A small album of old cartes de visite of ships got my attention.  When it was opened, it revealed some images that were familiar and some that were not.  Many of the ships were connected with the Rutherglen shipbuilder Thomas Seath.  It took me quite some time to identify all the ships and the original owner and purpose of the collection still remains a mystery, but the little album remains one of my favorite finds.

The most intriguing picture in the collection is a sweet pose of a young bearded man and, presumably, his wife.  The connections of the pictures of the ships to this picture is readily apparent.  The man is surely Tommy Seath, born on 20th September of 1820 at Prestonpans in East Lothian, and the young lady he married in 1848 was Helen Young.

T B Seath and wife (Bell, Trongate, Glasgow)

When he was eight years old, Seath’s family moved to Glasgow and at the age of fourteen, young Tom went to sea on the Glasgow and Liverpool steamers under the management of Thomson and McConnell. During the 1840s, Tom Seath was involved with the Largs and Millport steamer, Lady Brisbane, on the Clyde and so became acquainted with the management and maintenance of coastal shipping.  In 1854, he began building ships at Meadowside in Glasgow and two years later he moved his yard to Rutherglen.

At Meadowside, Seath built a small steamship, Artizan, on his own account to run between Glasgow and Rutherglen. At that time there was a proposal to improve the Clyde navigation for the seven miles above Glasgow Bridge.  The Artizan was revolutionary in that she could be controlled directly from the steering platform.  The fares charged were 3d in the cabin and 2d steerage with a cabin return at 4d.  The popularity of the Rutherglen service led to a replacement, Royal Burgh, when the Artizan was sold to Irish owners for service on the Lakes of Killarney.  However, the service was discontinued after a few years as Seath’s energies were directed elsewhere.  The Artizan is one of the steamers that is illustrated in the album.

Artizan (Turnbull & Son, Glasgow)

Seath continued to build small high quality iron steamers and steam yachts right up to the turn of the century.  Each of the steamers had to negotiate the weir built across the Clyde and this presented some interesting problems for the larger vessels.   Seath died in 1903 and with him so did the importance of shipbuilding in upper Clyde.

One of the photographs was of the schooner, Gipsey King.  There were two schooners of the name but I suspect the one that is photographed is contemporaneous with the other craft in the collection.  The coastal part iron-bolted schooner, Gipsey King, was built in Dundee in 1859 and owned by Potter & Co. of Glasgow. She was 231 tons, and her master is given as P. Gibson in Lloyd’s register of 1861. She was lost in 1869 on the Dulas Rocks on the north east coast of Anglesey, only one of her crew was saved.

Gipsey King (S H Fyfe, Glasgow)

I do not know the origins of the earlier Glasgow owned Gipsey King, but she featured in a famous case at the Admiralty Court.

“The Highlander, a small vessel of 119 tons, with a cargo of pig-iron, on a voyage from Glasgow to Rotterdam, having a river pilot (not a duly-licensed pilot) on board, about half past three o’clock p.m., of the 25th April, 1846, the tide being very far gone, took the ground on the N. side of the river Clyde, near Dumbarton Castle. In the evening she floated again, but there not being wind enough to enable her to make sail against the current, by direction of the pilot, her small bower anchor was let go, and she rode (not being moored) towards the north side of the channel. Whilst the Highlander was in this position, about ten o’clock the schooner Gipsey King, of 217 tons, from Liverpool to Glasgow, deeply laden with a general cargo, drawing fourteen feet water, was coming up the Clyde, in charge of a duly-licensed pilot, taken on board under compulsion the statutes and rules regulating the navigation of that river, towed, along with two other vessels, by the Gulliver steamer, the Gipsey King being the last of the vessels in tow. On the part of the Gipsey King, it was alleged that the pilot on board Gulliver, the towing vessel, seeing the Highlander anchored in the deepened channel, hailed her to pay away her chain and shift her helm: but that no notice was taken of the hail, and the anchor of the Gipsey King caught the chain cable of the Highlander, came in contact with her rudder, and did the damage which was the subject of the action. It was further alleged that, by the 63rd of the Bye-Laws for the River Clyde, it was ordered that vessels should not lie at anchor in the deepened channel, unless it was absolutely necessary, and should leave it as soon as they could; and that, whilst there, they should so anchor as not to prevent a free passage for other vessels. The owners of the Highlander alleged that there was sufficient room where she was anchored for other vessels to pass, and that the blame of the collision was attributable to the Gipsey King, the owners of which imputed the accident to the improper position taken up by the Highlander, which had abundant time to get out of the way.”—Admiralty Court, 1847.

The court determined that the Gipsey King was to blame and there were arguments to the view that her anchor was improperly catted as it holed the Highlander below the water line.  Ultimately the pilot, who had conveniently died in the interim, was blamed and neither of the owners were held liable for costs.

On March 22 1859, the Glasgow and Liverpool trader, Gipsey King of Glasgow, was reported abandoned and dismasted in the Irish Channel.  The crew got on board the Bahama Lightship, and were landed at Ramsey Isle of Man on the 18th.

Seath was well known for the production of steam-yachts and produced many vessels for important owners.  One of these yachts was the Fairy Queen, built in 1859 for Colonel Ridlehalgh.  She was almost sixty-six feet long, finely appointed and fitted with the latest facilities, including a gas manufacturing plant for lighting.  Her beat was the inland Lake Windermere and after sailing to Parkhead she was manhandled onto a trailer and hauled ten miles by a team of twenty-five horses to be relaunched at Fell Foot.

Fairy Queen on Windermere (Anderson, Glasgow)

Fairy Queen on the slip (McKenzie, Paisley)

Fairy Queen’s internal appointments (McKenzie, Paisley)

The Fairy Queen was sold in 1879 and had a number of subsequent owners in Cardiff, Liverpool and ultimately Crete.

The little photograph that caught my eye originally was the Vale of Clwyd off Dumbarton Rock.  The steamer was built in 1865 by Seath for Robert Preston, for service from Liverpool to the North Wales coastal resorts.  Seath had a financial interest in this business.  At 155 tons, the Vale of Clwyd was 187 ft long by 19 ft breadth and was powered by a compound engine with two cylinders acting on a single crank to 90 hp.

Vale of Clwyd

After a year sailing out of Liverpool, the Vale of Clwyd was brought back to the Clyde and replaced on the North Wales sailings by the Elwy.  On the Clyde, she was known as the “Vale of Clyde” and ran on the Ayr route initially for David Hunter, Thomas Steele and Hugh McJannet, another enterprise in which Seath had a financial stake. After the construction of a new Bonnie Doon for the Ayr service in 1876, the Vale of Clwyd was chartered to Campbell and Gilles for service out of Wemyss Bay and after a few years was sold to the Thames.

When Vale of Clwyd returned to the Clyde, she was joined in the service by Vale of Doon, a slightly larger steamer of 179 tons also built by Seath at Rutherglen.

 

Vale of Doon

The Elwy, at 242 tons, was a larger two-funneled vessel, perhaps more suited to the more exposed waters of the Irish Sea.  She was built in 1866 and was 210 ft in length by 25 ft in breadth.  She did not tarry long in the service but was sold to Constantinople in 1869.

Elwy

The Kin Lin was launched from Rutherglen in April 1864.  She was an iron single-screw steamer of of 100 hp and at 339 tons barely 160 ft long by 22 ft in breadth and 11 ft in depth.  Her original owners were J. Paton, Thomas Steele, and H. M’Jannet of Ayr and she appears to have been intended for the coastal trade.  However, she was sent out to the far-east  at the end of 1864 and the following year she was sold to the Prince of Satsuma and renamed Mannen Maru.

“The correspondent of the North China Herald, writing on the 3rd instant, says that the Kinlin has been sold to the Prince of Satsuma for $56,000 in cash, and the steamer Sarah. The latter vessel was bought some time ago, but is so badly injured that the owners were glad to get rid of her. There is also a rumour that the Ayrshire Lass, Union, and Wild Wave have been sold. Business was at a standstill in consequence of the Japanese holidays, or Matzuri, which were observed from the 27th to the 30th ultimo. The Japanese who attacked the officers of H.M.S. Rattler, and was subsequently shot by Mr. French, as reported in our last, died three days after he was wounded. The authorities seem to have changed their tone, for they now express their satisfaction at the punishment inflicted on the offender, as it will deter others from drawing their swords on foreigners. The fellow who was guilty in this instance was not, as was at first supposed, a retainer of Satsuma’s. He was a Nagasaki man employed at the time by Satsuma to purchase coals. He leaves a widow and two children. Just before his death he made a full confession, but said he was drunk at the time, and did not know what he was doing.”—Nagasaki (London and China Telegraph Dec 27, 1865).

Kin Lin

The Miaca was a small iron barque-rigged single-screw steamer launched by Seath at Rutherglen in 1866.  At 412 gross tons she was 160 ft by 30 ft with a depth of 17 ft.  Her propulsion consisted of a compounded two-cylinder engine generating 75 hp and she was reboilered in 1874 in Glasgow when she was owned by the Tyne Steam Ship Co. Ltd of Newcastle.—Loyd’s List 1876

Miaca

The Meg Merrilies was not a Seath product.  She was built in 1866 by A & J Inglis at Pointhouse for the North British Railway who planned an ambitious service from Helensburgh to Ardrishaig in competition with Hutcheson’s new Iona.  The service did not meet expectations and the steamer was withdrawn to be sold to Constantinople in 1868.

Meg Merrilies (S H Fyfe, Glasgow)

The last of the pictures in the collection proved to be the toughest to identify.  A powerful single funneled vessel with beautiful lines, she has the looks of a blockade runner built for the American Civil War.  In fact, she was built for the Sydney to Brisbane service, this is Lady Young.  The Lady Young and her sister, Lady Bowen, were built by A & J Inglis in 1864.  The Lady Young was 210 ft long by 26 ft in breadth, at 527 tons and with powerful two-cylinder oscillating engines generating 150 hp, designed for the open waters of the east coast of Australia

Lady Young (Ralston)

There is a photograph in my collection showing the Lady Bowen in Rothesay Bay.

Lady Bowen in Rothesay Bay

A fascinating little album that tells a story of one of the least well-known of the Clyde’s shipbuilders and his early business connections to coastal shipping.

Rutherglen Lore, W. Ross Shearer, Alexander Gardner, Paisley, 1926.

Steamers of North Wales, F. C. Thornley, T. Stephenson & Son, Prescott, 1962.

The Great Age of Steam on Windermere, G. H. Pattinson, Windermere Nautical Trust, 1981.