Sailing Out of Oban with Pioneer and Mountaineer

on Jun 10, 2015

The naturally sheltered waters of Oban Bay, enclosed by the Island of Kerrera to the south and west and farther off, the Islands of Mull and Lismore to the north attracted the earliest steamboats on the West of Scotland trade. The quay at Oban was a low stone built affair and by the middle of the nineteenth century was proving inadequate for the traffic and the expansion of the tourist trade. Around 1848, a ship, the B.C. Bailey, foundered off Lismore at Kilcheran, and the wreck was brought into Oban Bay and lay at the quay for a time until it was built over to form the North Pier. In the first of the old photographs, the outline of the hull can be seen below the pier construction. Oban in the 1850s In the second photograph, the pier is a little more advanced and there are some buildings upon it. The third photograph is from a different angle and shows the corner of the bay. Oban...

The Royal Route

on May 28, 2015

Steamboat travel from Glasgow to Oban and the West Highlands and Islands by way of the Crinan Canal originated with the Comet in 1819. As trade developed in the succeeding years, there were a number of innovations to reduce the time taken on the journey. The most important of these came in 1839 when cooperation between the owners Thomson & MacConnell and J. Martin and J. & G. Burns who dominated the trade, allowed the introduction of a “swift steamer” service where passengers could arrive “at Oban, Tobermory, or Fort William in the evening of the day they leave Glasgow, and at Portree and Inverness in the afternoon of the second day.” To accomplish this, the passengers had an early start leaving at 5:00 in the morning on Robert Napier’s Brenda, now running for Thomson & MacConnell, direct for Lochgilphead from there they transferred to the new track-boat Thornwood for...