Stranraer is not a Clyde resort that springs readily to mind. Nestled at the head of Loch Ryan, it provided a safe haven for the traffic to northern Ireland from the earliest days of steamboat travel. A stone quay was erected in 1820 at a cost of £3,800 and was extended in 1855 to make it accessible at all states of the tide. A second pier, associated with the railway expansion was completed seven years later. Regular steamboat communication with between Stranraer and Glasgow began in 1820 with Highland Chieftain that was replaced on the route around 1824 by the Dumbarton Castle, and for a time, Maid of Islay. In the 1830s, the steamers on the station were Hercules and Argyle, with the Ayr, Nimrod, Northern Yacht, and Lochryan involved later in the decade. In the 1840s as steamships transitioned from wooden to iron hulls, and the railway arrived at Ayr, the Albion, Queen of Scots,...

In the late 1840s, Clyde steamer services were controlled by monopolies that provided year-round service and at a reasonable price to the general public. The Castle Company that had dominated the sailings to Dunoon, Rothesay, the Kyles of Bute, and Loch Fyne since the 1830s had recently been taken over by Messrs Burns, expanding their hold on the tourist routes to the Western Highlands and Islands. They had also taken a lease on the Bowling to Balloch Railway, providing access to steam-boat services on Loch Lomond, and had the fast two-funnelled steamer, Plover, built by Messrs Wingate in 1848, to provide the connection between Glasgow and Bowling. The south-bank services to Largs, Millport, Ayr, and Arran had been in the hands of the Union Steam-Boat Company since 1846 with Duncan M‘Kellar as the principal owner. Messrs Henderson & M‘Kellar (Alexander M‘Kellar, snr., was the elder...

While going through a collection of old sepia photographs, I came across one that attracted my attention; it did not look quite right. The photograph shows Marchioness of Breadalbane at the Millport berth at Wemyss Bay with a paddle box that is black. Many will of course recognize that this dates the photograph to 1919, when the Marchioness was demobbed from service as a minesweeper in April, and quickly refurbished. The conversion back to civilian life was rough and ready, and for that season only, she appeared with black paddle boxes when placed on the Millport roster at the beginning of June. As further units of the Caledonian Steam Packet Co. were released over the following months, the Marchioness of Breadalbane was withdrawn in the third week of November, and reappeared in 1920 in her old livery, and complete with electric light. Marchioness of Breadalbane at Wemyss Bay I have...

The Società di Navigazione à Vapore della Peninsula Sorrentina, was established in 1902 in Naples. The ship-owner, Gioacchino Lauro, was the major shareholder, and the company was formed to compete with the Società Napoletana di Navigazione à Vapore, that held the concession for postal services and until then had a monopoly of the domestic navigation in the Gulf of Naples. There was a burgeoning passenger and goods trade between Naples and Sorrento and Capri, as well as sailings along the Amalfi coast. The first vessel acquired by the company was the former P. & A. Campbell steamer Princess May, that was renamed Principessa Jolanda. She had been built in 1853 by Messrs Barclay, Curle & Co., Ltd., for the Brighton, Worthing & South Coast Steam Boat Co. Ltd., and was surplus to requirements when that company was taken over by Messrs P. & A. Campbell in 1901. In 1903, two...

The trials and tribulations of the Largs and Millport Union Steam Boat Company have been related up until the close of 1856. At that point, the company had a fleet consisting of the new Jupiter, the Venus and Vesta that were relatively new, the Star that was ageing but strongly built, and two of the original steamers of the company, Lady Brisbane, and Lady Kelburne, both strongly built but more than 10 years old. Alexander M‘Kellar was now the leading light, and was master of the Jupiter. The two-funnelled steamers Jupiter and Venus were most commonly to be found on the Arran Service, the Star and the Lady Kelburne, generally on the Ardrossan and Ayr route, and Lady Brisbane and Vesta serviced Largs and Millport, with the latter catering to excursion traffic. Lady Brisbane and Lady Kelburne in 1845 It was in 1854 that the company first experienced serious competition for the summer...

The Diamond was a steamer that appeared on the Glasgow to Arran route in the summer of 1857, and the mystery was that she is recorded as having been built in 1853 by Messrs James Henderson at Renfrew. There is no record of a steamer named Diamond building on the Clyde that year, and so it seems likely that she was built under a different name. What was the name of the steamer? What had happened to her in the interim? Why was the name changed? The oft reported answer to these questions owes its provenance to a letter in the Glasgow Herald in the summer of 1897 that states “I am in possession of a list made out in 1856 or 1857 by a relative officially then connected with the shipping of the port.  According to that list, the following river steamers had within the previous year or two left the river:—Mars, Invincible, Merlin, Reindeer, Baron (came back as Diamond in 1857), Dunrobin...