Thomas Bollen Seath

on Nov 25, 2014

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...