Blog at the Ballast

This ship was built for the North British Steam Packet Company in 1883, by Barclay Curle & Company of Whiteinch. Unfortunately, she was considered too slow and returned to the builders after one season. She was sold to Captain Campbell of Kilmun, subsequently to the Caledonian Steam Packet Company, and finally to the Leopoldina Railway Company, for service in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro.

She left the Clyde in 1902, and the image seems to show her boarded up and ready for an Atlantic adventure.

There's another shot on flickr of her leaving Kilcreggan pier.

One for the start of the summer holidays this week! We uploaded this fab image of the Duke of Devonshire paddle steamer a couple of weeks ago to our flickr photostream. The ship was built by R & H Green, Blackwall, 1896.

There is more information about her on this website.



 Our image shows her at Lulworth Cove and I also realised this week via twitter that there are a few videos of her coming into the cove on youtube.

This week's photo is of the ps Lucy Ashton. She was built in 1888 by Thomas B Seath of Rutherglen, and owned by the North British Steam Packet Company, first working on the Holy Loch service and later steaming between Craigendoran and Gareloch.


She made her final run in February 1949. After that, she was sold for experimental use by the British Research Shipbuilding Association, during which she was stripped to the hull and fitted with jet engines. She was finally scrapped in 1951.

The name Lucy Ashton comes from Walter Scott's historical novel, The Bride of Lammermoor.

More great images have been added to flickr this week by our volunteer, Ruth. Including this wonderful image of the paddle steamer Industry, built by William Fife of Fairlie in 1814.


Fittingly as we're heading off to the opening of the refurbished Scottish Maritime Museum site at Irvine this afternoon, they also have a copy of this image up on their flickr site here with lots of information about the career of PS Industry.

Today a new exhibition opens at the National War Museum in Edinburgh - Arctic Convoys. I attended a preview of it yesterday evening as the Ballast Trust had worked with the National Museums Scotland (NMS) and Glasgow Museums to arrange for our model of the SS Rathlin to be included in the exhibition.

Glasgow Museums hold a large collection of ship models loaned to the Museum from the 1970s onwards by Bill Lind and since his death the Trustees of the Ballast Trust and Lind Foundation are responsible for them.

We were very pleased to be able to work with NMS to arrange for the loan and the model looks wonderful in its new display. The Rathlin served as a rescue ship during the Arctic Convoys but she had been built by Alexander Stephen & Sons Glasgow in 1936. We have a photograph of her from the Dan McDonald Collection below and there is some good information about her work as a rescue ship here.

Today's photo is from the Bill Lind collection, and is of the ps Duchess of Hamilton taking on some choppy seas. She was built by William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton, for the Caledonian Steam Packet Company.


The Duchess of Hamilton was the first vessel fitted with a Parsons turbine, which generated electricity for lighting. She was commandeered by the Admiralty as a minesweeper during WWI, and sunk by a mine near Harwich, on the 29th November 1915.