Blog at the Ballast

Today's photo is the last of the A's that I'm going to put up, the rest can be seen on our Flickr pages.

It's a picture of the Arawa escorted by the Flying Eagle tug.  This is one of my favourites from the batch that I scanned in as its such a busy scene and gives a feel for how active the Clyde was.

Today's photos are of a fishing vessel called Stormdrift.  The two images are from a selection of photographs that were scanned in for an enquirer who works in the fishing industry and is interested in the images that Dan McDonald took of fishing vessels along the Ayrshire and Argyllshire coasts in the 1930s.  This enquirer has been able to identify by name several of the individuals in other photographs in the collection, which is information that we would otherwise have little change of getting.

The Stormdrift was a fishing boat that operated out of the village of Dunure on the Ayrshire coast.

This afternoon's photo is of the Archibald Russell, a 4-masted barque built in 1905 by Scotts of Greenock.

Full details from the Clydebuilt site are available here.

There are lots of other pictures of her on a great site called Picture Australia, this site allows you to search online images from several different organisations like the National Archives of Australia, State Library of Victoria and the National Library of New Zealand.  Click here to see the pictures of the Archibald Russell.  The ship was used for a time to carry wheat to Australia from Europe which explains where there are several pictures of her in Australian collections.

Continuing the 'A's this week is the Agapenor, built in 1947 by Scotts of Greenock.  She was a cargo ship for the Blue Funnel line who became trapped in the Suez Canal during the six day war between Egypt & Isreal in 1967.  She remained in the Great Bitter Lake along with 13 other trapped ships until the canal reopened in 1975.  After that she was sold to Greek owners who had her refitted and returned to service.

More information from the Clydebuilt site here