Blog at the Ballast

We're finishing up here at the Ballast Trust for the holidays this afternoon. For our final photo of 2012, I'm very happy to share this Christmas card that we found in amongst some of Bill's odds and sods of headed notepaper and supplies of blank stationery.

It was an official Christmas card for British Shipbuilders who were the nationalised company that owned and operated British shipyards from 1977 until the late 1980s.

You may have already seen the image on the Scottish Council on Archives website as part of their Christmas in the Archives feature.




We will be closed for the Christmas and New Year holidays from Friday 21st December 2012 to Monday 7th January 2013 (inclusive).

On the 4th of December, I gave a talk as part of a joint training day organised by the Business Archives Council of Scotland (BACS) and Archives and Records Association Scottish Region and hosted by Glasgow City Archives to introduce members of both organisations to procedures and processes for handling technical records within their archive collections.

Here at the Ballast Trust, we specialise in processing technical records. Which we consider to be the plans, drawings, maps and photographs (often found in construction, engineering, architectural, design and manufacturing businesses) that provide evidence of the creation and development of products or sites within business and organisational collections.

For my presentation I have tried to explain our approach to technical records, the importance of background research and understanding your collection and then an awareness of plans and the use of 'core lists' or retention guidelines for certain industries. We will be publishing core lists that we use for shipbuilding and engineering collections in the new year.

On Friday 7th December, the Ballast Trust had a visit from MSP Annabel Goldie.

She met with our Director, Professor Tony Slaven, members of staff and some of our volunteers. We had laid out some examples of the different types of business records that the Trust specialising in working with. There were some beautiful examples of 19th century technical drawings in the form of locomotive manufacturing drawings and plans of station buildings constructed by the Caledonian Railway Association.

We also had lovely examples of the social history contained in business records through the minute books of the rambling and bowling clubs of George Stewart & Co. (which we have blogged about before).

It was a very welcome opportunity to get across the message that business archives matter and explain our role in the implementation of the National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland.

Annabel said in a press release of the visit:

I was delighted to be able to visit the Ballast Trust and meet Director Professor Slaven, staff and volunteers. Visiting the Ballast Trust in Johnstone was for me discovering an unexplored delight. I had no idea that such important processing of industrial and business archive information was being carried out right here on our own doorstep. The Trust is a hugely important contributor to Scotland’s archive records. The dedication and skill of the Director, trustees, staff and volunteers ensure that detailed information from technical drawings of the 19th and 20th century to workforce journals describing the activities of staff rambling clubs and bowling clubs is captured. Business archives provide a fascinating perspective not just on the technical skills of that period but of the social activity of employees and the wider community.

Since her visit, Annabel has submitted the following Motion to the Scottish Parliament:

That the Parliament notes the work of the Ballast Trust, which is a Renfrewshire-based charitable foundation that provides a rescue, sorting and cataloguing service for business archives with an emphasis on technical records such as shipbuilding, railway and engineering plans, drawings and photographs; understands that, since its establishment in 1987, it has processed technical records on behalf of national and local archive repositories and museums; believes that this has resulted in the trust, in conjunction with National Records of Scotland, carrying out the vital processing of a huge range of industrial and business archive material; commends its continuing referencing and retention of what it considers a diverse base of historic material that chronicles both industrial and business and social and community activity; applauds what it sees as the dedicated and committed efforts of the trust’s director, trustees, staff and volunteers, and praises it on its determined efforts to educate business and professional communities to be mindful of the archive treasures that might be found throughout business premises the length and breadth of Scotland.

One week to go until our Christmas image is posted...

Today's photo is an unusual one for us compared to the normal ship photos. It is an image of the engine room of the PS Caledonia, built by William Denny & Brothers, Dumbarton, Yard no. 1266.

Today's photo is of the ferry Eilean Dubh built by James Lamont & Co., in Yard no. 375 in 1951 for the Kessock Ferry route.

The Eilean Dubh was the first purpose-built vehicle ferry on the route. She was capable of carrying eight cars, with a small indoor passenger cabin.

This photograph was taken at North Kessock in May 1959.

Today's photo is a deck shot of passengers on board the SS Davaar, a passenger/cargo vessel built by London & Glasgow Engineering & Iron Shipbuilding Co. in 1885.

The ship was used by the Campbeltown and Glasgow Steam Packet Joint Stock Company.

There is a history of the company written by P Donald M Kelly available online

The plan is stamped A & J Inglis, Glasgow with a date in 1897, the ship number given is no. 246 and this turns out to have been the SS Magpie built for G & J Burns Ltd to run across the Irish sea.

She was renamed as the Lairdsgrove in 1929 and ended her days as such.  The image below is from our flickr and part of the Dan McDonald collection.

While hunting through the Bill Lind Collection, I found this lovely sequence of the vessel "Countess of Albane" being moved from Loch Awe to Loch Fyne where she made her way to the Clyde. The photos document every step of the process, from removing the deckhouse to turning the vessel onto the road in order to drive it to Loch Fyne.

I've published it on flickr with the tag "Moving the Countess of Breadalbane" and this link will take you to the set of photos.

Below is a photo of the vessel being readied in order to begin her journey on the road, with the car that would lead her pictured infront:

The George Stewart & Co Ltd, Manufacturing Stationers Collection, has now been catalogued and will be sent to the Edinburgh City Archives (Reference number SL247).

Business records

George Stewart & Co Ltd were founded in 1879 by George Stewart, but it was his youngest son, Alastair M. Stewart (b. 1905), who steered the company through the 20th century. This collection represents all that has survived from the long history of this Edinburgh Company. The reasons for this are numerous, but possibly the serious fire in August of 1950 destroyed much of their corporate and historical records; but in the surviving material are still important archival and historical records. The business records include two minute books, two finance books, share information and profit and loss reports. There are are notebooks detailing costs of materials and basic job work.

Additional to the business records, the Collection also has material relating to the social activities of the workforce, identifying a camaraderie that was evident in many family-owned firms of the time. Minute and record books of the Company bowling, golf and rambling clubs demonstrate highly active groups and provide an important contribution to local sports history. 

Stewart Rambling Club 1889-1905 (SL247/3/1/1)

For example, The Bowling Club was a member of the Edinburgh and Leith Printing Establishments Bowling Club Association, and it competed in both League and Single-hand competitions, winning several. The Rambling Club book contains information on local excursions, including various events such as local Burns dinners with 
accompanying ephemera. 

Stewart Golf Club 1902-1903 (SL247/3/3/1

Though Stewart & Co. were manufacturing stationers, they were closely involved with the printing industry. The Chairman, Alastair M. Stewart, was an important figure within the printing trade and served in a number of important positions, including Vice-President (from 1965) and then as President of the Federation of Master Printers (1966-67). 

Printers’ Association Events 1965-66 (SL247/6/1)

The archive has interesting ephemera from this period from a number of British and international printing associations and newspapers, related to conferences and dinners, including photographs, that Alastair M. Stewart and his wife attended.

A date for your diary and a reason to get yourself through to Edinburgh!

As part of Doors Open Days this year the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) is offering a number of talks and tours at their offices in Edinburgh on Saturday 22nd September.

From their website:

Hear experts talking about our extensive collections and view our exhibitions and fi lms. You’ll also get the chance to go behind-the-scenes to discover how we photograph, measure and draw industrial sites, and fi nd out how these unique images form an important record of Scotland’s industrial past and present.

View the programme here.

Plans: a 'before' and 'after'

This Sunday saw our second year of taking part in the Renfrewshire Doors Open Days programme.

We focused this year on explaining the different stages of what we do with collections and had a series of themed displays based on the following stages:

1. Rescue/desposit
2. Processing
3. Return
4. Access
5. Use

We had 44 visitors in total and were delighted to welcome lots of new faces and people with an interest in Johnstone's industrial past in particular as we had some items on display from Clifton & Baird Ltd, machine tool manufacturers established in Johnstone since 1908.

We tried to get across the different uses of business archives by a variety of user groups such as model makers, artists, businesses, family and local historians.

In December 2012 the Ballast Trust will be celebrating 25 years since its formal establishment.  There are plans for a history of the Ballast Trust to be published and this will be available online and shared here.  In the run up to the anniversary I am also tweeting extracts from Bill's diary that year starting with the entry for Thursday 3rd September 1987:

• York Street Ferry (York Street to West Street) 
• Clyde Street Ferry (Clyde Street, Anderston, to Springfield Quay) 
• Hyde Park Ferry (Hydepark Street to Springfield Quay) 
• Stobcross Ferry (Finnieston Quay to Mavisbank Quay) 
• Finnieston Ferry (Finnieston Quay to Mavisbank Quay) 
• Kelvinhaugh Ferry (Yorkhill Quay to Princes Dock) 
• Govan Ferry (Ferry Road, Partick, to Water Row, Govan) 
• Meadowside Ferry (Meadowside Street, Partick to Holm Street, Govan) 
• Whiteinch Ferry (James Street, Whiteinch to Holmfauld Road, Linthouse) 
• Renfrew Ferry (Yoker to Renfrew) 
• Erskine Ferry (Dunbartonshire to Renfrewshire)

The Glasgow firm of Penman & Co, boilermakers, Caledonian Iron Works, was established around 1870 and by 1900 occupied a three-acre site at its Caledonian Iron Works in Strathclyde Street, Bridgeton (built 1889). The firm was incorporated in 1907 and from 1920 was owned by Babcock & Wilcox. It specialised in land boilers, which were exported worldwide.

This photograph from our Dan McDonald collection was used by the Scottish Council on Archives as the front cover for their August edition of Broadsheet.

When we provided the image, I was only about to tell SCA that our description for it was 'Man on Hopper 7' and that we knew that Hopper no. 7 had been built by Lobnitz and Co., Renfrew in 1911.

Since then and in response to an enquiry that the SCA got about the man.  We have looked at our photocopies of Dan's original negative registers (held by Glasgow City Council Archives) which had more information about the photo.  So I can reveal that the man in question is Captain Duncan MacLeod and the photograph was taken on the 24th May 1948.

Our annual reports are now available in a snazzy online reading format over on Issuu.  This means that you can read the 2012 Annual Report and also our 2011 Annual Report.
 

Some shameless self-promotion this afternoon with an image of the Meet the Archivists poster that I have designed for this November event. The Meet the Archivists event will take place on November 9th 2012.

We've had a very busy week this week with 4 new accessions:

• Photographs from Ferguson Shipbuilders
• Rigging Plans from McKenzie Niven Ltd
• Material relating to North British Locomotive Company
• Papers from the Sinclair Scott family

[rigging plan]

Today's photo is from a series of photos of the William Hamilton shipyard in Port Glasgow.  It was founded in 1867 and moved to their Port Glasgow operations in 1891.

The records of William Hamilton and Co. are held by the University of Glasgow Archive Services and some plans are held by the National Maritime Museum.  Details here.

Today's photo comes from a set uploaded from a box of miscellaneous photographs from John G Kincaids. The image below is of the K23 engine.


The engine was fitted in the CLAN MCDONALD built by Greenock Dockyard Co. The collection belongs to Glasgow City Archives.

More images from Kincaids are available on our flickr pages.

Today's Friday photo is from a set of images we have for James Lamont Yard at Port Glasgow.  This image of of the mould loft.


This week I've added a few images from the Lamonts folder to the Yards set on Flickr.  There are a few images in the collection with descriptions and dates on the back so I have used them where available.


This collection is part of one of Bill's personal collections at the Trust and it comes from a few filing cabinets full of prints of ships and yards that he collected over the years.  There is a whole drawer full of images from different shipyards and engine works and I've decided to make this my next project for uploading a selection of them to Flickr.

As we're in the middle of having our offices painted, I still can't scan any new photos so here is an image Dan McDonald took of  a windmill in August 1930 from the set of pictures I put up this week.



**UPDATE** thanks to the power of twitter I found out on Friday that this windmill is called Oranjemolen and was a grain mill built in 1699.  Find out more about it on the Dutch Windmill Database.  Thanks to @MichielBaltusse for the information and @UKwindmills for retweeting our picture.

We are at the start of being redecorated so I'm unable to continue with the images of yards and workshops as planned because our scanner has been packed away.  Instead here are some images from the Dan McDonald collection taken in either Holland or Belgium in August 1930.



Although Dan McDonald's collection is best known for his images of ships.  There is also a series of views of places and we have been uploaded some of these images to our historypin channel.

Recently we have been adding some images from the Dan McDonald collection onto our page at HistoryPin. The website is a great opportunity to look to our past, by pinning pictures from years gone by on a map identifying the location. It's even more fascinating when we can locate a building on Google street view, which allows you to view the street as it is now, and how it was when the picture was taken!

However, some of the images from our collection are unidentified. A couple of distinctive images from the Dan McDonald collection have no location identified; so we would appreciate your help to add these images to HistoryPin. Pictured below is a town/city centre setting, and what appears to be a ruined castle. Recognise either of these? Then let us know!

Today's Friday photo is from a set of images we have for Beardmore's Dalmuir Yard.  One of the things we inherited at the Trust from Bill are a few filing cabinets full of prints of ships and yards that he collected over the years.  There is a whole drawer full of images from different shipyards and engine works and I've decided to make this my next project for uploading a selection of them to Flickr.

We have a new logo for the Ballast Trust which we are starting to use on everything.

It has been designed to be a simpler, cleaner version of the original logo which was put together very quickly when I started in 2009.

The first logo was created using wordle and was intended to get across all the different things that the Ballast Trust does.  However, three years later it seemed very busy and didn't include the tagline that we had started using 'understanding technical archives'.  So we have stripped it back and put together the logo above with a bit more thought, including choosing colours and a font.

The font is called 'British Rail Alphabet' and is based on the Rail Alphabet font developed by Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir in the 1960s and adopted by British Rail in 1965 as part of its corporate rebranding. The colours used are Battleship grey, Cunard red and a navy used by Glasgow University.

Today I'm giving a talk on the value of Twitter for Archives and Archivists as part of the ARA Scotland Born (Digital) Identity conference in Stirling.

I've previously thought that there was no point to the Ballast Trust being on Twitter mainly because we don't have our own collections to highlight.  However, while I was preparing my talk I realised that there are loads of other reasons and benefits to using Twitter would apply to us so we have officially joined!

Find us here.

Image from here

As part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Galgael are holding a workshop tomorrow (Thursday 26th April) to show you how to build a St. Kilda mailboat from found material (redeveloped flotsam) pulled from the River Clyde.

Go here for details of times and how to find Galgael.

One of the model railways at HMRS

On Saturday I gave a talk about the work of the Ballast Trust as part of the Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics workshop organised by the Business Archives Council and the Historical Model Railway Society.

It was a very interesting two days, very useful from our point of view to hear how other organisations manage and use technical records and has given me lots of things to think about.

There is a full write-up of the conference over on Turnip Rail (a blog written by PhD student David Turner about railway history).

One of the most interesting developments we heard about was the Transport Archive Register. This is an online register that aims to "describe archives containing railway and canal records which are not linked to national databases and which might otherwise escape notice. Local libraries, societies and individuals often have collections about which information is hard to find. Anyone is welcome to use the information provided and equally anyone can contribute."

Here at the Ballast Trust we have a processed a collection which belongs to Glasgow City Archives.  It is the papers of R McAlister & Sons, Yachtbuilders based in Dumbarton.

It is a lovely collection, a great example of the work of a smaller firm of boat and yachtbuilders founded in 1857 to build small boats, including racing boats, gigs, canoes and other oared craft which were the main output of the firm. By 1886, expansion of the business meant that McAlister now built sailing yachts, lifeboats, steam yachts and launches. In May 1911 McAlister entered into an arrangement with Mr Valdemar Engelhardt (a Danish captain) to build his collapsible lifeboats and make the McAlister yard his British headquarters. By February 1912 they had delivered the 4 Engelhardt lifeboats that the Titanic carried which they built.

This image on the right of Order Book no. 4 (ref TD1347/10/14) that contains the order for the four lifeboats.  You can see some images of the boats at the end of the pages here (fig 5 and 6) which discuss the development of the Englehardt Collapsible Lifeboat.

The page from the order book is shown below.  It notes that the order is for Messrs Harland & Wolff Ltd Belfast for vessel no. 401 for four Englehardt boats measuring 28' x 8'6" x 3'1" to be delivered February 1912.  The opposite page then records the dates that the four boats were delivered from Greenock by G & J Burns Ltd.

[click to enlarge]

There is obviously a wealth of information online about the Titanic.  One of the advantages of this is that we can see how the four collapsible lifeboats were used.  This website records the names of each of the passengers the different lifeboats held and you can click through on their names to find some biographical information about them and details of their journey plans.  For example, collapsible lifeboat C rescued Joseph Bruce Ismay, the President of the White Star Line.

• Englehardt collapsible lifeboat A
• Englehardt collapsible lifeboat B
• Englehardt collapsible lifeboat C
• Englehardt collapsible lifeboat D

The McAlister collection is at present located at the Ballast Trust but once is it returned to Glasgow City Archives will be available for research and access.

The is a larger version of the order image available on our Flickr page.  Please contact us if you have any questions about the order book.

This week I have been pulling together statistics on our Flickr views for our annual report which needs to be ready for the Trustees' meeting in May.  This year views of our Flickr photostream increased by 56% to 20,695 all time views.  This is on top of last year's increase of 65% so it's great to know that there's an audience for the images we have.

The most viewed image by a long lead with 991 views is HMS Candytuft.  The next closest is Campbelltown and Machrihanish Light Railway Locomotive with 426 views.

Our large catalogue for the collection of British Corporation records has been transferred from its card index files to a spreadsheet, and can now be viewed online! The catalogue, numbering just shy of 1000 ships, contains details of the ships name, the builder, year built, yard number, and the accompanying plans that we hold here, at the Ballast Trust.

The British Corporation Records

The collection dates from around 1890 to the mid 1960's. Most of the records contain essential details on the yard number, and ship dimensions. Many of these records themselves are accompanied by numerous specification sheets. Due to the substantial material of specifications that many of the ships have, a key has been devised to ensure that the maximum detail is provided.

WP = White Print
BP = Blue Print
BLP = Blue Linen Print
PP = Photographic Print

Our searchable document has also included (where possible) the location of the shipbuilder, as many firms had yards in more than one city. Whilst the index of records, as to be expected, includes mainly British Ship Yards, there is a significant minority of boats that have been constructed at foreign yards. We have strived to provide extra detail, where possible, including details on ships built as part of the 1939 Emergency Programme.

We hope that by uploading the collection online, it can find an audience, and any interest or feedback would be much appreciated!

We've been trying to think about themes for what we scan and put up on Flickr and decided this week to get one of our volunteers to look for images of Royal Yachts ahead of May's jubilee celebrations.

There have been 84 Royal Yachts since 1660 and in the Bill Lind Postcard collection we found several examples including this postcard of the Royal Yacht Victoria & Albert III.



See other images here.

Today's Friday photo is of one of the lifeboats from the steel sailing ship the Olivebank.  Built by Mackie & Thomson of Govan in 1892, she was known as an unlucky ship and was built for Andrew Weir & Co.

There is a fab picture of her in full sail from the Australian National Maritime Museum on flickr here.

Specification details available here and an article about the Olivebank is also available on the Clydebuilt site here.

The Ballast Trust gets a name check in an article by Alisdair Northrop about the value of business archives in the March 2012 issue of Scottish Business Insider.

It looks at why business history is relevant for today’s companies and discusses the strong position that business archives in Scotland hold and mentions the role that Bill Lind played in this and the work that we carry out today.

You can read the article online here or view a pdf version here.

Today's Friday photo is an image of the Mairi Bhan a fishing vessel built in Fraserburgh in 1933 and registered in Wick as vessel WK176.

This is one of the negatives that our volunteer Helen has recently finished added to the excel catalogue we have for our Dan McDonald collection.  For some reason the fishing vessels and ports weren't on the original excel spreadsheet.  This has now been remedied and you can download or view the catalogue from our collections page on the website.



It is a lovely collection of images of boats and ports like the fishing port of Pennan near Fraserburgh.

There are several handy services for identifying fonts, my favourite is what the font.  Which on my first run gave me 8 potential matches to investigate.