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 on the afternoon of Wednesday 21st and will be open again after the holidays on Wednesday 4th January 2012.

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.

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 the Secretary of State for Air in Shadwell Docks, London and sailed in 1947 to take up her station in the North Atlantic.

You can read more about the history of weather ships online here and also in this book.

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 designed and printed at the moment.