Blog at the Ballast

Several photographs from the William Lind Collection (held at the Ballast Trust) have been digitised and added to our Flickr account. The recent updates include two photographs of the S.S. Columbia, pictured below.

I am currently volunteering at the Ballast Trust where I have begun scanning and uploading some of the merchant shipping photographs held at the Ballast Trust from the William Lind Collection.

The picture below depicts one of the photographs from the William Lind collection.


This is the S.S "Amerika" built by Harland & Wolff, Belfast, in 1905.  Her story begins in 1910 where "Amerika" was the first ship to carry an extra-tariff restaurant, created by Charles Mews's of Ritz Carlton fame.

In 1912 she transmitted an iceberg warning just hours before the RMS Titanic struck the fatal iceberg that caused it to sink. In 1914, with the outbreak of WW1, "Amerika" hid in Boston util the Americans entered the war where she was renamed "America", and carried troops across the Atlantic.

Check out the Ballast Trust's flicker account for more photographs and other interesting stories by clicking the link here.

~ Joanne Savage, Volunteer

More images from the paddle steamer album have been added by our Project Scotland volunteeer this week to Flickr. Including this one of the Windsor Castle built by Caird & Co, Greenock, circa 1860.

Edit: Apparently the Caird & Co ship was built in 1859 and sank in 1860; since we have another photo of this ship dated 1889 (though we don't know when or how that date was attached), this may be a different Windsor Castle - most likely the 1875 ship built by Thomas B Seath of Rutherglen.



There is a model of the 1859 Windsor Castle on display in the McLean Museum, details here.

Today's photo is one which caused me some confusion this week! I'm the Project Scotland volunteer who's been scanning old photos of paddlesteamers. Usually, after scanning a photograph, I look up the ship in one or two places, such as the Clydebuilt database, and find a little information to put on our flickr. Not this one, however.


It looked to me like a very early paddle steamer, and I was quite put out at not being able to find anything. At first I thought the name written beside it was wrong - the second word didn't look like Maid to me - but my eyes deceived me, and Scottish Maid was indeed the name. Staff member Duncan took a look as well, and he recognised that the photograph was taken from Gourock Pier, with Kilcreggan in the background.

Unfortunately for my searching, Scottish Maid is also the name of the first clipper ship, and she dominated the initial search results.

One item caught my eye, though: a genealogy forum. The original post was from an Australian, looking for information on his great-great-grandfather from Port Glasgow, who was lost at sea. Further down the page was a paragraph from the Glasgow Herald about that very man's death in 1863 after falling from "the Tug-Steamer Scottish Maid" in Port Glasgow harbour. Port Glasgow is not very far from Gourock - surely it was the same boat?

Searching for "Scottish Maid tug" brought me immediately to Tyne Tugs which lists four tugs under the name; but only one of them was registered at Port Glasgow.

So, this is - most likely - the wooden tugboat Scottish Maid, built by J Dowey of North Shields, in 1846. She was registered at Port Glasgow in 1853, and stayed on the Clyde until she was broken up in 1873.


Update: New information has come my way, that another of those four tugs was based at Greenock from 1877 to 1892. This was the Scottish Maid built in Gateshead in 1856.

Simply thinking about the development of photography, it's probably more likely to be the later boat; we may never know for sure...

The Donaldson brothers, John and William, began working together in the 1850s as ship-brokers and eventually turned to ship owners with their first ship the wooden sailing barque Joan Taylor, named after the Captain’s niece, in 1858. The brothers were to become very successful and wealthy as they exploited the new South American trade markets. As the company expanded they moved into providing both passenger and cargo shipping, such as opening major routes to Canada. 

Maranon c1868: Photoengraved image Photograph Album TD49/263

I'm delighted to be able to share the official Ballast Trust history. This has been published by the Trustees to mark and celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Ballast Trust.

We are sending hard copies out in the post this week to organisations and individuals we have worked with over the last 25 years, our volunteers and other relevant organisations. But this online version also means that we can share our beautifully designed history* with other interested parties.

While December 2012 was the 25th anniversary of the official Trust deed being set up, the operations of the Ballast Trust really got going throughout 1988 when work begun on the huge job at Port Glasgow to process the Scott Lithgow records. So for this reason, throughout 2013, we'll be tweeting extracts from Bill's diaries to try and get a sense of what the Trust was doing in its first full year of operations (mainly sorting and rolling lots of plans!!).

*Our history was designed and printed by Resolve Creative.

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.

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.

The Ballast Trust is working with ProjectScotland to create a volunteering opportunity for a young person to give them an opportunity to an understanding of archives as a career and the role of an archivist.

It is with great sadness that we have to report the death of Graham Robinson, a volunteer with the Ballast Trust. Graham had worked as a volunteer for 10 years and was a valued colleague and friend.

During his time with us he applied his many technical skills to the identification and listing of the Grahame E Langmuir collection of railway photographs which is now held at the Mitchell Library. More recently he had completed over 5 years of work to separate, rebuild and list a large collection of British Rail negatives and slides on behalf of the National Archives of Scotland.

This was a substantial project that relied heavily on Graham’s amazing powers of identification, particularly as much of the collection was from the later 20th century after the Beaching cuts when a large amount of signage disappeared making identification more difficult. Graham’s hard work has resulted in 98 boxes being completed which contain nearly 35,000 items.

He will be sorely missed by us all.

The Ballast Trust is supported in what it does by the work of its volunteers. Without them it would be very difficult for us to make sense of the material we work with.