16/12/2025
What Lies Beneath – The Sailing Ship entombed beneath the North Pier
As you stroll around the frontage of the North Pier, perhaps dwell for a second or two on what lies beneath your feet, just where you are now standing. Entombed forever in a sheath of concrete and many tons of rubble and aggregate is a ship, a 471-ton sailing ship to be precise, built of stout white-oak and hard pine from the forests of New England. The three-masted sailing vessel, B.C. Bailey was built in the Johnson Rideout yard on the shores of the Kennebec River, Maine, in 1845.
The yard was one of 22 such yards taking advantage of the lumber harvested from the abundant New England forests. The B.C. Bailey was one of a fleet of 11 ships built by Bertram Bailey and his son Samuel in the 1840s-50s. These were schooners, brigs and cargo sailing ships ranging from 260 to 1,078 tonnage. In December 1848, the B.C. Bailey, with a crew of 17, was on a voyage from New York to the Clyde with a cargo of cotton, to***co, molasses and sugar. The B.C. Bailey was a comparatively fast sailing ship and had set a record of eight days for a voyage between Bath, Massachusetts, and New Orleans. The master of the ship was an experienced Captain, Ebenezer Fitts (bn. 1802 @ Sandown, New Hampshire, died 1854) On the last stage of the transatlantic voyage, the B.C. Bailey encountered storm-force winds and heavy seas as she emerged from the Sound of Mull. The ship was forced to haul in sail and lost steerage, being blown northwards, close into the coast of Lismore where she ran aground and was holed. Over the next 24 hours, despite the efforts of the crew, she foundered but did not sink and fortunately no lives were lost..
In due course, the B.C Bailey was towed into Oban Bay and her commodities off-loaded from the two cargo holds. A proportion of it was spoiled, however, the subsequent sale for creditors offset the immediate costs of salvage. Insurance wrangles ensued and the vessel was eventually abandoned by the owners, grounded off Oban beach at low tides. The 471-ton sailing ship was de-masted and would be eventually used in a sensible innovation by the town council to extend the North Pier to enable larger vessels, including the new iron-hulled ships (bringing disparate hordes of visitors to Oban), to come alongside. From a civil engineering perspective, the squat, square-sided hull was ideal to be positioned, sunk and then infilled with aggregate, thus avoiding a vastly more expensive solution. And here she remains to this day..
