Clyde Steamer Enthusiast's Guide, A

A C L Y D E S T E A M E RE N T H U S I A S T ‘ S G U ID E

P. Donald M. Kelly

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

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Introduction

“There is an immense conversation in the sea” (The 8th Duke of Argyll)

he beginning of the end of the Clyde Steamer excursionservices began at the end of the 1964 summer seasonwhen both the turbine-driven

“Duchess of Montrose”

andthe paddle-steamer

“Jeannie Deans”

were withdrawn fromservice. In the half dozen or so years that followed, thetraditional pier-to-pier passenger services and links quicklyshrank and disappeared leaving only an unintegratedskeleton of car ferry services to meet commuter and touristneeds.

T

I was brought up in the Ayrshire village of Skelmorlie, besideand overlooking Wemyss Bay. The Clyde’s steamers andships were then very much part of everyday life and myfather, the Customs and Excise’s Landing Officer at Prince’sDock in Glasgow in the 1950’s, had me well schooled in theways of the ships from an early age.Our house, built by my parents, directly overlooked the startof Skelmorlie’s Measured Mile and Wemyss Bay’s Pier andRailway Station and, in winter, with the leaves fallen fromthe trees, I could see the very spot where the little

“Kintyre”

had sunk in 1907, the year before my motherwas born.As events transpired, I would buy my very first car from ‘the(then) schoolboy’, Ninian Stewart, who had rowed out in aboat and rescued John M’Kechnie, the skipper of the

“Kintyre”,

after she had been sunk by the

“Maori”.

Oneof the

“Kintyre’s”

white porcelain toilet pans, in nearpristine condition and brought to the surface in recent years,now has pride of place in Armitage Shanks historic collectionin Staffordshire. The geographically and socially ‘twinned’ villages of Skelmorlie and Wemyss Bay were home to many well knownshipping and shipbuilding families, the Scott’s and theDenholm’s; the Dunn’s of Harrison’s and the Willan’s of Constantine Lines and to the Dunnet’s who now ownFerguson’s Port Glasgow shipyard. The villages were alsohome to the families of some of the men who crewed theClyde Steamers and to others who sailed ‘deep sea’ so it islittle surprising that I found myself drawn to a wide range of interests and not just to the Clyde Steamers themselves.At the end of the 1890’s, a decision was taken to double-upmost the railway line from Port Glasgow to Wemyss Bay andto rebuild Wemyss Bay’s railway station and pier. The new station-pier complex, the Queen Anne-style stationwith its half-circle passenger concourse and sixty-foot highclock tower, designed by The Caledonian Railway Company’sown architect James Miller, opened on Monday, December7, 1903 and drew immediate acclaim, not least from a partyof Japanese railway and shipping company directors stayingat Castle Wemyss as Lord Inverclyde’s guests, there beingthen, as even now, many business links between Scotlandand Japan.Such was the admiration of the Japanese officials that theyasked for copies of the plans for Wemyss Bay’s new station-pier complex returning to Japan with the intention of buildingan identical ‘twin’ terminus for themselves.Having grown up overlooking this most beautiful andfunctional of all Scotland and Britain’s railway termini andbeen fortunate enough to have enjoyed the final days of thereal Clyde steamers, I would like to think that what followshere will encourage armchair sailors and today’s

anorak

edClyde Steamer enthusiasts go ‘Doon The Watter’ again in theold Clyde Steamers.

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The first section of the book focuses on a ‘composite’account of a 1950’s/1960’s Saturday when it was possible totravel on most of the Clyde steamer fleet and spend theafternoon down-firth cruising round Ailsa Craig on the

“Duchess of Montrose”

, included in the account arerecollections and details of many, now largely forgotten,‘goings-on’ of these ‘halcyon days’. The next section of the book is about steam engines andsome of the more notable and early ships. While the earlydevelopment of marine engines owed much to thecontributions of James Watt, the Americans too were at theforefront of their early trials.

C o n t e n t s

Keeping Up Steam1Day Sea Rover 2Steam and Engines57Time for Tides90. . . . . and Weather 96Teletext Weather Pages99The Hovercraft and The Catamaran100 A Ferry Good Idea104The “Hebridean Princess”113From “Queen To Knooz”118Keeping Up Steam120 An Overseas Mystery 120Waverley Passenger Certificates (2001)123 Argyll County Council Ferries (1909)125

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