of a Edwardian steam yacht, the 110-foot long, two-masted, clipper-bowed “Medea” now lies preserved at the San DiegoMaritime Museum. She was built on The Clyde, in just 51 days, to bedelivered in time for the start of the shoot on August 12, for William

Macalister-Hall of Torrisdale, just south of Carradale and was used for ‘normaltransport’, the roads on the east side of Kintyre being, to say the least, somewhatdifficult in these days and she was of course used for “shooting cruises” by thefamily and their guests.

World War I, 1915

uring July and August 1915, the Campbeltown steamers’ passenger servicewas operated from Ardrossan, a goods service being run three days a weekfrom Glasgow. From Wednesday, September 1, 1915, Wemyss Baybecame the terminus for passenger sailings until Tuesday, April 1, 1919,

when services again were re-opened from Price’s Pier and Gourock.

The “Dalriada”

he 758-ton “Dalriada”, 230-feet long, 34-feet 8 -inches beam and 14-feet10-inches in depth, was built by R. Duncan & Company in Port Glasgowand engined by D. Rowan & Company who gave her a 4 cylinder 22”, 35½”and 2 x 40” x 33” triple expansion engine which gave her 18-knots and made

her then probably the fastest single-screw steamer in The World, a claim disputedby The London & Edinburgh Shipping Company whose “Royal Archer” and“Royal Fusilier” were both credited with speeds of some 17½ knots. The“Dalriada” was the only Clyde steamer to have four-crank triple expansion engine,

a reportedly noisy ‘beast’, it’s thrust and throw of the cranks producing somevibrations, unlike the smooth- running machinery of the turbine steamers.

The name of the new £42,000 ship, built for the company’s centenary, was theresult of a competition entered by Campbeltown school-children and believed tohave been won by a young Robert Taylor, later to become a “Campbeltown Courier”reporter. She was launched on Monday, March 15, 1926 by Mrs Hugh Mitchell ofSeafield House, Campbeltown and on Wednesday, April 28, 1926, the “Dalriada”made her initial trip from Gourock to Campbeltown in less than three hours.

The old graceful, yacht-like clipper-fiddled bow so long favoured by the companyhad disappeared, a sacrifice of beauty for utility and a sign of the times and she hadbeen given a simple slanting stem and a well-rounded counter stern, her upper deckbeing carried right to the stern, above her after mooring capstan on the main deckbelow.

While steerage class passengers were left to find themselves room on the sparredwooden seats running along the outsides of the boiler and engine-room on the maindeck, the first class passengers were well looked after. The after deckhouse on theupper deck, below the bridge and boat deck, contained a smokeroom withcomfortable leather seats and from outside, the deckhouse gave way to the mainstair leading to the main first class lounge, on the main deck aft and the diningsaloon, on the lower deck. Cargo hatches fore and aft were handled by derricks onthe masts and opening doors on the main deck, at the after hold space, allowedpassengers to reach the ferry boats which came alongside the ship at Saddell andPirnmill.

Given a black top, the main area of her gigantic funnel was painted equally into twoparts, the middle red, the bottom black and, to the eye, no one colour appeared todominate over the other. In common with all the company’s steamers, she wasregistered at Campbeltown, on May 1, 1926.

Being of deeper draught than the company’s previous ships and therefore making itunsafe to come close inshore when approaching the pier from the north, she alwaysberthed with her port side against the pier at Carradale, the face of the pier beingangled so as to give a safe line in and out and clear of the rocky point which had tobe rounded to the south of the pier. To berth with the starboard side of the vesselagainst the pier, it is still necessary to make a considerable sweep shorewards for,even if the bottom is sandy rather than rocky, the water shoals quite considerably.

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Thus the “Dalriada” would come in at steep angle from Kilbrannan Sound and,using the sideways thrust of her right-handed propellor, going ‘full astern’ to pushher stern quarter to port, would draw quickly alongside the pier at Carradale, herbow now facing up the sound.

To clear the pier, she would simply let go the forward rope, go ‘slow astern’ whilekeeping the after spring rope tight, ‘let go’ and, making a very tight starboard turnto keep her propellor in the deeper water, go ‘ahead’ on her way again, to Pirnmillor to Campbeltown. The new ship was quickly put out of commission by theprolonged 1926 coal strike and only appeared again at the height of the 1926 seasonwhen she ran a number of highly popular excursions.

On summer Fridays, particularly at the start of Glasgow July Fair and SeptemberAutumn Holidays, the “Dalriada” would take the morning ‘down-run’ fromGlasgow to Campbeltown and then return, as a ‘special sailing’ to Gourock to takea second return sailing that evening, outward via Wemyss Bay to Lochranza andCampbeltown and then returning late, diect to Gourock and on ‘up-river’ toGlasgow to arrive well after midnight.

In July each year, she would give a direct trip from Campbeltown, CarradaleandLochranza to the Inveraray Highland Games, lying off the village in company withthe other excursion steamers and, in August and September each year, wouldoperate evening cruises to the annual illumination and firework displays at Rothesay.In later years she would frequently find herself on charter in early season and everyyear, from 1930, usually on the second last Friday of July, gave a day trip fromStranraer to Campbeltown.

The Sale of The “Kinloch”

ith the appearance of the new “Dalriada”, the old “Kinloch” was sold toThe Channel Islands Packet Company for service to France and, on herway south, she called at Campbeltown again to fill her bunkers with coaljust as that years long coal strike was beginning. Her sojourn south was

short-lived and she was broken up at Bo’ness in 1928.

Company Managers and Agents

ohn Colvill, junior, served as both manager and agent from October 1826 tillMay 1839 and was followed by Peter Stewart who carried on as manager tillNovember 1863 and then retired as agent in August 1869.

Duncan Colville took over as manager in November 1863 and exactly two yearslater was followed by John Murray who would hold the post till May 1884 when hisbrother Charles succeeded him. Next, in March 1895, came Ross Wallace who wasin the post for 30 years, until his death in 1925 and then Angus Macdougall.

The Glasgow agent, R. M. Dunlop, began in February 1865 and, in the early yearsof the new century, was succeeded was his assistant J. L. Macdonald. Greenock’sagency was looked after by John Macmillan from 1865 till 1882 and then by PeterM’Callum who, in turn, was succeeded by his son.

The Captains

aptain James Napier was appointed to the “Duke of Lancaster” onNovember 20, 1826. He had been selected from a large number ofapplicants who included Captain Johnson of the “Henry Bell” andLieutenant John Campbell R.N., formerly captain of the steamboat “Ben

Nevis”. As senior officer of the company, Captain Napier was successively incommand of the “St. Kiaran”, “Duke of Cornwall” and then “Celt”, retiring onhealth grounds on November 20, 1856. The date was very important to him for, bya number of coincidences, November 20 was 1) his birthday, 2) the date on which,at the age of twenty, he had been taken prisoner, 3) the date when he had beenappointed the company’s first master and to the “Duke of Lancaster” and 4) thedate on which he would have served the company for 30 years. The directors of theday humoured their loyal servant and thought sufficient of his services to wellpension him to the end of his days.

Captain M’Lean took over the “Duke of Lancaster” in November 1835 and sailedsuccessively on the “St. Kiaran” and “Duke of Cornwall” till resigning on apension in October 1855.

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Captain Thomas Kerr was appointed to the “Duke of Cornwall” on November 5,1855. Commencing his seafaring days at the age of ten on his father’s own fishingsmack, he went ‘deep sea’ and sailed all over The World till coming to commandthe Glasgow schooner “Rebecca”, trading to Ireland. Next he was appointed mate ofthe paddle steamer “Glencoe” - she bought later by MacBrayne’s and, re-named“Glencoe” , lasting till the 1931 appearance of MacBrayne’s “Lochfyne”, TheWorld’s first diesel-electric passenger ship. Then Thomas Kerr had taken commandof the paddle-steamer “Islay” before joining the Campbeltown company. By thistime, he had a notable record of rescue work and had been the recipient of severaltestimonials, the sum of £1,000, an enormous sum in these days, being presentedto him on one occasion alone.

Apart from a short eighteen month spell when, between about May 1863 andNovember 1864, he had unsuccessfully tried running his own steamer, the“Seamew”, in the fishing trade, he had successively commanded the “Duke ofCornwall”, “Celt”, “Druid”, “Gael”, “Kintyre”, “Kinloch” and “Davaar” and heremained on the active list till May 1, 1889, occasionally, such as for Denny’s“Goorka”, in 1882, acting as their master. Captain Thomas Kerr retired toCarradale where he built himself a house, ‘Ardcardach House’, overlookingCarradale’s pier and his old steamers.

Thomas Kerr was a robust, dashing man of handsome build and genial andremarkable personality, a great favourite with everyone and he held a special placein the heart of the young and beautiful Elizabeth McGaw of Ayr for, at the tenderage of sixteen, she eloped with the dashing captain and lived with him aboard shipfor the first two years of their married life and then settled in Glasgow to producewhat was to become a large and lively family. Of the sons, there was Tomcommanded troopships all over The World; Charlie, who became a millionaire andmarried a French girl called Marie, worked with Mackinnon & McKenzie’s BritishIndia Company and Harry, the ‘unmarried ne’er-do-weel’ of the family who was ajunior officer on a cargo ship trading amongst the islands of the South Pacific.

When World War I began, Captain Kerr’s grandson, Tom Ritchie, enlisted in TheArgyll & Sutherland Highlanders and, commissioned, decided to join the fledglingair force. Airplanes were a new and untried weapon and Tom was determined to beamong the first to test their capabilities. His career in the skies came to an abruptend one day when he rather unceremoniously landed his plane in a haystack, savinghimself but demolishing both stack and aircraft ! Back in The Army again, hereached the rank of Captain but was killed in action on the front line in 1916.

Captain Robert Finnick, previously her mate, took command of the “Celt” fromMay 30, 1857 and was with her for 3½ years. Captain Eaglesome was appointedto the “Celt” on November 1, 1860 and then the “Druid” on April 3, 1863,remaining there till his retiral on November 26, 1864. Captain M’Diarmid, themate of the “Celt”, took over command on April 3, 1863 and was in command ofher until March 25, 1868. Captain Bryce Wright had command of the “Celt”and afterwards the “Druid” and the “Kintyre” for a period of ten years.

Captain Samuel Muir, a native of Campbeltown, joined the company in 1858 andgot his first command in 1871, taking charge of the “Gael” when Captain Kerr wasincapacitated due to ill-health. In November 1876, he was appointed master of the“Kintyre”, the “Gael” on May 6, 1878 and to the “Davaar” on May 1, 1887when Captain Thomas Kerr relinquished command.

Captain Angus Kerr, a native of the west side of Arran, joined the company inMay 1868, he got command of the “Kintyre” ten years later, in 1878 and then the“Kinloch” in 1889. Subsequently he took charge of the “Davaar” but died rathersuddenly in July 1901 having had a seizure shortly after berthing his ship atGlasgow’s Broomielaw Quay.

Captain Peter M’Farlane, a native of Tarbert, short, very stocky, with a pointed‘imperial’ beard and moustache fringing a round, rubicund, kindly face, the very‘word picture’ that Neil Munro employed to describe the immortal ‘Para Handy’,Captain Peter M’Farlane was indeed his ‘Spitting Image’. Entering the Campbeltowncompany in a junior capacity in 1876, he was appointed master of the “Kintyre” onMay 13, 1889 and retired from commanding the “Davaar” in December 1916 afterforty years with the company.

One then young passenger, Neil T. Semple, later recalled the ritual of fares beingcollected on the “Davaar” when “a stately cortege, consisting of CaptainM’Farlane, 1st mate John Galbraith, the purser and two stalwart seamen began tomove along the decks and an almost deathly hush seemed to enshroud the ship.When the procession reached me, I held out the whole ten shillings that my fatherhad given me to Captain M’Farlane which he gravely accepted. He beamed down atme, “You are a fine boy. Who is your father ?” I could only stammer “HenrySemple of High Ugadale.” Captain M’Farlane then handed back nine shillings and“Then tell him I was asking for him,” he smiled as the party moved on.”

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Captain Neil Macalister, a native of Tighnabruiach, tall, bearded, lean andsaturine, a fine seaman, was with the company for over 30 years in variouscapacities and retired from the bridge of the “Kinloch” in 1916. Captain JohnM’Kechnie, who had joined the company as a mate, was in charge of the“Kintyre” when she sank after being in collision with the “Maori” on September 18,1907.

Captain John Galbraith, a native of Saddell, was more than 30 years with thecompany, latterly as master of the “Davaar” and in command on Friday, January28, 1927 when she was caught in a big storm. Off Carradale, she was struck by atremendous sea and thrown almost on her beam end, broadside to the gale, amoment of extreme peril. Fortunately she righted herself and, running before windand sea into the lee of Arran till the storm began to abate, she managed to reachCampbeltown shortly before midnight.

Again to the Semples of High Ugadale and World War I. Early in the war, they hada large consignment of hoggs to be shipped to the Lanark sales and these were dulyloaded on to the “Davaar” at Carradale for shipment. Normally, Henry Semplewould have travelled with them to Glasgow but war regulations demanded that allthe ship’s passengers had to disembark at Wemyss Bay as the ship was not allowedto proceed through the boom - the net barrage between The Cloch and Dunoon -and up river with passengers on board. Henry Semple, deciding that thistemporary abandonment of his sheep was not a good idea, hid himself away untilafter leaving Wemyss Bay to go through the boom. The ‘stowaway’ was soonconfronted by Captain John Galbraith, “Well Mr Semple ? I’ll just have to throwyou overboard !”

Also with the company for many years, in charge of the “Kinloch”, was hisbrother, Captain Neil Galbraith. Well known for his dry wit and in command ofthe “Kinloch” at Carradale Pier, he was tooting the whistle and shouting at a ladyhurrying down the pier, “Come away, Mistress. The last man wass aye a wumman!” Captain Neil Galbraith had command of the new “Dalriada” when he died andhe was buried in the old churchyard at Saddell. His successor on the “Dalriada”was Captain Alexander M’Niven who, after considerable coasting experiencearound Britain, joined the company after World War I. Also Captain McKillopwho may have been the company’s last master at the beginning of World War II.

The “King George V”

n September 1926, Turbine Steamers Limited took delivery of their new,Denny’s built, twin screw g e a r e d turbine steamer “King George V”, just asunique as had been the 1901-built “King Edward” for her turbines were drivenby superheated steam from two Yarrow water-tube boilers at 750° F (60 bar

and 400° C) and 550 lb per square inch The port set of machinery, four ‘ahead’turbines, worked on the principle of quadruple expansion, the starboard set ofmachinery working on triple expansion, the first turbine in the set receiving steamfrom the extra high-pressure turbine on the port set of machinery, two asternturbine units being supplied in each set as well.

For the next nine years, the “King George V” was more often on the Inveraray runthan in Campbeltown, the “Queen Alexandra (II)” returning to replace the “KingEdward” on the Campbeltown run from 1927 onwards and the “King Edward”herself then being transferred to the ownership of Williamson-Buchanan SteamersLimited and taking over the 10 a.m. daily excursions from Glasgow to Rothesay,The Kyles of Bute and Arran.

On Friday, July 10, 1931, the “King George V”, with Their Majesties King GeorgeV and Queen Mary on board, sailed from Glasgow’s Bridge Wharf to cut through aribbon stretched across the entrance of the new Shieldhall Dock, the King GeorgeV in Glasgow itself was also then newly completed. That same evening, the “KingGeorge V” took an evening cruise down river to allow Glaswegians a view of thenew dock, the passengers then cruising to The Gareloch and returning home by railfrom Greenock’s Prince’s Pier.

The “King George V” was acquired, along with the “Queen Alexandra (II)”, byMacBrayne’s in 1935 and thereafter, until the end of the 1974 season, was generallyon the Oban - Staffa (calls abandoned after 1968) - Iona service every summer.Acting as a troop transport at Dunkirk, she made six round trips in May 1940 andthen returned to The Clyde to act as a tender. She carried Prime Minister WinstonChurchill out to his battleship at The Tail of The Bank when on his way to crossThe Atlantic. In the summer of 1946 and the winter of 1960-61, was on theGourock - Tarbert - Ardrishaig mail service.

In May 1970, she was chartered by The Highlands and Islands Development Board,to celebrate ‘The Festival of The Countryside’, carrying out an ambitious week of

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cruising beginning from Oban to Kyle of Lochalsh, then to Portree and Aultbeawith an excursion back to Portree and then returning to Mellon Charles for thenight. Next day, from Mellon Charles, prevented by bad weather from cruising toTarbert (Harris), back down to Kyle of Lochalsh and then to Ullapool where shespent the third day stormbound, instead of doing a cruise to Lochinver and roundHanda Island.

Then it was back to Kyle for a ‘landing trip’ to Rum, then the spelling was ‘Rhum’and back to Mallaig for the night before ultimately returning to Oban the next day.She also that month, on Saturday, May 16, 1970, sailed from Ayr to Bangor,County Down and then gave a three-hour cruise towards Portpatrick, returning byDonaghadee and the Copelands channel, retracing the old mail route.

Sold on April 3, 1975, she was towed to Wales and left high-and-dry in a dock till1981 when she began conversion to turn her into a floating bar- restaurant toreplace the fire-damaged “Caledonia” on The Thames. “King George V” caughtfire during the conversion work and was scrapped in 1984.

The End of The Railway

hough the railway carried more than 21,000 tons of coal in 1923, the end wasin sight for the pit, its coal never of particularly good quality. In the 1920’s,with labour disputes, coal strikes and ‘The Depression’ looming, coal buyerscould be selective and little coal was mined at Machrihanish after 1926, the

mine struggling on till being closed in September 1929. In 1931, Maisels PetroleumCompany was floated to re-open the pit and distil oil from the coal but the schemefoundered and the railway’s passenger services were withdrawn in November thatyear.

The mine would open again in 1946 but then again finally close in 1967. Nobodycan now be quite certain when the final passenger train ran for services wererestarted a couple of months later in anticipation of the new season’s tourist trafficbut, by the time the “Queen Alexandra (II)” made her first sailing of the 1932season, the railway had already closed again, this time for good.

With the appointment of a company liquidator in November 1933, men had begandismantling the track at the colliery in December and then, in May 1934, the scrapmen from James N. Connel Ltd. in Coatbridge moved in with a vengeance.

Within the fortnight, “Chevalier” and “Argyll” were dismantled and, by themiddle of August, “Atlantic”, used to work the demolition train, had also finallyarrived at the New Quay to be dismantled and be loaded with her sister engines andthe rest of the scrap in the puffer “Norman”, bound for Irvine and the smelters.

The six carriages were sold off for use as holiday huts at Trench Point, beside theold shipyard, the first reluctantly hauled there on Wednesday, July 11, 1934 andresisting all attempts to site it until 4 o’clock next morning ! There they remained,still looking like proper trains, until well into the 1950’s. By 1958, they too haddisappeared, victims of weather and time.

1935 Fleet Changes

he Caledonian Steam Packet Company’s 1895-built paddle-steamer “Duchessof Rothesay” had called at Campbeltown in her early years, in her 1896timetable she ran through The Kyles of Bute and down Kilbrannan Sound,returning via the south end of Arran, every Friday till September 18 that

year, the return fare for the saloon being 2/6d, the fore saloon fare just 1/6d. Her‘quasi-sister’, the beautiful 1903 “Duchess of Fife” would later stand in on occasionfor the then new turbine steamer “Queen Alexandra (I)” and her successor. The“Duchess of Fife”, the L.N.E.R. 1931-built paddle steamer “Jeanie Deans” and the1930-built Canadian Pacific liner “Empress of Scotland”, originally launched as the“Empress of Japan”, were all designed by Fairfield’s Percy Hillhouse, son of aCaledonian Railway Company officer and later destined to become Professor ofNaval Architecture at Glasgow University.

In 1919, the Buchanan and Williamson fleets and the associated Turbine SteamersLtd. had all joined together. A generation earlier, Buchanan and Williamson hadbeen jointly involved in the running of the 1852-built “Eagle” on the Glasgow toRothesay run but had gone their separate ways in 1862. On October 3, 1935, the‘L.M.S.’ railway, in association with David MacBrayne Ltd., took over theBuchanan-Williamson steamers.

In April 1912, the month that the White Star liner “Titanic” was lost, TurbineSteamers Ltd., in association with MacBrayne’s, purchased the two remainingsteamers of The Lochgoil and Inveraray Steamboat Company, the “EdinburghCastle” and the “Lord of The Isles” registering them in Turbine Steamers Ltd.’s

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name but having the catering on the latter contracted out to MacBrayne’s who hadacquired shares at that time in Turbine Steamers Ltd..

Now, at the end of 1935, the ‘L.M.S.’ railway took over the three paddle steamers,the 1897-built “Kylemore”, the 1910-built “Eagle III”, the 1912-built “QueenEmpress” and two of the turbine steamers, the 1901-built “King Edward” and thenew 1933-built “Queen Mary II”, the ships being passed into The CaledonianSteam Packet Company fleet and then into a new railway company, Williamson-Buchanan Steamers (1936) Ltd., which company was eventually wound up in 1943and the steamers transferred back to the ‘C.S.P.’.

MacBraynes took over the 1926-built “King George V” and the 1912-built “QueenAlexandra (II)” which, with a third ‘dummy’ funnel added, they would rename“Saint Columba” and, although MacBrayne’s took over the ownership of TurbineSteamers Ltd., the goodwill of the Campbeltown and Inveraray trade was vested inThe Caledonian Steam Packet Company whose 1932 Harland & Wolff - builtturbine steamer “Duchess of Hamilton” had been running recent day excursionsfrom Ayr to Campbeltown, her older, 1930 Denny-built sister, the “Duchess ofMontrose” being based at Gourock.

The “King George V” and the “Queen Alexandra (II)” now away from theirrespective daily runs to Campbeltown and Inveraray, The Caledonian Steam PacketCompany brought in their 1906-built “Duchess of Argyll” to cover both runs. TheInveraray and Loch Eck Tour connection being operated on Mondays, Wednesdaysand Fridays, with an additional Thursday service being handled by the “Duchess ofMontrose” and the Campbeltown run being operated on Tuesdays, Thursdays,Saturdays and, in ‘high season’, on Sundays. In addition, the 1925-built turbine,the “Glen Sannox (II)”, a near-identical sister of the “Duchess of Argyll”, wastransferred from the railway company to the ‘C.S.P.’ in order that she too couldwork without restriction to Campbeltown and she was put on an additional daily‘express’ run from Ardrossan to Brodick, Lamlash, Whiting Bay and Campbeltown,the Ardrossan to Arran service now given to the 1936-built, twin screw gearedturbine steamer “Marchioness of Graham” .

The 1939 Sunday timetable for the “Duchess of Argyll”, from June 4 to September17, supplies the following departure (arrival) times. Leaving from Gourock at 9.30a.m. (8.20 p.m.), Dunoon 9.50 a.m. (8 p.m.), Rothesay 10.30 a.m. (7 p.m.), Largs 11a.m. (6.30 p.m.), Fairlie Pier 11.20 a.m. (6.15 p.m.) and Millport (Keppel Pier) 11.30a.m. (6 p.m.) via Kilbrannan Sound in one direction, via Pladda and the east coast

of Arran in the other, to arrive in Campbeltown at 2 p.m. and depart at 3.50 p.m..The fares were 6/3d return in saloon class, 4/3d in 3rd class and return motorcoach tickets to Machrihanish were charged extra at 1/- or to Southend at 2/-.

The “Duchesses” of Argyll

he 250-foot long “Duchess of Argyll”, Denny Yard No 770, was originallyintended to have been called the “Marchioness of Graham” , in honour ofLady Mary Hamilton, the daughter and heiress to the Arran estates of the12th Duke of Hamilton, whose wedding to the Marquis of Graham was due

to take place in the early summer of 1906 but, the wedding date, over a month laterthan the new ship’s launch date, the choice of name was considered injudicious andthus the “Duchess of Argyll”, her lifeboats placed on the after deck and easilydistinguished from the 1901-built “King Edward”.

As on the paddle steamers, her engine control platform was at main deck level forall to see, the control platform on the older and first commercial turbine, the “KingEdward”, being hidden away, amongst a maze of steam-pipes on the lower deck.In a rough sea and a stiff breeze, on Friday, May 4, 1906, she achieved a meanspeed of 20.9 knots over the Skelmorlie Measured Mile. Four days later, in calmerconditions and ‘running the lights’ between the Cloch and Cumbrae, she achieved amean speed of 21.11 knots, her fastest run that day being at 21.65 knot

After only three years in service, the “Duchess of Argyll” was laid up in 1909 aspart of a ‘pooling arrangement’ reached by the railway companies over theirArdrossan to Arran services. It was therefore something of a happy coincidencethat, in the spring of 1910, The Larne & Stranraer Steamship Joint Committee andThe Caledonian Steam Packet Company reached an agreement whereby the“Duchess of Argyll” would be available for the Stranraer to Larne service if neededbetween April 1 and October 15, 1910.

The necessary alterations to the ship, mainly the plating up of the open forwardmain deck area, which accommodated the steam mooring capstan and the forwardsaloon’s square windows being replaced with portholes, costing £425, being paid,along with a retainer of £100, by the L. & S.S.J.C.’. The charter rate for the ship wasfixed at £50 per day.

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The “Duchess of Argyll” had in fact been named after Queen Victoria’s daughterPrincess Louise who had given her own name to the first ‘L. & S.S.J.C.’ ship, thepaddle steamer “Princess Louise” whose delivery had been expected early in 1872but, on Tuesday, June 25, with workmen still on board putting the final touches toher very ornate decoration, which included stained glass representations of theMarquis and Marchioness of Lorne, she was ordered to leave Glasgow, adjust hercompasses in The Gareloch, drop the workmen at Wemyss Bay and proceed at bestspeed to Stranraer.

Princess Louise took on the title of Marchioness of Lorne when she married the 8thMarquis of Lorne in 1871, he acceded to The Dukedom of Argyll in 1900. Fiveyears after his accession, The Marquis and Marchioness of Bute were married atCastle Bellingham on Wednesday, July 5, 1905 and the wedding party thenconveyed out to the Stranraer - Larne steamer “Princess Maud” , anchored sometwo miles out in Dundalk Bay, County Louth, for the journey across to Stranraer.

The Caledonian Steam Packet Company had two paddle steamers named the“Marchioness of Lorne” , the first being built in 1891 and the second, built byFairfield’s yard, in 1935. There was a shipyard strike on the go at the time and, asthe companies were desperate to get the new ship in service, the finishing of theship was left to Fairfield’s apprentices who were excluded from the strike. Knownlater to only a handful of people was the fact that, in her lower saloon, themischievous apprentices fitted a most wonderfully crafted piece of marquetry, aninlaid wooden panel showing a full frontal 1930’s style ‘Page 3’ girl ! Sadly, thoughall the apprentices received handsome bonuses for finishing the ship quickly, thecompanies’ directors, rather than remove the ‘young lady’, simply had a slightlylarger and plain wood panel ‘screwed’, if that is the appropriate word, on top of theapprentices’ work ! The ship was sold to The British Iron and Steel Corporation(Salvage) Ltd. on February 17, 1955 and towed to Smith & Houston’s Port Glasgowyard for breaking up. Perhaps even today, the ‘young lady’ may still be in residencein some Port Glasgow residence, sneaked up a close to give pleasure to secretadmirers ! Back now to ‘Argyll’, the “Duchess of Argyll”.

As events turned out, it was to be June 1911 before she was needed for theStranraer to Larne service. On Saturday, June 10, with a certificate reduced now to592 passengers on the channel crossing, she left Stranraer at 3 p.m. with 165passengers on an advertised three-hour public excursion round Ailsa Craig. Shethen took the regular 7.33 p.m. sailing to Larne and, after the Sunday off, picked upthe daylight sailings for the whole of the following week, finishing on the Saturday

evening. In 1922, she was fitted with radio telegraphy equipment and again retainedfor the Stranraer - Larne route but never needed.

Between February 11, 1915 and April 27, 1919, serving as a transport, she made655 trips covering 71,624 nautical miles and managed to tow the Clyde paddle-steamer “Queen Empress” back to Boulogne after a collision with an escortingdestroyer. During WWII, she was mainly employed on the Gourock to Dunoonservice, tendering occasionally to troopships at Greenock’s ‘Tail of The Bank’.

In 1952, withdrawn from Clyde services, she was sold for use at The Admiralty’sUnderwater Detection Establishment at Portland where she served as a ‘funnel-less’floating laboratory until Easter 1969 and then, in January 1970, towed toNewhaven, the last resting place of the old Campbeltown company’s “Davaar”,for breaking up.

Change of Colours

t midnight Wednesday/Thursday, March 3/4, 1937, Clyde Cargo SteamersLtd. took over the “Davaar” and the “Dalriada” and The Campbeltown& Glasgow Joint Steam Packet Company and on Monday, March 29,1937, Clyde Cargo Steamers Ltd. became The Clyde & Campbeltown

Shipping Company Ltd..

Clyde Cargo Steamers Ltd., a co-operative of steamer owners including DavidMacBrayne Ltd., had been formed, at the behest of The Admiralty, in 1915, toprovide a basic cargo service to the outlying Loch Fyne ports, Arran, Bute andKintyre.

In February 1937, their cargo-passenger steamers, the “Ardyne”, the “Arran” andthe “Minard” had painted their funnels red with black tops and now, though theCampbeltown steamers’ hull colours would remain unchanged, on Thursday, April22, 1937, the funnel of the “Davaar”, then equally divided into black - red - blackbands, was repainted, the red band becoming crimson.

A fortnight later, on Friday, May 7, 1937, her funnel was again repainted, now thelower and upper funnel bands were painted crimson and the funnel top given a,

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narrower than before, black top, later, the crimson would change to a ‘MacBraynered’. In May, the funnel of the “Dalriada” was repainted crimson from the deckup, her black funnel-top remaining at its old height.

In July 1939, company now bought, instead of chartering her as usual, the small1904-built, 83-foot long fish-carrying steamer “Marie” from her owners,McKinney & Rafferty, the Glasgow fish merchants. She would rarely appear inCampbeltown and was mainly employed on cargo runs in the upper reaches andwould be sold off to Norwegian owners in April 1949. Also in that summer of1939, the new company learned that they had lost the Campbeltown mail contract.

The passenger service to Campbeltown itself was uneconomic to run on its own andMacBrayne’s, with their controlling interest in the company, tried unsuccessfully topersuade The Caledonian Steam Packet Company, now running summer turbineexcursions to Campbeltown, to take over responsibility for the passenger servicesand, at the beginning of July 1939, the company finally decided to withdraw theCampbeltown passenger service at the end of that summer leaving cargo to be runby their other smaller ships, a reprieve, announced on August 26, 1939, allowed theservices to continue till the end of 1939 when, as rumour had it, it was thought thatthe “Dalriada” would be transferred to MacBrayne’s and operate the Stornoway toKyle of Lochalsh mail service.

Home and Away at War

ith war clouds looming in late August 1939, some of the Clyde steamerswere commandeered to take Glasgow families ‘Doon The Water’ to thecomparative safety of the coastal towns and villages.

War against Germany was declared on Sunday, September 3, 1939 and the anti-submarine boom between Dunoon and the Cloch lighthouse was again put in place,as it had been in the previous war and the Clyde steamer services reduced to aminimum. The steamers’ windows boarded up and the saloon lights onpermanently, all were fitted now with steel wheel-houses, their hulls andsuperstructures painted grey and their after decks cleared of their familiar buoyancyapparatus seats to make way for cargo.

Above the boom, the “Lucy Ashton” was assigned the four times dailyCraigendoran - Kilcreggan - Hunter’s Quay - Kirn - Dunoon service, she wouldmake occasional calls at Clynder till 1943 and also be rostered to make connectionsat Gourock. The “Marchioness of Lorne” , based at Kilmun, would operate theArdnadam - Strone - Blairmore - Kilcreggan - Gourock - Hunter’s Quay - Kirn -Dunoon service, a complex roster which saw her making three, essentially, roundtrips on weekdays, four on Saturdays. The turbine steamer “Queen Mary II” wasassigned to the Gourock - Dunoon run, though, in October 1939, the roster wasoriginally operated from Hunter’s Quay and included a daily sailing to the HolyLoch and Kilmun.

Below the boom, the turbine steamer “Duchess of Montrose”, also often servingon the Stranraer - Larne run too till late July 1940, took up the four times dailyRothesay - Wemyss Bay service assisted by the turbine steamer “Marchioness ofGraham” which, although ostensibly operating from Fairlie to Millport andBrodick, also covered some sailings from Wemyss Bay to Innellan and Rothesay,the turbine steamer “Glen Sannox (II)” being the mainstay of the Fairlie - Millport- Brodick - Ardrossan service.

The “Saint Columba”, now leaving Wemyss Bay at 9.48 a.m. daily, covered theRothesay - Colintraive - Tighnabruiach - Tarbert - Ardrishaig mail service, arrivingback in Wemyss Bay at 5 p.m.. In November 1939, she was requisitioned for use asthe Boom Defence headquarters’ ship at Greenock, the now repaired diesel-electric“Lochfyne” taking over the mail run. Wemyss Bay too became the terminus for theCampbeltown company’s “Dalriada” and “Davaar”.

The older Clyde paddle steamers, the “Waverley (III)”, “Marmion”, “Duchess ofFife”, “Duchess of Rothesay” and “Eagle III”, re-named the “Oriole”, wereassigned to the 12th Minesweeping Flotilla at Harwich, its flagship being the“Queen Empress”. The newer paddle steamers, the “Juno”, “Jupiter” and the“Caledonia”, now renamed respectively “Helvellyn”, “Scawfell” and “Goatfell”and the “Mercury”, under her own name, joined the 11th Minesweeping Flotilla atMilford Haven. The “Jeanie Deans” too was sent on mine-sweeping duties servingfirst as flotilla flagship, based at Irvine and then to join the 11th Flotilla at MilfordHaven. The diesel-electric paddler “Talisman” which, like the diesel-electric“Lochfyne”, had been out of service, broken down, at the start of the war, wasrepaired and, renamed “Aristocrat”, sent south as a Bofors Gun Ship.

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Both the “King Edward” and the “Duchess of Argyll” remained above the anti-submarine boom to relieve on the Gourock - Dunoon service and act as troopship-tenders at The Tail of The Bank. After the evacuation of Dunkirk in May 1940,where the “King George V” had made six round trips, her master, CaptainMacLean and her Chief Engineer, W. Macgregor receiving D.S.O’s and her bosun,Mr Mackinnon, a D.S.M., the “King George V” too would join them as a trooptransport tender at The Tail of The Bank.

“Finished With Engines”

ust a month after war was declared on Germany, on Monday, October 2, 1939,shortly before 8 a.m., the “Davaar” left Campbeltown for Greenock’s EastIndia Harbour to be laid up and leaving the newer “Dalriada”, her funnel andlifeboats all now painted black, to carry on the service to Carradale, Lochranza

and the Wemyss Bay terminus alone.

In January 1940, the “Dalriada” collided with an armed yacht, some said adestroyer and, following repairs at Lamont’s yard, she was laid up, where the“Davaar” had been, the “Davaar” herself now again back on the service andremaining there until Saturday, March 16, 1940 when the Campbeltown to WemyssBay service was finally suspended and withdrawn. The “Davaar” then being laid upwith the “Dalriada” in Greenock and the cargo-passenger steamer “Ardyne” thencontinuing the cargo service till October 31, 1949.

With the final sailing of the old “Davaar” on Saturday, March 16, 1940 and theconsequent closure of Carradale Pier, West Coast Motors stepped in to provide aservice up the east side of Kintyre and on to Tarbert to connect with the MacBraynesteamer.

Running daily during July and August of the war years but only on Mondays,Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays otherwise, a West Coast bus left Campbeltownat 10 a.m. for Carradale at 11 a.m. and then on to Tarbert for 12.20 p.m.. LeavingTarbert on the return run at 2 p.m., it reached Carradale at 3.20 p.m. and arrived inCampbeltown at 4.30 p.m..

To compensate for the withdrawal of the steamer-rail service connection to

Glasgow, MacBrayne’s were given the licence to operate a direct bus service fromCampbeltown and to 44 Robertson Street, Glasgow. Leaving at 7 a.m., the busreached Glasgow at 1.15 p.m. and two hours later, at 3.15 p.m., left on the returnjourney to arrive back in Campbeltown at 9.33 p.m. ! The single fare 13/-, thereturn £1.3/-. The service was an “Express Service”, the licence granted only toserve the interests of those who would have travelled between Campbeltown andGlasgow by steamer and rail and no stops to pick up or set down passengers atintermediate points along the 138-mile long route was allowed !

In July 1940, the “Davaar” was requisitioned and sent to Newhaven where she waskept, with steam up, ready to be sunk as a block-ship in case of invasion. In July1943, unneeded, she was broken up on Newhaven beach. The “Dalriada”remained at Greenock till April 1941 and then, requisitioned as a wreck dispersalvessel, she was sent to the Thames Estuary. Working on the wreck of the“Stokesley”, which had been loaded with 1,600 tons of sulphate of ammonia boundfor London, she was mined, two cables off The North Shingles buoy, about 51°32’ N 01° 20’ E, on Friday, June 19, 1942. All the 34 crew of the “Dalriada”,including 8 gunners and 2 army personnel were safely rescued and she herself wassubsequently blown up in June 1946 to clear the channel.

“Wimaisia” and “Taransay”

egistered respectively on May 11 and 25, 1948 and both founded respectivelyby William E. McCaig, a Glasgow wholesale fruit merchant who was deputechairman of The Clyde Navigation Trust, the Mac Shipping Company and theWimaisia Shipping Company, using the 120-foot long ex-Belfast Harbour

Commissioners tug-tender 1936-built “Duke of Abercorn”, now renamed“Wimaisia” and crtificated for 230 passengers, began operating an 8 a.m. servicefrom Glasgow’s Bridge Wharf to Greenock, Lochranza and Campbeltown.

During June, the service operated on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondaysand was then stepped up daily return sailings but, too small and slow for such anundertaking, the ship moved to Ardrossan on Wednesday, July 21 and fromSunday, August 1, went via the south of Arran, calling at Whiting Bay instead ofLochranza. The companies also operated the “Taransay”, a former motor yacht,on a cargo passenger service leaving Glasgow’s Prince’s Dock at noon for Greenockand Campbeltown to depart on the return trip at midnight.

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Though the “Taransay” would remain on the Clyde till broken up at Port Glasgowin December 1955, the “Wimaisia” was laid up in October 1948. Later sold toLiverpool Fire Service, she was renamed the “William Gregson” .

“Halcyon” Days

hough puffers were a familiar sight in Campbeltown, there was also the two-masted auxiliary ketch, the “Halcyon”, owned by Captain William McMillan.Built and previously registered in Hull in 1903, slightly larger and shallowerthan a puffer, she carried 101 tons of cargo and sailed, sometimes under

canvas, until July 1966 when her owner, after 51 years at sea, retired, only herowner’s age and not any lack of cargo leading to her sale.

The “Duchess of Montrose” and The “Hamilton”

hough sometimes difficult to tell apart, the 1930 Denny-built “Duchess ofMontrose” only three small rectangular windows forward of the opening‘stable-type’ landing ferry door on the main deck, the 1932 Harland & Wolff-built “Duchess of Hamilton” had four and, being fitted with a bow rudder

for ease of handling in the confined spaces of Ayr harbour, the latter was fitted witha cross-tree on her main, after-mast to carry the required signals when going asternand using her bow rudder.

The “Duchess of Montrose”, certificated to carry 400 military personnel and 250civilian passengers, had been sent to cover the Stranraer to Larne run at the end ofSeptember 1939 but, within the month, the Sea Transport Officer had her sentback to Gourock being persuaded that her ‘sister’, the “Duchess of Hamilton” ,fitted with a bow-rudder might be better suited to the harbours, the “Duchess ofHamilton”, now arriving at the end of October, would, in addition to carryingtroops, cover the mail service for the “Princees Margaret”, temporarily out ofservice with engine problems, between December 11 and 13, 1939.

The “Duchess of Hamilton” was overhauled at her builder’s yard, Harland &Wolff of Belfast in February 1940, just as well for in April 1940, the 53rd WelshDivision was moved from South Wales via Stranraer to Northern Ireland, a moveinvolving some 11,000 troops and their baggage and a precaution against a possible

German invasion of neutral Eire. From the middle of the summer of 1940,continual troop movements after the evacuation of Dunkirk and many personnelgoing home on leave, led to both the “Duchess of Hamilton” and the “Duchess ofMontrose” working the Stranraer crossing during June and July 1940. They wereboth relieved by the Denny-built Thames excursion motor-ship “Royal Daffodil”,the “Duchess of Montrose” returning to the Wemyss Bay - Rothesay run at the endof July and the “Duchess of Hamilton” returning to Gourock in October 1940being recalled to Stranraer as needed.

In early December 1945, the “Duchess of Hamilton” again returned to Loch Ryanand, on the evening of Boxing Day, Wednesday, December 26, 1945, whilecrossing from Larne with some 300 military personnel on board, she ran at fullspeed into an almost perpendicular cliff just south of Corsewall Point, at theentrance to Loch Ryan.

It was first thought that they had hit a mine and the ship’s distress signals broughtout the Portpatrick lifeboat. In the event, the “Duchess of Hamilton” had only abadly buckled bow and was able to free herself under her own power and proceed toStranraer where she lay until the Saturday when, in the afternoon, she made herown way up-river for repairs, a new bow at Henderson’s yard in Glasgow.

She then returned to the Stranraer station and remained there until Thursday, March28, 1946 when she returned to Gourock to give assist on the day’s services and thenwent for re-conditioning at D. & W. Henderson’s yard and return to peace-timesailings. The “Duchess of Hamilton” made a return visit to Stranraer on Saturday,September 6, 1969, a charter from Ayr which too gave Stranraer passengers, as inpre-war days, the chance of an afternoon cruise round Ailsa Craig.

Apart from occasional pre-war 1930’s visits to Campbeltown, it was not until 1946that the sister turbines would begin to appear there regularly, the “Duchess ofHamilton” carrying out the run on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and alternateSundays and Mondays, thus giving each turbine a day off for maintenance once afortnight and the “Duchess of Montrose” covering the other sailings each week untilthe end of August each year when she went into harbour for her winter lay-up.

On Wednesdays, the “Duchess of Hamilton” cruised via The Kyles of Bute toBrodick and Pladda, going direct to Largs from Brodick on the return run and, onFridays, to Ayr with a short cruise round Holy Isle. The “Duchess of Montrose”

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carried out the Inveraray service on Tuesdays and Thursdays - on one occasionbeing relieved by the diesel-electric paddler “Talisman” which was actuallyobserved arriving at Wemyss Bay exactly on the turbine steamer’s advertised returntime !

On Saturdays, the “Duchess of Montrose” duplicated the morning Gourock -Dunoon - Wemyss Bay - Rothesay peak ferry sailings and, returning to Gourock,then, via Dunoon, Largs and Millport (Keppel Pier), cruised round Ailsa Craig andon Sunday afternoons, the turbines alternating rosters, one or other would cruise toLochranza Bay and Catacol or go round Holy Isle.

The “Duchess of Montrose” was withdrawn at the end of the 1964 season and leftGreenock under tow on Thursday, August 19, 1965, to be broken up in Belgium.Now alone, her roster having her cover Inveraray on Tuesdays and Ayr on Fridays,the “Duchess of Hamilton” would carry on with the Campbeltown service till theend of the 1970 season when, ‘for economic reasons’, she was laid up and thensold in the following year to be converted into a floating restaurant in Glasgow. Theplans fell through and she was towed to Troon in April 1974 for breaking-up.

Of seemingly heavier construction, the “Duchess of Montrose” was undoubtedlythe better sea-boat of the pair and, in the last week of her Clyde service proved, atleast on that occasion to be faster than her near sister.

By correspondence, it would have been Friday, August 28, 1964, the “Duchess ofHamilton” as usual going to Ayr and scheduled out of Rothesay at 10.15 a.m. toarrive in Largs at 10.45 a.m., five minutes ahead of the “Duchess of Montrose” onthe Campbeltown run but, the “Duchess of Montrose” won the race to Largs thatday for unknown to Herbert Waugh, the Chief Engineer on the “Duchess ofHamilton”, his opposite number on the “Duchess of Montrose”, Ned Higgins, hadreplaced his 1-inch ‘economy’ burners with 1½-inch oil burners that day and, as thetwo ships swept out of Rothesay Bay towards Largs, the “Duchess of Montrose”quickly out-paced her rival and arrived in Largs at 10.45 a.m. causing the passengerqueues on the pier to be re-assembled to board their respective cruise ships !

Ayr Ways

ollowing World War II, the Ayr-based steamers, first the twin-screw turbine“Marchioness of Graham” , between 1947 - 1953 and then the paddle-steamer “Caledonia”, between 1954 - 1964 inclusively, carried out a weeklyexcursion to Campbeltown via the Arran piers, including making a call at

Whiting Bay, it to close after the 1962 season. From 1957 onwards, day tripperscould take the “Duchess of Hamilton” or the “Duchess of Montrose”, viaLochranza, to Campbeltown, return with the Ayr-based steamer to Whiting Bayand Arran and then return on the new 1957-buit car ferry “Glen Sannox (III)” toFairlie.

From “Queen” to “Knooz”

ith the coming of the 1970’s and the demise of the “Duchess ofHamilton” so too came the end of Campbeltown’s regular summersteamer services. The 1933-built turbine “Queen Mary II” took up theexcursion programme for the 1971 season and continued running, albeit

something of an impoverished schedule till the end of the 1977 season. She hadreverted to her original name “Queen Mary” at a ceremony on Thursday, May 6,1976, the 1934-built Cunard liner of the same name now removed from theshipping registers and berthed at Long Beach as a static hotel and conference centre.

The “Queen Mary” was laid up in Greenock’s East India Harbour and then sold toEuroyachts Ltd. for conversion to a floating restaurant, her three valuablepropellors, simply, burnt off, rather than being uncoupled from her tailshafts, inLamont’s dry-dock. Though she had been towed from the Clyde to Chatham onJanuary 29, 1981, it was only in July 1988 that, now again with two funnels, shewas then towed up-river to be moored near London’s Hungerford Bridge, not farfrom the old “Maid of Ashton”, in use as a floating restaurant bar and renamed“Hispaniola (II)”. Sold to City Cruises of London in the early part of 2002, theold “Maid of Ashton” put to sea for the first time in nearly 30 years when she wastowed to George Prior’s yard at Ipswich for refitting and hull inspection later in theyear.

While one of her sister-ships, the “Maid of Argyll”, renamed first “City ofPiraeus” and the “City of Corfu”, was declared a total loss after fire broke out on

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board in 1997, her other sister-ships, both now able to carry cars, continued to sailon, the former “Maid of Cumbrae” as the “Capri Express” and the former “Maidof Skelmorlie” as the “Ala”.

Both 'Maids' were thoroughly overhauled around 2002 and though the “Maid ofCumbrae” / “Capri Express” was withdrawn and then scrapped, at Aliaga, inMarch 2006, the “Maid of Skelmorlie” / “Ala” sails on.

Also in the warm Mediterranean climes, in Malta’s Valetta Harbour, the one timeLargs - Millport ferry “Keppel”, once the “Rose”, continues to sail under her oldClyde name.

The “Queen Mary” now occupies the moorings first used by the Clyde paddlesteamer “Caledonia”, renamed “Old Caledonia”, irreparably damaged by fire in onApril 27, 1980, it being then the intention to replace her with the “King George V”but she too had been consumed by fire during conversion work at Cardiff onAugust 26, 1981.

CalMac, now concentrating on car ferry services, had sent the 1957-built “GlenSannox (III)” to be re-engined at Hall Russell’s Aberdeen yard early in 1977 and,with the withdrawal of the “Queen Mary” at the end of that same year, the “GlenSannox (III)” found herself on an integrated cruise-car ferry roster in the summersof 1978, the days Campbeltown’s regular, evenccasional, excursion service wereover. The “Glen Sannox (III)” would now find herself acting as relief car-ferry asoften in West Highland waters as in the Clyde even, in February 1979, somewhatexceptionally calling at the island of Gigha, Gigha’s own car ferry service toTayinloan not then being in operation. The “Glen Sannox (III)” was subsequentlysold for use as a pilgrim ship in The Red Sea and left the Clyde on Wednesday,August 9, 1989, renamed as the “Knooz”, she surviving until scrapped in 2000.

Keeping Up Steam

ithdrawn from service at the end of the 1973 season, the 1947-builtpaddle-steamer “Waverley (IV)” was handed over to The Paddle SteamerPreservation Society in 1974 and, after an inaugural cruise on theThursday, gave her first public sailing on Saturday, May 24, 1975, an

excursion from Glasgow’s Anderston Quay to Gourock, Dunoon, Tarbert andArdrishaig, the old ‘Royal Route’ of MacBrayne’s mail steamer service. Three years

later, on Saturday, June 24, 1978, she repeated the excursion as a centennial tributeto MacBrayne’s famous paddle-steamer “Columba” leaving Glasgow’s StobcrossQuay at 7.11 a.m..

To complement “Waverley (IV)” and generate more funds for her upkeep, anotherconsortium refurbished the former Portsmouth - Ryde passenger ferry “Shanklin”and, renamed “Prince Ivanhoe” , she took up her integrated excursion programmeof sailings, including Campbeltown, in 1981. Sadly, she struck a ‘submerged reef’,some maintain ‘a submarine’, off The Gower Coast on Monday, August 3, 1981and, safely beached to evacuate her passengers and crew, she was subsequentlybroken up where she lay.

In 1986, “Waverley (IV)” was joined by the twin-screw 1949-built “Balmoral”,both ships now continuing to provide a wide programme of excursion sailingsaround Britain. In 1993, the “Balmoral” initiated what was to become an almostannual day trip from Campbeltown to Red Bay and Rathlin Island, the 2002 trip,on Saturday, June 22, was given by “Waverley (IV)” and, breaking new ground,began from Ayr, leaving only time for the steamer to cruise to Fair Head instead ofRathlin itself.

What’s In A Name ?

he Campbeltown & Glasgow Steam Packet Joint Stock Company, founded in1826 and first registered as an unlimited company in 1867, then as a limitedcompany in 1883, merged with Clyde Cargo Steamers Ltd., a subsidiary ofDavid MacBrayne Ltd. since 1935, at midnight on March 3/4, 1937 and

then, on March 31, 1937, the company changing its name to The Clyde &Campbeltown Shipping Company Ltd..

Though the “Davaar” and the “Dalriada” had been withdrawn and lost onaccount of the war, the company continued to operate the “Ardyne”, “Minard”,“Arran (III)/Kildonan” and the little second-hand, former fish carrier, “Marie”.On October 1, 1949, the financial responsibility for these remaining companyservices passed from David MacBrayne Ltd. to the control of the British TransportCommission, the formal control of the company’s capital not being transferred toThe Caledonian Steam Packet Company Ltd. till March 1951.

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The last ship, the “Arran (III)/Kildonan”, being withdrawn in July 1957 and soldfor breaking up at Port Glasgow in January 1958, the company, ceasing trading,became dormant until January 20, 1960 when its name was changed to CaledonianSteam Packet Company (Irish Services) Ltd. in order to operate British TransportCommission’s London Midland Region’s Stranraer - Larne ferry service, thecompany’s capital then transferred from The Caledonian Steam Packet CompanyLtd. to the British Transport Commission with Caledonian Steam Packet Company(Irish Services) Ltd. then becoming a British Transport Commission subsidiary.

Caledonian Steam Packet Company (Irish Services) Ltd. ceased to act as owners andmanagers of the Stranraer - Larne service on December 31, 1966 and the companynow became a dormant subsidiary of British Transport Commission.

Then, as a consequence of The Transport Act 1968, which severed the linkbetween the British Transport Commission and The Caledonian Steam PacketCompany Ltd., the company again changed its name to The British Transport ShipManagement (Scotland) Company Ltd., resuscitated for management purposes inpreparation for the transfer of The Caledonian Steam Packet Company Ltd. to theScottish Transport Group from January 1, 1969.

On June 24, 1971, the company took delivery of the Stena Line’s new vehicle ferry“Stena Trailer” which, in view of her long term charter for the Stranraer - Larneservice, they renamed “Dalriada (II)” to reflect the company’s links with theancient kingdom and the company’s roots being laid down in the founding of TheCampbeltown & Glasgow Steam Packet Joint Stock Company.

In February 1972, The Caledonian Steam Packet Company Ltd. and DavidMacBrayne Ltd. formed an ‘association’ known as Caledonian MacBrayne Servicesand then, on January 1, 1973, The Caledonian Steam Packet Company Ltd. wasrenamed Caledonian MacBrayne Ltd., responsible for all the vehicle ferryoperations of the Scottish Transport Group without direct subsidy.

In 1980, the ‘red lion’ emblem, hitherto found superimposed on a yellow disc oncompany funnels and flags, was found ‘a heraldic infringement’ and the offending‘rampant pussy cat’ was duly removed.

First and Last ?

n the near flat calm, misty, Sunday afternoon of September 27, 1992, thepaddle steamer “Waverley (IV)” edged her way in against the open end ofCarradale’s harbour quay, her forefoot stopping less than a dozen feet off asubmerged rock. An hour later, at 4.15 p.m., she eased away again, going

slowly astern and then, after three long blasts from her whistle, disappeared off intothe misty Kilbrannan Sound. Though she was the first and probably last steamer tocall at Carradale since the departure of the old “Davaar” on Saturday, March 16,1940, Cal Mac’s little Lochranza - Claonaig car ferry “Rhum” had earlier called atCarradale when on charter to The Clyde River Steamer Club on Saturday, May 15,1982.

A year earlier, on Sunday, September 29, 1991, the twin-screw motorship“Balmoral”, consort to the “Waverley (IV)”, had also called at Carradale but, suchis the difficulty of bringing a 200-foot plus ship alongside the open end ofCarradale’s harbour quay, even in flat calm conditions, it seems now unlikely thatthere will ever be another call there again by a Clyde ‘steamer’.

Tickets Please !

ixty-one years after the withdrawal of the “Dalriada” and the “Davaar”,purser Jim Goodall, passed away peacefully, in his 94th year, in Rothesay onChristmas Day, Tuesday, December 25, 2001. The only other knownsurvivor of the company’s employees, descended from Chief Steward Sam

Campbell, is Miss Betty McGeachy of Campbeltown, her sister, Mrs Mary Blairpassing away on October 10, 2002, both served as stewardesses on the company’slast ships. Of the ships themselves there are but three known reminders.

Now, proudly displayed in Armitage Shanks’ Staffordshire works, is one of theoriginal 1868 white porcelain toilet bowls which had been fitted in the ill-fated little“Kintyre” sunk off Wemyss Bay in 1907, the bowl brought to the surface the late1990’s by divers.

The ship’s bell of the “Kinloch”, which was broken up in 1928, was acquired byKintyre historian Duncan Colville and presented to Campbeltown Sailing Club byhis grandson, Rory Colville of Kilchenzie, after his death. A triangular ship’s

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pennant flown from the foremast and bearing her name, “Kinloch”, in red, is inthe possession of Springbank Distillery, the family proprietors being closelyinvolved with the Campbeltown ships.

Full Circle

n 1826, ten years after the “Britannia” had first steamed into CampbeltownLoch, Alexander Laird, now joined in business by his son, built two newsteamers, the “Clydesdale” and the “Londonderry”, for a new tri-weeklyservice between Glasgow, Campbeltown and Londonderry. Though the regular

Campbeltown calls were dropped, the service, run latterly by Burns and Laird andthen Coast Lines, was to operate for a full 140 years.

Built in 1944 at Ardrossan Dockyard, Burns-Laird’s “Lairds Loch”, essentially acattle-ship with accommodation for a few hundred passengers, took the route’s finalpassenger sailing, from ‘Derry to Glasgow Saturday, September 10, 1966, theservice to the end being thrice weekly in each direction.

After a couple of weeks for overhaul at Ardrossan, the little “Lairds Loch” relievedthe “Irish Coast” on the overnight single-ship service between Glasgow andDublin, her former first-class accommodation being offered at second-class faresand her sleeping berth accommodation at first-class rates. With the return of the“Irish Coast” to the run on June 6, 1967, the “Lairds Loch” was then laid upuntil the end of the year when she again found herself again on the ‘Derry route,this time carrying only cattle and general cargo, tillnear the end of 1968.

She was sold in January 1969 to Sefinot Ltd., an Israeli company and, leavingArdrossan on January 7, 1969 and sailed for The Gulf of Aqaba via Cape Town.Renamed “Hey Daroma”, she began a new thrice-weekly service between Eilat andSharm-el-Sheikh, an eight hour crossing. Her 200 or so passengers might well havebeen on the old ‘Derry route for her accommodation and fittings and even herScottish cutlery were unchanged.

Despite a fortnight off service after being the object of a mine-attack at Eilat in themiddle of November 1969, she returned to service and, sold to a new company,Hey Daroma Ltd., continued on her old route until September 3, 1970 when sheran aground some seven miles away from her Sharm-el-Sheikh terminus. Heavilydamaged and in a difficult location, she was written off.

From June 1936 onwards, Burns-Laird’s nightly Glasgow - Belfast service had beenoperated by the new “Royal Scotsman” and “Royal Ulsterman” . The “RoyalScotsman” made her final run, from Belfast to Glasgow, on the evening of Friday,September 29, 1967 being replaced by newer 1957 Belfast-built “Scottish Coast”which had been operating the summer-only ‘daylight’ Ardrossan - Belfast ‘car-ferry’service. The “Royal Ulsterman” too was withdrawn, her final sailing on Saturday,December 30, 1967 and the “Scottish Coast”, now running alone, continued theovernight Glasgow to Belfast service till its closure at the end of August 1969.

At the end of October 1967, the “Royal Scotsman” was sold to The HubbardExploration Co. Ltd., a body which caused great stir in the press and indeedParliament when it was found that it embraced the cult of Scientology. Nowrenamed “Royal Scotman”, the ship sailed for Sierra Leone and the port ofFreetown where she was duly registered under her newly adapted name.

Her sister-ship, the “Royal Ulsterman” was sold to shipbuilders Cammel Laird onMarch 29, 1968 and for a while used to accommodate shipyard workers on acontract at Southampton. Sold to Mediterranean Link Lines of Famagusta, shearrived at Piraeus on May 1, 1970 and almost immediately began a fortnightlyservice between Marseilles and Haifa with calls at Naples and Famagusta on theoutward runs and then at Limassol, Piraeus and Genoa on her return trip.

The “Scottish Coast”, now withdrawn from the Glasgow - Belfast service at the endof August 1969 and deposed from the, now all-year, Ardrossan- Belfast service bythe introduction of the new purpose-built car-ferry “Lion” at the beginning of1968, was sold to the Greek Kavounides Shipping in November 1969 and, totallyrebuilt as the “Galaxias”, began offering short three and four day long cruises inthe summer of 1970.

The 1952-built “Irish Coast”, designed primarily to systematically relieve the otherCoast Lines’ Irish Sea crossing ships for overhauls, had been operating the thrice-weekly overnight Glasgow - Dublin service since 1964, the route closing with herfinal sailing from Dublin to Glasgow on the evening of Saturday, February 10,1968. She then covered on the Glasgow-Belfast service until she too waswithdrawn, her final sailing being from Glasgow on Wednesday, April 10, 1968 andwas sold to the Epirtiki Steamship Co. “George Potamianos” S.A. of Piraeus leavingBirkenhead, renamed “Orpheus”, on August 22, 1968, for Greece.

Now a 300-passenger cruise ship, the “Orpheus” attracted interest of a group ofGlasgow businessmen who formed The Enso Atlantic Shipping Company Ltd. to

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explore the possibility of chartering her for the 1969 season and reviving therecently abandoned Liverpool - Greenock - Montreal route which had previouslybeen operated by The Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Operating the ship asthe “Eros”, the company proposed giving substantial fare discounts to ex-pats andsenior citizens, students and other bodies and groups but, beyond the company’sassertion of good intentions, the venture sank without trace.