As a youngster in the 1950s on holiday on the south end of Arran, one of the treats was to spy and identify the ships that passed in and out of the Clyde. There were Canadian Pacific Empresses, and the occasional Cunarder. One special memory was the brightly-lit Irish boats, heading out at bed-time; my favourite was the Irish Coast with its black funnel with a white V of Coast Lines. The boats were the last of the long dynasty of steamers sailing between Glasgow or Ardrossan to Belfast, Londonderry, or Dublin of Messrs Burns and Messrs Laird. This is not a history of the companies or the ships, but an album of various images from engravings, slides, and photographs of the steamers that I have tried to put in some sort of context. The chronology follows the dates of launching rather than the date of acquisition. Irish Coast built by Messrs Harland and Wolff, Belfast, in 1951 The...

This is the final article on the Loch Lomond steamers. It is mostly pictorial in nature with a brief description of the history from 1896 until services on Maid of the Loch ceased operating in 1982. There were sailings after that by Countess Fiona but they are beyond my scope and best covered by the books cited at the end of the article. The Queen at Ardlui The opening of the Caledonian railway line between Glasgow and Dumbarton on October 1st, 1896, signalled the joint ownership, with the North British, of the line between Dumbarton and Balloch, and joint ownership of the steamers on Loch Lomond. On the water, a new pennant was raised with the letters DBJLC—representing the Dumbarton and Balloch Joint Line Committee—superimposed on each other on white with a red background. The funnels were painted red with a black top, loosing the white band of the North British. The livery of grey...

After war was declared on September 3rd, 1939, the local authorities in the Vale of Leven got into action. The invasion of Poland had highlighted the dangers to the civilian population of bombing from the air, and measures were immediately put in place to safeguard lives and property. Notable public buildings such as schools, the labour exchange in Leven Street, the Henry Brock Hospital, and the police station in Hill Street were surrounded by sand-bags. Alexandria Police Station in Hill Street (Ian M‘Caffary, Vale Memories and Banter) Shops had strips of paper glued to their windows to prevent shards of glass flying in the event of a bombing. The blackout was enforced; and kerbs, lamp-posts and telegraph poles had reflecting stripes painted on them to aid walking and driving in the dim lighting that was allowed. However in February 1940, new restricted gas lighting was introduced at...

By the summer of 1890, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company had established a strong position in capturing the bulk of the daily traffic to the Clyde coast. Frequent service from Gourock and Wemyss Bay to Rothesay, Millport, Dunoon, Cowal and the Holy Loch piers with fast and comfortable steamers brought a positive response from the public. In the lower Firth, the service to Arran from Ardrossan by the new Duchess of Hamilton was a great improvement on the opposition’s Scotia. However, the Duchess was a summer butterfly, laid up for the winter, and the provision of a steamer capable of withstanding the rigours of the winter crossing was high on the priority list for the Company. In October, the order was placed for a steamer that was quite a revolution. The hull was constructed by Messrs Russell & Co., of Port Glasgow. She was of similar dimensions of her quasi-sisters built the...

The village of Fairlie, just south of Largs, lies in the shelter of the Cumbraes and was long a summer resort of wealthy Glasgow merchants and lawyers who built villas on the hills behind the row of fishermen’s cottages that fronted the beach. The feudal land-owner was the Earl of Glasgow whose Kelburn Castle is the major estate in the district. Fairlie was a ferry call by the Millport and Ayr steamboats, but traffic was never sufficient to merit the construction of a pier until the Glasgow and South Western Railway planned a branch-line to Largs. Kelburn Castle Apart from fishing, boat building by the Fife family began at Fairlie at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The boatyard produced fishing boats and small trading sloops and smacks, and, for more wealthy clients, yachts and cutters. In 1814, an early steamboat, Industry, came from the yard of John & William Fife, and...