Blog at the Ballast

These are two images from a ship called Uncle Ned. I chose these images mainly because I liked the look of the figurehead as I was going through potential images for today's post. He's quite a dapper chap.

However, when it came to finding out anything about the ship, it was tricky. There was no information on the back of the print except the name of the ship. Using the Plimsoll Ship Database I was able to find several entries in Lloyd's for the Uncle Ned.

This told me that it was built in 1867 by E. Robertson in Ipswich and was 188 tons and while originally a sailing vessel had had an oil engine fitted by at least 1930 (earliest date of Lloyd entries in the database).

This is a picture of the men unloading whisky from the Pibroch at Bunnahabhain Distillery on Islay in 1952.

This is a picture of the first Pibroch, which was built by Scotts of Bowling in 1923. She was commissioned by the Mackie brothers, owner of the White Horse Distillery of Lagavulin and served them and their successors, Scottish Malt Distillers carrying coal and barley to the island and whiskey out. A second Pibroch was launched in 1957 (more information here).

Image taken 8 July 1952

The PS Waverley is one of the most famous of the Clyde paddle steamers and is now the last sea-going paddle steamer in the world. I'm posting images of it today because the Waverley's Clyde sailings start again today, you can find out more about the timetable here.

In the Dan McDonald collection we only have images of the original Waverley, built in 1899 by A and J Inglis of Pointhouse and sunk at Dunkirk in 1940.


Image taken in Bowling 9 October 1921, the Waverley sits between the Columba and the Iona.

This ship was built for the North British Railway Company and was used on longer distance cruises from Craigendoran.

As promised last week, here's an image to make up for the photoless Friday the 19th!

This is a picture of men at work on the Malabar. This was a ship built by Barclay, Curle and Company, Scotstoun and launched on 9 July 1925.

More information about the MV Malabar's career can be found here and how it came to be shipwrecked in 1931 here.

No image today (I'll post one on Tuesday to make up for it) as I'm out of the office. Instead I thought I'd write a little bit about how I put the Friday photos together and find out about the images.

StoryBox is being used by the River Clyde exhibition to capture people's memories and experiences of life on the Clyde. Several stories have been submitted already and include memories of a Clyde engineer, tales about the Renfrew Ferry and some background information about the filming of the opening sequence of Seawards the Great Ships. Which incidentally is being shown on 20th September at the Lighthouse as part of the exhibition.

Do you have a memory or story you'd like to share? If so, submit it to the StoryBox website.