This week, we have a beautiful three-masted iron sailing ship from the Dan McDonald Collection, the 'Earl of Zetland'. Like most of the glass negatives in this collection, this particular ship was built on the Clyde, at Archibald McMillan & Sons yard in Dumbarton in 1875. She is recorded as carrying many immigrants to Australia and New Zealand, with one group of immigrants being 'without a single dissentient...fully satisfied' (although one went mad during the voyage...).

As an ocean-going 'windjammer', she and her crew would have had to endure the most treacherous seas, and it is very likely that she would have lost several crewmen over the course of her career in accidents. According to the South Australia Maritime Museum, most of the officers and crew apparently went mad during a voyage from Sourabaya to San Francisco, for reasons unexplained. She was wrecked in 1905 at Vang near Hasle, Bornholm while carrying a cargo of timber. It isn't known if the crew survived.

~ William Brown, Volunteer