Help bring The Result tall ship back to its rightful home in Carrickfergus

News of an appeal from my home town, Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, which is trying to raise funds to conserve and bring back an extra special vessel to the town: 

APPEAL LAUNCHED AND WEBSITE EXPANDED

The Carrickfergus Tall Ship Project is embarking on a fundraising campaign to develop their plans to conserve and bring home the last Carrick-built ship. The Result was built in the town's Victorian shipyard and had a long career as a merchant schooner providing a lifeline to coastal communities during both peace and wartimes. Additionally she saw action as a Q-Ship in the First World War with weaponry hidden on board to lure in and attack unsuspecting German U-Boats.

Our website has a number of new pages providing an in depth account of Result's history, our project aims and how to support us - including an appeal for donations to help raise funds for the necessary vessel conservation and transport logistics surveys, and enabling works.

Since the Carrickfergus Tall Ship Project was launched in July 2024 it has been engaged in discussions with the Result’s owners National Museums NI, and the Mid & East Antrim Borough Council. 

For further details please visit https://www.carrickfergustallship.com/news/appeal-launched-to-bring-home-the-result 

* The Result has always had a wee place in my heart, as whilst attending Model Primary School in Carrick in 1980, my P5 class did a project about it, which was featured on BBC Northern Ireland's Spotlight programme. The Result was built in the small Paul Rodgers shipyard that used to exist where today's Legg Park is located, and I was interviewed with fellow classmates about our project, then went home. As the news came on that eveing, my aunt from Belfast phoned my dad to say "Our Chris is on the telly, our Chris is on the telly!" as the opening lines of the story played out, with various shots of us all doing our project playing out as the narrator spoke. Then came the interviews, and I had been cut out - my aunt was raging! It was, however, the first time I had ever been glimpsed on the telly, even fleetingly, and I remember being fascinated by the camera crew at work, not knowing that within a couple of decades I would be directing my own programmes for the Corporation!

Chris 

Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available -Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.

A century of Clyde ship launches

The BBC has a short, but fun, report focussing on a century of Scottish ship launches on the Clyde, on the day when the second of the two ferries currently being built at the Ferguson Marine yard is due to be launched. 

I had the pleasure to be standing up close beneath a ship as it was launched in 2005, whilst working on the Coast series for the BBC, when we filmed the launch of the RFA ship Cardigan Bay (on a second attempt!). It was an incredible site to view the hull slip into the river, to be followed by the large and noisy drag chains behind it, designed to stop the vessel hitting the other side of the river. Fingers crossed the Glen Rosa is not the last major vessel to be launched on the Clyde!  

You can view the report at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-68736987

(Don't forget that many shipbuilding firms have their historic records deposited at the University of Glasgow's Scottish Business Archive, details at https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/archivespecialcollections/discover/business/. If you have a shipbuilding ancestor who may appear in some of the records there, I can consult these for you, details of my service are at www.scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk)

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

The Greenock kirk moved brick by brick for a shipyard

There's an interesting article on the BBC News website about the Old West Kirk of Greenock, which was moved in the 1920s a mile down the road, in an agreement with shipbuilders Harland and Wolff.

You can read more about the story at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxr1p207r3go

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

HMS Unicorn, Scotland's oldest ship, receives £1.1 million for restoration

Scotland's oldest vessel, HMS Unicorn, has received £1.1 million in funding for its restoration from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Launched in 1824 as a 40 gun frigate for the Royal Naval Reserves, the ship continued in use until the 1960s. It is today based in Dundee, where it is in the care of the Unicorn Preservation Society (https://www.frigateunicorn.org).

For more on the story visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-66202473.

 

Creative Commons: CC BY-SA 2.0
File:HMS Frigate Unicorn - geograph.org.uk - 1169196.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Unicorn_(1824)#/media/File:HMS_Frigate_Unicorn_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1169196.jpg

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Find Scots and Irish folk who worked in shipbuilding in Barrow-in-Furness

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has a new collection that may be of interest if your Scottish or Irish families had connections to shipbuilding in Barrow-In-Furness, Lancashire, including both male and female ancestors and relatives involved in the trade (or indeed, English family members who spent time in Scotland or Ireland). This is the description as given on the site:

Lancashire, Barrow-in-Furness Shipbuilding & Engineering Employees
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/lancashire-barrow-in-furness-shipbuilding-and-engineering-employees

These records, compiled by staff and volunteers from staff registers and records held by Barrow Archive and Cumbria Archive Service, include the names of the men and women employed or were apprenticed at the Barrow in Furness shipyard in Lancashire 1890s-1950s and the women who were employed to work at Vickers during the First World War. Information found could include –

• First names(s)
• Last name
• Date of birth
• Department employed in
• Job role
• Address
• Age
• Date they entered service
• Date they left service

The records are indexes, with comments also available for some entries. For example, this is an entry for a gent called Balchandra Nagesh, who started work in Barrow in 1932, with the record adding that he was previously "With John Brown & Co, Glasgow from 29/04/1930 to 12/12/1931":

Amongst the employees listed there are several mentions of women who were serving apprenticeships in connection to firms in Belfast and Glasgow, for example, as well as many employees from both cities. Barrow was part of a triangle of operations between the north-west of England, Belfast and Glasgow, with employees regulalrly flitting between the three areas for employment opportunities. As a rivetter, my own great great grandparents from Belfast got married in Barrow in 1881 - and in possibly the most obscure genealogy fact that you'll ever read connected to Scottish and Irish history, I myself was conceived in a house there (my parents were posted there when my Dad was in the Navy), before being hatched back in Larne! 

It should be noted that FindmyPast's blog post description of this title at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/women-shipbuilding is a little misleading - it does not exclusively document female employees from the First World War period, the collection predominantly features male employees, but it is certainly useful for finding women who worked there during the war. 

The records are sourced from the Cumbria Archive Service, with collection accession numbers included in the respective entries.

Chris

Pre-order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Oral History of Port Glasgow Women presentations

This might be of interest to those with an interest in the women of Port Glasgow's shipbuilding community:

Fieldwork & Creative Engagement: Oral History of Port Glasgow Women
Thursday, 12 August 2021, 14:00-16:30.
Online, via Zoom.
Free, but ticketed via Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/157935676861

Our two presentations are rooted in the lived experience of women in the shipbuilding communities of Port Glasgow, recordings of which are held in our collection. Through our presenters' fieldwork - undertaken almost 30 years apart - we see the importance of fieldwork, the collection and preservation of oral history recordings. It is from this perspective we will explore the value in creative reuse of archive recordings.

After the presentations we shall have a short break, followed by a chaired question-and-answer session with our presenters. Participants are encouraged to submit questions in the chat facility during the papers and the break.

This session is open to anyone who wishes to attend and those with a particular interest in collecting, researching, or creating with oral history recordings. Please register for the event via the link to Eventbrite (above). Joining instructions will be sent with your ticket.

Speakers:

Dr Hugh Hagan, Head of Public Records Act Implementation at the National Records of Scotland, is passionate about the shipbuilding communities of Port Glasgow and Greenock on the lower reaches of the River Clyde, particularly in the inter-war period. These towns, being removed by some distance from the large and diverse economy of Glasgow, depended entirely on shipbuilding and they developed a very particular sense of community. This was the subject of his PhD research at the School of Scottish Studies in the 1990s and he will draw on that research, specifically the role of women in these communities, in his talk.

Martine Robertson and Hannah Wood, of GaelGal Productions, were undertaking studies at the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies, University of Edinburgh, when they attended a lecture by Hugh Hagan about his Port Glasgow work. They were galvanised to revisit this fieldwork, recording new material with the family of Cassie Graham, one of Hugh's contributors. They have also been inspired to take these stories to centre stage, lifting the voices and experience of women of the Port Glasgow community and using these recordings in their creative practice. The presentation at this event is but one postcard-sized venture into their ongoing creative piece, What A Voice.

For more information and to register for the event, please follow the link to book on Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/157935676861. If you have any questions, please contact scottish.studies.archives@ed.ac.uk

(With thanks to Kirsty M Stewart / Ciorstag Stiùbhart, New College Collections Curator and Archivist, School of Scottish Studies Library and University Collections, University of Edinburgh)

Chris

Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.