Clyde steamer history is replete with personal anecdotes and reminiscences that add colour and fascination to the more mundane statistics of length and breadth of hull, and horse-power of engines that characterize the vessels themselves. The classic histories such as James Williamson’s “Clyde Passenger Steamers 1812-1901,” and Andrew M‘Queen’s “Echoes of old Clyde Paddle-Wheels,” have preserved much of the lore. There were few earlier accounts published in book form such as Robert Reid’s “About Clyde Steamers and Clyde Skippers, (Senex Afloat),” but the Glasgow newspapers during the Victorian era contained accounts where various anonymous authors have attempted to catalog the history of the steamers in serial form. Some of these have been presented here and here. This is another, shorter, article gleaned from the pages of the North British Daily Mail in 1878, the year the Columba first...

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...