Scotland and the Sea

Contents Preface

vi

1 19 34 47 69

1 2 3 4 5 6

An Important Role in a National Service The Start of the Steamship Era The Emigrant – Fuel for Trade and Empire In the Service of Empire London Scottish Wood to Iron, Iron to Steel, Sail to Steam: The Shipbuilders and Engineers 7 Clyde-Built 8 Innovators, Investors and Entrepreneurs 9 Missionaries, Explorers and Traders 10 The Making of the Sailors and Some of their Stories 11 Disasters and Lessons Learnt 12 The Atlantic Crossing 13 Bens and Clans – Cargo Liners to the Orient 14 Tramps, Bulkers, Other Specialists and the Jute Trade 15 A Heritage to be Proud of

86 102 119 142 154 171 191 213 231 257

References 275 Index 276

2 Scotland and the sea

Typical of the fleet of the Clyde Shipping Company was the coastal passenger liner Rathlin (1905) which served her owners until 1933 when she was sold.

the Honourable East India Company. The birth of the steamship lay firmly at the door of Scottish inventors, engineers, boilermakers and shipbuilders, and the initial success of the steamship was keenly demonstrated by innovative shipowning syndicates initially focused on Glasgow and Edinburgh. Or so the Scots would have it – in reality the first commercial steamer service was in America and the first paddle steamer to venture on the high seas was American.

Steam-raising from coal was, of course, the driver behind the Industrial Revolution ashore, and Scotsman Henry Bell took the new steam technology to sea as a commercial venture aboard his Comet. The English engineer Isambard Brunel wryly observed that ‘Bell did what we engineers all failed in – he gave us the sea steamer; his scheming was Britain’s steaming’.

There are several good reasons why Scotland was the hub of maritime industry in the nineteenth century, and why it exerted its dominance in early marine engineering, in ship design, and even in the need to develop international trade. The first was the opening up of the Glasgow Coalfield.

Shallow but rich seams of good-quality steam coal were extracted from workings beneath what is now Glasgow city, and the mines worked progressively eastwards into deeper reserves towards Monklands and beyond. The second was a pool of intelligent and innovative men who had been brought up on the technological race of the Industrial Revolution.

Collectively, these men maintained the vision that steamships would take over from sail, and, unlike sailing ships, would run to an advertised timetable

An Important Role in a National Service   3

at regular intervals. They were capable of applying their vision equally to the practicalities of timber and of iron castings, and to the business of economics and company management.

Equally important were the inventors and designers who so rapidly drove the evolution of the steamship. They were quick to recognise, for example, that the earliest marine steam engines were over-complicated and constantly in need of adjustment, and so set about simplifying their designs to make the engines less prone to breakdown. Another element was a determination to travel and to trade, complemented by a ready-made skills base which excelled in seamanship. The seamen were the islanders who relied on the sea for food and contact with the mainland; the Hebrideans and Shetlanders took the lead here, and taught the lowland men how to navigate. And the final element was an entrepreneurial will in men who were keen to take risks, but who were also able to manage the risk-taking. Of course, once these skills had been set to work, and steamers set out from the Forth and the Clyde, the momentum generated by the new industry drove it forward with increasing confidence.

The developing British Empire provided an ideal global context in which the Scots and their inventions could reach the ends of the earth.

The early steamers arrived in heady days when the wealth of the Industrial Revolution engendered some grand and ambitious designs. When the celebrated English engineer John Smeaton was invited to work on the Forth

Dining saloon aboard the Carron Line steamer Forth (1887). (Linda Gowans collection)

46 Scotland and the sea

All the troop-carrying quarters and most of the original passenger accommodation had been dismantled and new accommodation built for the carrying of emigrants. Rooms with two, four and six berths, and hot and cold running water, had been built; the original six public rooms on the promenade deck had been retained, and one of the other public rooms had been fitted out as a nursery. The main engines had been completely overhauled and the boilers and most of the auxiliaries renewed. She sailed from Glasgow on 1 November [1948] with 1,276 emigrants bound for Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney.

Cameronia was sold to the Ministry of Transport in January 1953 to become the troopship Empire Clyde, retaining an Anchor Line crew and Anchor Line management but operated by the Sea Transport Service out of Glasgow. Captain Hobson sailed under berth arrangements with Shaw Savill & Albion and was transferred to the New Zealand government in 1951, complete with her Henderson Line crew. She completed her final voyage to Wellington in May 1958 and was later sold for demolition. Empire Clyde was withdrawn and scrapped in 1957. In 1960 the government-sponsored service ceased and the last of the Scottish emigrant ships, Captain Cook, was laid up and withdrawn. Thereafter, the Italian-owned Sitmar Line offered cheap fares for emigrating families until the late 1960s, after which the emigrant service was operated by air. It is ironic that an Italian-owned company should provide a sea service for British emigrants, much as the Anchor Line had done earlier for Italian emigrants.

Empire Clyde (1921), formerly the Anchor Line’s Cameronia, served on the post-World War II assisted passage to Australia for the Ministry of Transport

4

In the Service of Empire There are two remarkable aspects to Scotland’s involvement in the Merchant Navy. The first is that the founders of the many important Scottish shipping companies all belonged to one great community. That they knew each other is not surprising, because the shipping company offices in Glasgow were mostly situated in and around Bothwell Street, and in Leith were focused on Leith Walk. These geographical clusters of like-minded companies not only reflected the respective industrial and port city foci, but also, like the numerous IT companies grouped in the Thames Valley today, stayed geographically close to each other in order to share experience and learn from each other. The other remarkable aspect is the breadth of Scottish shipping interests, with such ‘English’ companies as P&O, British India and, of course, Cunard being essentially Scottish in origin, and all heavily reliant on Scots managers and senior officers throughout their tenure.

The shipowners’ cabal in Glasgow was so highly respected that it invited foreigners to aspire to its own standards. The most famous of these was Charles Cayzer, who brought his Clan Line of Steamships from Liverpool in 1881 under a refinancing package backed by Scottish merchants. Cayzer later became one of the most respected shipowners in Glasgow (see chapter 13).

Other English shipping companies did not quite manage to forsake St George for St Andrew, but they adorned their companies in a distinctly tartan fashion – the Nelson Line, for instance, adopted its Highland fleet nomenclature, which clashed desperately with its corporate cockney accent.

So numerous were the Scottish shipping companies which maintained the trade routes with Empire that no single book could recount their histories adequately. A review of some of the companies and of their founding fathers will, however, illustrate the breadth of the industry and show how the family of Scottish shipowners actually worked.

Paddy Henderson was once a household name in Glasgow. The Henderson house flag not only flew on the High Seas, but in due course was seen the length and breadth of the mighty Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers in Burma.

The timeline for the various Henderson companies in the nineteenth century is complex, and is intertwined with other companies, both by marriage of family members and by a variety of business agreements: 47

108    Scotland and the sea

(Above) Queen Mary (1936) at the start of a liner voyage from Southampton to New York, 30 July 1964.

(Author) (Left) The shell in the early days of construction, before work was stopped on the hull in December 1931 due to the Depression.

(Bottom left) Partly plated hull seen after work resumed in April 1934. Every shell and deck plate overlaps adjacent plates by up to one foot depending on the number of rivets required in the overlap.

(Above) Grand main hall and shops reflecting the art deco mood of the period.

(Below) Traditional main lounge.

Clyde-Built 109

King George V wryly commented on the years of the Depression in his address: For three years her uncompleted hull has lain in silence on the stocks. We know full well what misery a silent dockyard may spread among a seaport and with what courage that misery is endured. During those years when work upon her was suspended we grieved for what that suspension meant to thousands of our people …

Of the many other wonderful ships built on the Clyde, John Brown also had the millionaire’s steam yacht Nahlin on the stocks alongside the slip where the Canadian Pacific Line’s Empress of Britain was rising in 1930. Nahlin was yard number 533, while yard number 534 was, of course, Queen Mary. Ordered

by Lady Henrietta Yule, husband of David Yule, who had made his millions as a merchant in India, the yacht was the last steam yacht to be built in the UK. Nahlin was designed by G L Watson & Company of Glasgow, a company founded by its namesake George Lennox Watson, who was renowned for racing yacht design, including four America’s Cup contenders, in the late

Empress of Britain (1931) was built alongside the luxury yacht Nahlin, Yard Number 533, at John Brown’s yard at Clydebank.