Blog at the Ballast

The University of Glasgow has put together a pack of plans for the Lusitania.  "Each pack comprises full-size, rolled paper copies of the nine key plans for model-makers, plus an A3 colour poster of striking images, all at a 35% discount on the individual cost of these items."

More details are available on their blog and website.

Apologies for the lack of post last Friday.  My forward planning didn't work and as I was in Hawick all day I wasn't able to put one up.

I was in Hawick talking about this blog, the Glasgow University one and how to use web 2.0 technologies in archives.  If you're interested my slides from the day are up here.

This Sunday the Lighthouse in Glasgow is screening a free showing of Seawards the Great Ships. The 1960 oscar winning documentary about shipbuilding on the Clyde.

Full details on the screening here and more information about the film itself here.

These are some pictures of a ship called the 'Alert', it has been tricky to find information about it. According to the Lloyds Registers that Southampton have digitised there are 9 entries for ships named 'Alert' and the Clydebuilt database has 10. Without knowing the tonnage or date of build its impossible for me to decide which of these entries this images relate to. So I can only offer some pictures and hope that someone out there might care to fill in the blanks?

The National Maritime Museum has put online its Admiralty collection of sailing warship plans, commonly known as the 'Sailing Navy collection'.  This means that 711 plans are available to look at online covering the period from 1700 to the 1900s. The collection can be viewed here.

You can browse through the entire collection or by maker or century if you wish to narrow it down.  Once you've found an image you like, you can enlarge it so that the detail on the plan can be clearly read and images can also be emailed to friends or ordered up as prints.

Fairfield Shipyard Offices will be open this weekend as part of the Glasgow doors open day range of events.  Details about when they are open and how to get there are available here.

Another building that is open as part of the weekend is Maxwell Park Station (information here), something for the Caledonian Railway fans out there.