Blog at the Ballast

Christmas greetings from all of us here at the Ballast Trust! Our Christmas E-card above shows the Empress of Britain sailing past a faint iceberg in 1922 from our Dan McDonald collection.  She was built in 1906 by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company for the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company.  Specification details are available from the Clydebuilt site. We are going to be closing...

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A picture of a lovely wee tug the Warrior built by Built by Scotts of Bowling in 1935. Specification details available from clydebuilt database here and lots more information about its career here. ...

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This weeks Friday photo is appropriate given yesterday's crazy weather.  It is the ship Weather Observer.  She was built as HMS Marguerite by Hall Russell & Co. Ltd in Aberdeen in 1940. The Weather Observer was the first of the post-war UK Ocean Weather Ships.  She was converted to the Weather Observer at H.M. Dockyard Sheerness and renamed on 31 July 1947 by...

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On a Thursday... I got waylaid this week with holidays and the crazy weather so here is a very belated Friday photo which is a scan of one of the plans used to build the replica PS Comet in 1962. I've been uploading some different photos to the flickr stream as resources for a history of the Ballast Trust that we are getting...

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Today's photo is of HMS Vanguard built by John Browns in 1944. Specification details are available from Clydebuilt. ...

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Today's photo is the first of a new batch of 'Us' and 'Vs' and is the Vehicular Ferry No. 2. I have no idea who the builder is or the date so any suggestions would be welcome. There is some information about the vehicular ferries on this site which states that in the 1950’s when vehicular ferries provided the cross-river service on the Clyde their odd...

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Today's photo is of the Talisman a paddlesteamer built by A & J Inglis, Pointhouse Glasgow in 1896. Specification details available on-line from Clydebuilt. ...

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Today's photo is of The Monarch built by Ailsa Shipbuilding Company, Troon in 1904. Specification details available from Clydebuilt. ...

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Today's photo is the first of the new batch of 'T' vessels that I've scanned and put up on flickr.  It is the Thunderer built by Bow McLachlan & Company of Paisley in 1920. Specification details available from Clydebuilt. ...

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Today's photo is of the Spartan, a lovely wee puffer built by J and J Hay, Kirkintilloch as VIC 18 in 1942. This great puffer can now be seen at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine where she is on display. Specification details are available here. The next batch of photographs for October will appear next week. ...

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A belated Friday photo showing a fairly small ship with a long name.  The dredger Sir William H Raeburn built by Ferguson Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow in 1928. The dredger was built for the Clyde Navigation Trust and Sir William Raeburn was the deputy chairman of the Trust which explains its name.  More information about Sir William can be found here, including his links...

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I will be back from my holiday in New York today and to link up with that have decided to include this image of the City of Rome built by the New York Shipbuilding Company in 1911. She was built for the Merchants & Miners Transport Company as the Suwannee and sold to the Savannah Line in 1917. ...

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Today's photo is the St Mungo, a fire boat built by H McLean, Renfrew in 1959.     The boat provided firefighting cover for Glasgow Harbour and was owned by Glasgow Fire Service Marine Division until 1975. Specification details available from clydebuilt database. ...

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This afternoon the steam locomotive the Tornado will be making a visit to Glasgow Central. It will arrive from Crewe at 14:23 and will stay on the platform for about 30mins before going to Mossend Yard to be serviced.   It will be back in Glasgow Central for 17:40 before leaving for Crewe at 18:23. The Tornado is a steam locomotive completed in...

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Today's image is of the puffer Stormlight which I got confused with this one built by Ferguson Shipbuilders, Port Glasgow in 1937. I was wrong and thanks to the magic of Flickr, I now know that it was built by Yarwood's of Northwich in Cheshire in 1957. She was built for Ross & Marshall and more details about the vessel and its career...

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Slightly delayed by all the doors open day preparations, I've spent this afternoon scanning and uploading the next batch of Dan McDonald photographs - the 'Ss'. There are 22 new photos, including this one which was the oldest ship uploaded - an 1866 paddle tug called SAMSON   Enjoy! ...

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We had a wonderful 53 people battle through the miserable weather in Johnstone yesterday to visit us.  Thank you to everyone who came to see our display. We had over 60 items out on display which have all been put back now so we've got about 50 metres of table space to work on again.  It was a lot quicker putting it away...

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This Sunday is our doors open day.  We've all been working really hard to clear as much space as possible and then display as many examples of what we do as possible. The main workroom shown below has been transformed and we've got items on show from the railway, shipbuilding and engineering collections we have here at the moment. We're open Sunday 11...

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Patricia Cain is giving a talk at the House for an Art Lover on Sunday 25th September.  The Rivited Eye will discuss: her experience of being the unofficial artist-in-residence during the construction of Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum and her work for her highly acclaimed recent exhibition, Drawing on Riverside at Kelvingrove Art Gallery. There is also an opportunity to see some of Trish's...

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Too busy this week getting ready for doors open next Sunday to scan in the next batch of Dan McDonald photos - sorry!  Instead, I'll offer up an extra example from the 'Rs' Today's photo is the puffer Roman built by J & J Hay, boat builders based in Kirkintilloch in 1904. I've featured her before but thought I'd add this one in as...

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Ooops, I meant to blog about Manufacturing Week at the beginning of the week. However, the telegraph had a good article about the history of manufacturing over the weekend which is worth reading and they have been writing about the subject all week as part of their analysis of British manufacturing. ...

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Today's photo is the Rob Roy built by Ailsa Shipbuilding Company, Troon in 1896. If you zoom in on the photo you can see the detail of people on the pier and the crates from J Alexander, Glasgow. ...

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The full programme for Renfrewshire's doors open days weekend is now available to download from the doors open days website here. This is a screenshot of our entry in the programme: The eagled eyed among you will note that we are said to provide a resume service for business archives!  This  looks to be another example of the pesky autocorrect at work and should...

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The steamer Queen Mary is up for sale today in an online auction by Capital Boats, sale details here.  She was built by William Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton in 1933. There's a news article on STV about it here and in the evening times here. ...

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The National Maritime Museum is looking for help with its Warship Histories Project.  They are looking to harness the knowledge their users have about their collections to enhance the existing information they have on over 20,000 British warships from about 1500 to 1950. This information includes: The data includes the name, type and launch date of almost every British warship in the time...

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Today's photo is of the Renfrew Ferry, this ship was built by Fleming and Ferguson of Paisley in 1952.  She was a river chain ferry and took cars which was a new development in the 1950s until then the renfrew ferry had been passenger only. Specification details are available from the Clydebuilt site here. I think she now operates as a static leisure...

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We've started the preparations for our doors open day on Sunday 11th September, just over three weeks away now! As part of that, we're going to be distributing flyers locally to encourage as many of our neighbours and residents of Johnstone to visit us at some point on the day.  You can download the flyer here and it has a map of how...

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Today's photo is of the Rosslyn, a bucket dredger built by Lobnitz and Co. of Renfrew in 1912. A bucket dredger is equipped with a bucket dredge, which is a device that picks up sediment by mechanical means, often with many circulating buckets attached to a wheel or chain. Very detailed information on bucket dredgers, how they work, their history and plans is available here. Specification...

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In a month's time on Sunday 11th September, the Ballast Trust will be opening its doors as part of Renfrewshire's doors open day weekend.  We'll be open from 10 am to 4 pm. We'll be welcoming you into the courtyard and behind the big red doors to find out what we do here, see some of the treasures we're currently working on and...

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Today's Friday photo is the Rivercloy, a Clyde puffer built in Larne, Northern Ireland by Larne Shipbuilders in 1910. She was built for G & G Hamilton of Brodick. ...

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The August batch of photos have been scanned and are up on our flickr pages.  We're up to the 'Rs' which is a small batch but includes one of my favourites of the puffer ROMAN unloading potatoes at Kilchattan Bay.  I've blogged about it before so can't use it as a Friday Photo for this week and will have to pick something else...

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The National Archives announced today that the records of railway workers are now available online via Ancestry.  At the Ballast Trust the railway records we are working on tend to be the production drawings and often all you get of the person who drew them is a set of initials in the title box. The information now online has come from the TNA's Railway...

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Today we end July's Friday photo with an image of the Queen Mary leaving the Clyde in 1936.  She was built by John Brown & Co. We have lots of others showing the ship close up here but this one of the two boys watching it go past is my favourite. Full specification details are available from Clydebuilt. ...

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As well as writing an Annual Report for the Trustees and clients and friends of the Ballast Trust to receive.  I also put together a formal update for clients on what collections we have of theirs and what the status is of each of the collections. Some of the collections we work on are pretty big and the work often takes years - particularly...

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Today's photograph comes from a small collection of photographs that Bill Lind kept which are of the William Beardmore and Company yard. ...

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I scanned some images of locomotives this week and thought it would make a nice change to use one for the Friday Photo this week rather than more ships. This is an image of the Gordon Castle, a Highland Railway locomotive built in 1900 by Dübs & Co., Glasgow.  ...

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Today's photo is of the Queen Alexandra Built by William Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton in 1902. Full specification details available from Clydebuilt database here and more information about her career here, including the fact that she ended life as the Princess Patricia presumably after this Princess Patricia. ...

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This weekend the Tall Ships Races will be coming to Greenock from Sat 9th to Monday 11th. There is a list of the ships coming here. We've got lots of great photographs of sailing ships in our Dan McDonald collection on flickr, such as this one of the L'avenir. ...

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This week's Friday Photo is of the Queen Empress.   A paddle steamer built by Murdoch & Murray of Port Glasgow in 1912. Specification details and career history are available on the Clydebuilt site here.  More information about her can be found here and information about Murdoch and Murray here. ...

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There's a very detailed blog post about the Cunard Steamship Co. over on the New York Public Library's What's on the Menu blog. It is called Maury and the Menu: A Brief History of the Cunard Steamship Company and discusses in depth the Mauretania. There's a very detailed blog post about the Cunard Steamship Co. over on the New York Public Library's What's...

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There's an interesting post over on the University of Glasgow Archive blog about the carpet designs used on luxury liners like the Queen Mary and Aquitania and created by James Templeton & Co. {Image from here} Find out more about the Stoddard Templeton project on their blog and see lots of photos in their flickr set. ...

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Today's photo is the Paladin.  She was a tug built by Murdoch & Murray of Port Glasgow in 1913. Full specification details are available from Clydebuilt. ...

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With the opening of the Riverside Museum yesterday, there is now a ferry service running between Govan and the new Riverside Museum on the banks of Yorkhill Quay.  The service is run by Clyde Cruises and details about the timetable are here. The BBC has a great article on the history of the Govan Ferry. ...

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Today's photo is of the Princess Kathleen built by John Brown & Co., Clydebank in 1924. She was owned and operated by Canadian Pacific Steamships.  We had a lovely comment this week from someone on flickr who saw it on our pages and mentioned that it was sunk in 1952.  There are lots of pictures and information about the sinking on this blog and...

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Found out about ScotRail's Adopt a Station scheme today via the Doors Open Days folks.  The scheme finds community or start-up uses for vacant accommodation at ScotRail stations.  Perfect opportunity I thought for some shots of North Johnstone Station plans: Johnstone Station (click to enlarge) Johnstone Booking Office (click to enlarge) ...

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Today's photo is of one of my favorite boats, the Pibroch.  I've blogged other images of it unloading whisky and the later 1957 Pibroch transporting a van. This Pibroch was built by Scotts of Bowling in 1923 and was one of a breed of Clyde Puffers. ...

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The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland have a very snazzy feature on the aerial section of their website that allows you to compare shipyards on the Clyde in 1947 with today. Screenshot from here Thanks to their great twitter feed for the heads up. ...

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The 'Ps' are up on flickr.  For some reason there are a lot of pictures of sailing ships in this batch, the Pommern, Padua, Passat, Parma and the Ponape ...

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Today's photo is a great up close view of the steam ship Pyrrhus which was built by Cammell, Laird & Co. in Birkenhead in 1949. She was part of the fleet of ships belonging to the Ocean Steam Ship Company Limited which was formed from the Elder Dempster Line and later became the Blue Funnel Line ...

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It is Annual Report time of year and I have attempted to make it look a bit snazzier with some pictures.  You can read all about our past year (April 2010 to March 2011) Annual Report 2010/11 (large file, may take time to download) Annual Report 2010/11 (smaller file, poorer image quality) ...

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Today's photo is of the Opawa, a tanker built by Barclay Curle & Company, Glasgow in 1964. Specification details available from clydebuilt database here. ...

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Interesting article in i-on magazine about the restoration of Fairfield Shipyard offices by Govan Workspace. Read article here ...

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Today's photo is a coaster called Onyx which I think was built by Scotts of Bowling either in 1910 or 1903.  Without pictures to compare to on the Clydebuilt site, I find it pretty tricky to decide. Whilst doing some research on Scotts of Bowling for another collection we have recently received I came across this site which is interested in capturing knowledge people have about...

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The harbour at Dunure is celebrating its 200th anniversary this week.  The Dunure Harbour Committee Association's website has details about all the events being planned but they include on Friday 20th May crafts such as Knotting, Fishing Net making, Rope splicing and Lobster Pot making in the harbour and on boats. As well as games, stories and a quiz.  Saturday 21st is the main day...

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