Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald
26 June 1891........................................... List of Saltcoats Shipmasters here
Next week we propose to print a list of Saltcoats Shipmasters ; meantime as introduction, it may not be out of place to recall a few facts connected with Saltcoats Harbour. Two centuries ago, there was but a creek , but even then a trade was carried on between Saltcoats and Dublin, and other Irish ports - the local fishermen carrying fish and cattle to the sister isle, and in the return passage bringing home corn and butter.
The erection of the harbour was the work of the Cunninghames of Seabank. In 1638 the whole of the parish of Stevenston was purchased by Sir Robert Cunningham, but it was not until his possessions passed to his nephew that the new era for the district began. First he sought for coal, and the finding and successful working of the coal-fields necessitated the conversation of the creek of Saltcoats into a harbour.
To assist Mr Cunninghame in the erection, Parliament empowered him to uplift for twenty years the excise in ale and beer used in the parish of Stevenston. This privilege was granted in 1686 and in 1693 he obtained besides the ale and beer, on all retailed brandy and aquavitae used in the parishes of Stevenston and Ardrossan, on a payment quarterly of £117. In 1707 he obtained a renewal of this Act for another twenty years, on the same terms in favour of his son James, that the harbour might be maintained and kept in repair.
Mr Cunninghame died in 1713, greatly unpoverished in fortune - the consequence of his public spirited enterprise, but leaving a memorial of this, a good substantial harbour, where he had found only a little creek affording a harbourage for fishing boats ; a rising town where he had formerly found an insignificant village. Not much progress was made during the lifetime of his successor, James Cunninghame, but when John Reid Cunninghame succeeded to the estate, further improvements were made upon the harbour, by extending it.
He also formed a canal to connect his coal fields with the harbour, a distance of more than two miles. This was in itself no small undertaking, and was completed in 1772, and had the honour of being the first on which business was done in Scotland. The impetus thus given to the trade of the district had its corresponding effect upon Saltcoats, and it speedily rose to be a thriving and prosperous port. Ship-building began to be carried on, and within a short time three yards, employing above 100 carpenters, besides blockmakers, smiths, etc., were in full operation. From 1775 till 1790 they turned out 64 vessels from 30 tons to upwards of 220 - in all 7090 tons, being at an average above 110 tons each.
The prospect of an increased trade at the close of last century, led to an agreement being entered into between Hugh, Earl of Eglinton, whose estate extended to the centre of the entrance, and Mr Cunninghame, for the erection of a more commodious harbour, by running a breakwater across from Windmill Street to the inner perch rock, and excavating all the hurst. Sheltered from all winds, a large basin for ships would thus had been obtained ; but unfortunately for the town, after the foundation was laid, and a few tires of massive stones run across, the two lairds fell out. The story is that they differed about the division of the dues, and as to which of them should have chief control. Both were obstinate, the agreement was cancelled, and the earl after obtaining a survey of the promontory of Ardrossan, began to erect docks there.
The construction of the docks at Ardrossan was the death-knell to Saltcoats harbour. It was not immediate ; where the ship's keel in bad weather bumped every tide on a hard bottom, could not for long compete with a harbour where there was good shelter. and plenty of water to keep it afloat. For a time Mr Cunninghame's own brigs, which took out his coal chiefly to Dublin, loaded at, and returned to the old place. At his death, these brigs passed into the hands of others, chiefly who had long sailed them, who bought them for a trifle, but by and bye the Board of Trade interfered, and they were condemned as unseaworthy.
To Captain John Smith of the Mount Line, we are indebted for the following graphic account of Saltcoats seafaring and town life in the olden time :--
The twenty years war with Napoleon, in which England played so great a part, made us a great maritime nation, and gave us most of the colonies we now possess in many parts of the world. The press gang pressed many of our Saltcoats men into service in H.M. ships, and at the close of the war in 1815, when the men were paid off, many of them returned to their homes in Saltcoats, and when they became old for foreign service, they served as "penny men," as they were called at the harbour. ie., men who attended ships coming in and going out, and moored them head and stern with heavy 15 in. junks of hemp to the shore, being an open harbour with a swell in, when the wind came from the S.W. The vessels of Saltcoats, if not large, were many. Fifteen ships might be seen moored head and stern from the quay end to the Saltpans.
These "penny men" had a room of their own in the harbour office, still standing, where they smoked their pipes, and spun sea yarns of where they had been, and what they had seen, in fleets, and line of battle ships. It was a treat for those who had the time to go down the quay for an hour and sit with them around their rousing fire, and hear of Captains and Admirals with whom they sailed, and battles and victories won by our fleet. Young men of the place had the choice of being weavers or sailors, and boys so much frequented the quay and heard the exploits of the men who had see foreign lands, and the free and easy life of the sailor, that any lad with a spark of ambition naturally chose the sea as his profession ; so Saltcoats produced the chief portion of the men who manned the ships sailing out of Clyde.
There was no Board of Trade requirements, nor examination of officers till the year 1850. Navigation by many was not much attended to in these early days. If a mate could do dead reckoning and take the sun at noon, he was fit for the berth. A master a little more, such as correct the compass, and find the longitude by observation of the sun. In the early part of this century, Mr Alex. Smith left Glasgow to push his fortune in the new and rising world of America. Saltcoats was the great shipping port of the west. Ships went yearly to it for timber, and took passengers if they turned up.
Mr Smith travelled on foot, as people often did in those days, from the interior to the coast he arrived at what was then called Townend of Saltcoats, the end of Manse Street, where the North Parsh Church now stands. It was the resort of neighbours at the meal hour to meet there and hear the news. William Miller, wright, was out at the Townend to get the fresh air ; he had a son who had been pressed into the Royal Navy called James ; and John his eldest son, had a weaver's shop in Manse Street.
The young man liked the look of the older man - who bye-the-bye was a pious man, having been converted by a midnight revelation from heaven while he lay in bed. A written testimony was found of it among his papers after his death. Testimony meetings were not so common then as now, and perhaps he never told it in life. Mr Smith went up to him and asked if he knew if there were any ships going from here to America. The old man heard his story and learned that he was a weaver to trade, and had no particular object in view, but to try his hand in the new world.
Mr Miller replied -- Young man I see it is just a freak that is taking you to America just now, but I'll tell you what to do, my son has a spare loom in his shop close by, you go and get a web in and work at it till the spring, when ships fit out, and you are of the same mind as now, I will speak to a captain and get you a ship. He took the advise, got in a web, and when spring came, he was so comfortable that he did not think of America. It maybe that a daughter in the house had a charm for him, that kept him, like a magnetic attraction ; at least eleven years after he left the house and took the daughter, Janet Miller, with him as his wife.
John Miller and he, both young men, spent their evenings together improving their time and their minds. We don't know what school education either of them had, but we know that Alexander Smith opened a school and began teaching after his marriage. Some say first in Windmill Street, but we know he built a house in Hamilton Street, which now is in the centre. The lower flat was fitted as a school with desks from end to end, and it was usually crowded. a night-school was open who were too old to mix with children during the day. Irvine was the nearest place where navigation was taught. Mr Smith, when he opened his school, had a desk for sailors, where he taught navigation. In old time, if men made two voyages to America in the year they thought they had done well, and like their ships, lay up in winter till next spring, except a few of the more frugal ones who made a few voyages in the coal trade to Ireland, which continued all the year round, and the older men never shifted out of the trade.
Those who aspire to foreign service, and who aimed at command, attended the school in winter during the time they were at home. it was very convenient for them, there was no fixed salary by the month, or the quarter, they just paid as they were able, so much after coming off a voyage, and could rise from the desk in the middle of a count, go away to sea, and return and sit down at where they left of so many months before.
Usually the southern going men, if they had been to India, or China, which was a great thing then, as soon as they had greeted friends and heard the news in their own house, said, "I must go and see the "old man," - so the "old Man's" home was a constant rendezvous for sailors, and few, if any of the better sort, ever came without bringing relics of the East or West Indies to him.
The "old man," as he was called, had a great delight in the sailors, and on clear starlight nights they spent hours together in the fields among the stars calling out the constellations. He also lectured on Navigation in the Mechanics' Institute ; and on such occasions could always get a muster of his sailors to help him when required. We remember the heaving of the lead and the heaving of the log. One held the reel, another the glass, and a third at a distance made the line run at the rate of 10 knots. Mr Smith died in 18?6, but before his death Captain John Wilson retired from the sea, took up a book shop in Dockhead Street, and taught navigation there. There may have been others, but the "old man" put through his hands all the older men of other days. Here most of the men who commanded ships out of Clyde in these early days got their schooling. Most of them were "down by men," and hailed either from Saltcoats or Irvine.
Dropping the personal relating to the education of sailor, it must be noted that Saltcoats in its best days had many men of enterprise, whose names have become as familiar as household words. Here was brought up the Allans of the "Allan Line," who removed first to Greenock for a wider sphere and then to Glasgow. The Smiths of the "City Line," who removed to Glasgow, and, like the Allans, stand in the front rank as shipowners. The workmans, who crossed to Belfast to extend the linen and flax trade. The Ritchies, who sent each year sloops and schooners to the herring fishing, returning at the end of the season loaded with barrels of salt herring, which found there way into every part of the country.
Successive shipbuilders moved further up the Clyde for larger fields ; and not to mention the creators of the industries, I close with naming Mr William Burns, the chemist, who erected a magnesia work in Canal Street, and who also erected the North Pans for the manufacture of chemicals. He was a man of superior parts, and when a Mechanics' Institute was formed he often lectured on his favourite subjects, astonishing his audiences with the wonders of the world we live in by his chemical combinations. The Clyde ships were manned with a class of men we do not see now. They were as much distinguished by their dress as a policeman is by his coat and hat. The blue jacket was as distinct a dress for the merchant navy man, as the cut of the trousers, jumper, collar are for the Royal navy man. Fashions change, and all that is changed now.
Saltcoats fair was held in the last week of May. No steamer plying to Arran then, the trade was carried on with smack and whirries. Wednesday was called the "Highland boat day," when the Arran people came over with their annual stock of pigs, fowls, and eggs, their principal export of produces, and the Ayrshire folks laid in a supply at that season. Thursday was the fair day proper ; one of the greatest fairs of Scotland. Here all the riff-raff of society gathered. It might well be called vanity fair. Jugglers, shows, clowns, anything to make it like revelry and amusement, along with all sorts of stands, put up in Quay Street, where useful things were sold. Friday was the sailors parade day, when they mustered and marched in procession, dressed with fantastic ribbons of many colours in their bonnets, hanging in long tails, and in the evening had a dance. Saturday was curd day, when groups of towns people went to the country and had curds and mashlam scone at some farmhouse.
Another age or epoch, has dawned on the world. When a launch took place there was no more work that day, and a dance of the carpenters and friends in the evening. A launch takes place now and the sound the sound of the hammer scarcely ceases to see her slide off the ways. When a ship from Saltcoats or Ardrossan was bound for America, the sailors must have a dance on the strength of the month's advance, and when the ship hauled out of port, she was dressed with bunting from truck to rail, cruising the bay all day, firing guns till night-fall, when she went away on her course. The puncheon of rum, thought as necessary then to have on board as a cask of vinegar and a case of lime juice now, got a severe draining from the many friends who spent the day on board in the bay. Ships sail now to the ends of the earth, i.e. round the world, and a mere good-bye and a waive of handkerchief is all that takes place with a ship leaving now.
An old gazetteer of Scotland, speaking of Ayrshire, says, Saltcoats a flourishing seaport ; Ardrossan, a rocky promontory. The reverse of that is now, Saltcoats, a neglected harbour, only used by fishing boats, Ardrossan a flourishing sea port and a rising town. Few, very few, of the old sea captains remain who sailed the old wooden ships of other days. They have dropped off the stage of time after a well earned retirement to enter another life, the sequal of this. But though on the quay wall may be written "Ichabod" (the glory is departed) the ruins of the North Pans, still standing, speak of other days ; and although the Magnesia Works, the Brewery that was beside it in Canal Street, and the Salt Pans at the quay with the Windmill at the foot of Windmill Street, which was the only place at one time to lock-up prisoners in, are all swept away as if they had not been ; still the town remains, and is improving in its old age by a finer and better class of buildings than our fore-fathers were content with, which makes it to be a favourite resort of summer visitors, who in these days of annual holidays and picnic parties, seek the pure air on the Saltcoats shore.
Associated topics
List of Saltcoats Shipmasters
Saltcoats outwits the Press Gang, 1789