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...

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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...

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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...

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Today's photo is of the PS Galatea, a paddlesteamer built in 1889 by Caird & Company, Greenock for the Caledonian Steam Packet Company. One week to go until our Christmas image is posted... ...

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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. ...

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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. ...

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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 ...

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Today's Friday photo is an image of a Midship Section plan that is part of the collection of plans we have for the British Corporation. We have scanned it so that it can possibly be used in our 25th anniversary publication which will be published by the end of the year. The plan is stamped A & J Inglis, Glasgow with a date...

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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...

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The Friday photo returns after a shamefully long absence! Things have been pretty busy recently with collections coming and going but we have a wonderful new volunteer who is going to scan in photographs from Bill's own collections which are an assortment of shipping and engineering images he collected.   The first batch come from a drawer entitled 'Clyde and West Coast' and...

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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...

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Today's Friday photo is a locomotive for the Highland Railway. It is an example of the Castle Class designed by Peter Drummond. ...

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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...

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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: Rescue/desposit Processing Return Access Use We had 44 visitors in total and were delighted to...

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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:...

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Today's photo is of the Finnieston Vehicular Ferry carrying horse drawn vehicles.  The Clyde had several ferry crossings, including: 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...

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For today's photo I couldn't resist this random but wonderful image of a Penman's boiler being loaded/unloaded? onto a boat. The records of Penman & Co. Ltd are held by Glasgow City Archives.  At the Ballast Trust we have a collection of job files that we will be processing and adding to the existing collection TD244.  From the SCAN entry for Penman & Co.Ltd: The...

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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...

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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.   Open publication - Free publishing - More annual report ...

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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. It is a FREE workshop to encourage students and academic researchers to make the most of Business Archives will be held at the University of Glasgow. It will bring...

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Today's photo is from a selection that I had printed to decorate our newly refurbished office space.  It shows paddlesteamers queued up to take people 'doon the watter'. Although this photograph was taken in May that year, I thought this was appropriate for the end of the Glasgow Fair Fortnight when Glaswegians in the past traditionally took a trip down the coast on...

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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] ...

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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. ...

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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. ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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....

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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...

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It has been a busy few weeks here at the Ballast with a clear-out and reorganisation. So I'm afraid the Friday photos have slipped.  However here is an image that we've scanned in for our Director to potential use in his book. This is an image of one of the four 10,000 ton cargo motor-ships that were built by Doxford & Sons in...

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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. ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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This week at the Ballast Trust we have been using History Pin, which includes photos, videos, and audio clips.  We have been able to ‘pin’ photographs from the Dan McDonald Collection to their location. Here is a photo from the Whitby Harbour. Why don't you take a look at the other photos available here! ...

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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...

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We had an enquiry this week for plans of the Duchess of Hamilton, built by Harland & Wolff, Govan in 1932.   ...

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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...

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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...

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.. how to identify a 20 year old font so you can use it in a new logo for publicity materials. A bit of a random Friday photo post today but a view into parts of the promotion and publicity side of things here at the Ballast Trust. It was suggested recently that we think about simplifying our existing logo which I had...

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