Blog at the Ballast

Something a little different for this week's Friday photo. A great image of Wemyss Bay Pier featuring the following paddle steamers:

• Largs built by Wingate & Co, Whiteinch, 1864
• Lancelot built by Robert Duncan & Co, Port Glasgow, 1868
• Lady Gertrude built by Blackwood & Gordon, Port Glasgow, 1872. 
• Argyle built by Barclay, Curle & Co, 1866.

More images from the paddle steamer album have been added by our Project Scotland volunteeer this week to Flickr. Including this one of the Windsor Castle built by Caird & Co, Greenock, circa 1860.

Edit: Apparently the Caird & Co ship was built in 1859 and sank in 1860; since we have another photo of this ship dated 1889 (though we don't know when or how that date was attached), this may be a different Windsor Castle - most likely the 1875 ship built by Thomas B Seath of Rutherglen.



There is a model of the 1859 Windsor Castle on display in the McLean Museum, details here.

Between 1834 and 1961, there were 23 Clyde-built ships which were given the name Victoria; nine of these were paddle steamers.

This is one of them.


I believe this is the 1886 Victoria, built by Blackwood and Gordon, of Paisley and Port Glasgow.

This Victoria went on fire on 17th September, 1893, while lying at the Broomielaw in Glasgow. The fire-brigade had to use two small ferryboats in fighting the fire, and a great deal of damage was done. The ship then spent a few years working on the Thames before returning to the Clyde, and was ultimately scrapped in 1900.

Of the eight other paddle steamers named Victoria: one has no location given; two were owned by the Alloa, Stirling & Kincardine Steamboat Company; one worked in Aberdeen and Newcastle, and later in Portugal; one sailed on Lake Lucerne; one worked in Australia, and later in Japan; one worked along the south coast of England; and one sailed the Channel crossing from Newhaven to Dieppe, and was wrecked in 1887 due to fog, with the loss of 19 lives.

And that's not mentioning the ships named Princess Victoria, Queen Victoria, or Royal Victoria...

Today's photo is one which caused me some confusion this week! I'm the Project Scotland volunteer who's been scanning old photos of paddlesteamers. Usually, after scanning a photograph, I look up the ship in one or two places, such as the Clydebuilt database, and find a little information to put on our flickr. Not this one, however.


It looked to me like a very early paddle steamer, and I was quite put out at not being able to find anything. At first I thought the name written beside it was wrong - the second word didn't look like Maid to me - but my eyes deceived me, and Scottish Maid was indeed the name. Staff member Duncan took a look as well, and he recognised that the photograph was taken from Gourock Pier, with Kilcreggan in the background.

Unfortunately for my searching, Scottish Maid is also the name of the first clipper ship, and she dominated the initial search results.

One item caught my eye, though: a genealogy forum. The original post was from an Australian, looking for information on his great-great-grandfather from Port Glasgow, who was lost at sea. Further down the page was a paragraph from the Glasgow Herald about that very man's death in 1863 after falling from "the Tug-Steamer Scottish Maid" in Port Glasgow harbour. Port Glasgow is not very far from Gourock - surely it was the same boat?

Searching for "Scottish Maid tug" brought me immediately to Tyne Tugs which lists four tugs under the name; but only one of them was registered at Port Glasgow.

So, this is - most likely - the wooden tugboat Scottish Maid, built by J Dowey of North Shields, in 1846. She was registered at Port Glasgow in 1853, and stayed on the Clyde until she was broken up in 1873.


Update: New information has come my way, that another of those four tugs was based at Greenock from 1877 to 1892. This was the Scottish Maid built in Gateshead in 1856.

Simply thinking about the development of photography, it's probably more likely to be the later boat; we may never know for sure...

Today's Friday photo is the paddlesteamer Premier.


Built by William Denny and Brothers in Dumbarton, in 1846, she was first owned by the Dumbarton Steamboat Company. She was bought by John Tizard of Weymouth, and then by Cosens and Company, and worked for them for over 70 years. Before her scrapping in 1938, she was said to be the oldest paddle steamer afloat anywhere in the world.

This ship was built for the North British Steam Packet Company in 1883, by Barclay Curle & Company of Whiteinch. Unfortunately, she was considered too slow and returned to the builders after one season. She was sold to Captain Campbell of Kilmun, subsequently to the Caledonian Steam Packet Company, and finally to the Leopoldina Railway Company, for service in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro.

She left the Clyde in 1902, and the image seems to show her boarded up and ready for an Atlantic adventure.

There's another shot on flickr of her leaving Kilcreggan pier.