Clydebuilt

13/10/2026

On the 21st of October, 1874 the 953 ton paddle-steamship Chusan was run aground at Crinan Rock, near Horse Island at Ardrossan.

Constructed by John Elder and Co., Glasgow for use by the China Steam Navigation Company of Shanghai, the ship was launched on the 17th of September, just one month before the fateful events at Ardrossan.

The ship was captained by George Coate Johnson, a 37 year old American who was nicknamed Whispering Johnson due to his booming voice.

The ship ran the measured mile at Wemyss Bay and arrived at Waterford in Ireland, with the intention of proceeding to Shanghai via the Suez Canal. Fatefully, one of Chusan’s paddle wings was damaged and instead of heading for Shanghai, it was decided to send the vessel home to the Clyde for repairs. It would be the last journey Chusan would make.

On Wednesday the 21st of October, Chusan was heading for the Clyde when it encountered a fierce storm. On board, Captain Johnson had a crew of 48 plus his heavily pregnant wife Harriet, their 4 year old son George and his wife’s sister Miss Helen Elliot.

The decision was taken to head for the safety of Ardrossan but on the approach was dashed on the Crinan Rock some 50 yards from the pier head and, almost immediately, the ship broke in two.

The forward section of the ship stayed afloat, drifting towards the pier where some crew were able to leap to safety. Meanwhile, the aft section was trapped on the rocks. The desperate scene saw the captain, his family and some of his crew, clinging to anything they could to stop being thrown into the tumultuous sea.
Harriet Johnson was tossed overboard and George jumped in to save her, holding her afloat until she could be pulled back aboard. Sadly, George was unable to be rescued, drowning in the process.

In all, the captain and 16 of the crew lost their lives on that fateful day. In the following weeks, their bodies washed up at various points in Ardrossan. The body of Captain Johnson was found close to North Crescent and was sent back to America where he was buried in Salem, Massachusetts.

On the 22nd of December, a couple of months after the tragedy, Mrs Johnson gave birth to twins – a boy named DeCourcey Elliot Johnson and a girl named Decosta May Johnson.

There is a monument in Ardrossan, that was erected in memory of those who died. Do you know where it is (and have you seen it)?

A) Ardrossan Harbour
B) Ardrossan Cemetery
C) Ardrossan Parish Church

Let us know in the comments below for this sad .

11/10/2026

09/10/2026

A locomotive being lifted onto a ship at Stobcross Quay by the Finnieston Crane, around 1952. This is one of the metre-gauge Pacifics built at the North British Locomotive Company’s Hyde Park Works in Springburn for Indian State Railways — among the last steam express locomotives built anywhere in the world.

India kept building steam into the 1970s, and a couple of these were still working in Togo as recently as 2007.

07/10/2026

The shipping world gave "all the credit of the race" to the ship that reached London a week late.

That was how Basil Lubbock, in his 1924 history The Log of the Cutty Sark, recorded the end of the 1872 tea race home from China. Cutty Sark lost that race because a gale off South Africa carried away her rudder. She took the credit because her captain, George Moodie, built a new one in the open sea, and worked out where every chain had to go on a small model of his own ship.

It was only her third voyage. Scott and Linton had built her at Dumbarton on the Clyde in 1869, to a design by Hercules Linton, for the shipowner John Willis. Moodie had overseen the building himself. He went over every piece of timber for knots, sappy patches and shakes, and any piece that had one was rejected.

Her rival was Thermopylae, the green clipper of the Aberdeen White Star Line. The two loaded tea side by side at Shanghai, and in June Cutty Sark crossed the bar at Woosung with Thermopylae close behind her. By 7 August, in the Indian Ocean, she was about 400 miles ahead.

Then the wind died. When it came back it came from the west, a hard gale with a very heavy sea, and it blew for days. At half past six on the morning of 15 August a heavy sea struck the rudder and carried it away.

At noon they tried a spar over the stern. It would not steer her.

The owner's brother, Robert Willis, was aboard, making the voyage for his health. He begged Moodie to put into the nearest South African port. Royal Museums Greenwich, who care for the ship today, say he ordered him into Cape Town. But a refit in port meant time and expense, and Moodie meant to have her home on schedule. Therefore he would build a rudder where he was.

A spare spar 70 feet long, which could have made a jibboom or a main topgallant yard, was cut into three. The long piece became the rudder post. The two shorter pieces became the blade. A blacksmith forged bolts and bars out of the ship's awning stanchions, and Moodie's son Alexander, an apprentice, kept the bellows going. The forge was set up on the weather side of the deck, because more water came aboard on the lee roll. Even so, it was knocked over and washed away again and again.

Moodie wrote that making the rudder was the simple part. Hanging it was the hard part. The usual way was to run chains under the bottom to the hawse pipes, but she was too sharp for a chain to lie along her keel, and too long to bind tight. So he led the guys his own way, and took the measurements for the chains from his little model.

At about two in the afternoon of 20 August, with a good deal of sea running, the jury rudder went over the stern. When sail was made, "to every one's delight the ship was found to steer very well."

She had lost a whole week, and covered 50 miles in it.

The rudder held for a month. On 20 September the last of its eye-bolts gave way, and the whole contrivance came back aboard. Moodie was short of material by now, so the band was taken off the slings of the topgallant yard and riveted on to the rudder to bind it all together. The next day it was back in place.

She came from the Cape to the Channel in 54 days on that rudder, 122 days out from Shanghai, a week behind Thermopylae. Congratulations were showered on Moodie. He was, Lubbock wrote, almost worn out.

Moodie gave up the command after that voyage. He never captained a sailing ship again, went into steam, and retired from the sea in 1891, at 62.

Alexander, the apprentice at the bellows, became a master mariner in 1883.

07/10/2026

A ship passing the remains of the Lang D**e opposite Dumbarton Rock. While many people will be unfamiliar with it, the Lang D**e is perhaps Glasgow's largest and most important bit of engineering as it was instramental in creating a navigable channel up the Clyde. This meant ships could finally sail into the city itself and be unloaded on the Broomielaw rather than twenty miles to the west in Port Glasgow (after which goods needed to be transported to and from the city by cart).

Due to the distances involved, dredging the channel wasn't a feasible option in the 1770s, so instead John Golborne designed and constructed a massive, 800 yard long, retaining wall to narrow the main channel. This caused the water flowing through it to move faster, which, in turn, resulted in an increase in scouring of the seabed. This increased erosion then permamently deepened the channel without the need for constant re-dregding, and within just a few years, this part of the Clyde went from being shallow enough to wade across at low tide to being seven feet deep.

02/10/2026

A very special lady is celebrating her 80th birthday today. 80 years ago today, on 2 October 1946, the paddle steamer Waverley was launched at the A. & J. Inglis Pointhouse shipyard in Glasgow, where the River Kelvin meets the Clyde.

She was built to replace the first Waverley, a 1899 paddle steamer that was sunk by German aircraft off Dunkirk in May 1940 while helping to evacuate troops. The new ship was built for the London & North Eastern Railway and named after Walter Scott's Waverley novels. She entered service on the Clyde in June 1947, sailing from Craigendoran.

Her working life was on the Firth of Clyde coastal routes, carrying holidaymakers "doon the watter". By the early 1970s she was surplus to requirements. In 1974 she was sold for £1 to the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society, and she has been in preservation ever since. She is now the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world and still sails from Glasgow each summer.

The Pointhouse yard where she was built is now the site of the Riverside Museum, so you can stand where she was launched and often see her pass on the Clyde.

She's captured here getting an unlikely es**rt at Greenock.

📷 Bob Dougans

27/09/2026