Blog at the Ballast

Today's photo is from the new batch of L's which I've added to flickr and I'm working on their descriptions.

The photo I liked best from the bunch was this one of the MV Leven a launch built by William Denny & Brothers in 1938 for the Caledonian Steam Packet Company and still going today!

I received a very helpful email today from Mick at Irish Ship Wrecks with information about a ship I posted about back in September 2009, the Alert.

This was one that I struggled to find information about from my usual sources Clydebuilt and

Miramar but Mick has suggested the Crew List Index Project CLIP as another potential source of information.

Today's photo is the King Edward, a passenger vessel built by William Denny & Brothers in 1901 for Turbine Steamers Ltd.

Full specification details are available from Clydebuilt as usual.

The BFI this month presents tales from the shipyard;

I was alerted to it by this message on twitter - A #shiptales message from Sean Connery

Although organised by the BFI in London there are screenings in Glasgow at the GFT.

An interesting post from Glasgow University Archive Services on their blog about their collection of records for John Hastie & Co. Ltd. Read it here.

There is some more information including this image about the company on this site from the people at the McLean Museum.

Today's photographs are of the Kathleen and May, one of 60 tall ships on the UK’s National Register of Historic Vessels.

More information about her can be found here and on this blog.

Finally I have uploaded more of the Dan McDonald photographs so the 'Ks' are now available on our flickr pages.

I can't resist a paddle steamer so bring you the KYLEMORE today:

She was built by Russell & Co. of Port Glasgow in 1897.

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland has great image collections of industrial sites available on their Canmore site and they've just uploaded more new images for February which include some of "international building projects from the Sir William Arrol Collection, including sites in Denmark, Egypt, Ghana and England, as well as photographs of John Brown’s shipyard in Clydebank in 1959."

This is because we were originally supposed to finish up in October, so my evaluation wasn't as comprehensive as it will be once we have completed a full collection, imported it and then seen it made available online but it did give me an opportunity to think about the project planning benefits and the current status of the project.

I do think that thinking properly about the work we have to do here and how we can parcel it up into 'projects' has been helpful for us and is something that I hope to do more of.

In terms of the actual project, I'm pleased to announce that all the additional information for the Montague Smith collection has been captured and the data entry stage has begun. We have one of our new volunteers working on it and she has been able to input over 250 items so far which makes it nearly 10% complete!!