Cheers to the launch of Campbeltown Shipyard exhibition
‘The key to our success was teamwork – right from Sir William Lithgow, through management, right to the youngest apprentice. We took young local men and turned them into highly skilled tradesmen who became an asset to the yard. Our boats were highly popular as they had outstanding sea keeping qualities’ – Leslie Howarth, former manager at Campbeltown Shipyard.
It is the exhibition that the town has helped to create and cannot wait to see.
Top Skippers’ Choice will be staged at Campbeltown Town Hall later this month.
It presents a snapshot of the Top Skippers’ Choice online archive, which showcases the work of Campbeltown Shipyard Ltd through personal testimonies, technical information, articles and more than 1,000 images from participants, gathered in the course of the past year.
First boat
It celebrates the 50th anniversary this month of the launch of Campbeltown Shipyard’s first boat.
The yard was at the heart of the community for almost three decades, in its heyday employing as many as 150 workers and providing apprenticeships with the opportunity of learning a wide range of skills.
The exhibition also presents an opportunity to bring together members of Campbeltown’s shipbuilding community and reunite them with some of the skippers who commissioned the boats that were built in the town.
Between 1969 and 1998 the yard produced almost 100 innovative, steel-hulled fishing boats, with orders from Shetland, Orkney and the Scottish mainland, the Faroe Islands, Ireland and England, and even one boat that was destined for Kenya.
Top Skippers’ Choice has been devised and delivered for South Kintyre Development Trust by Campbeltown-born artist and filmmaker Jan Nimmo. The project is funded by National Heritage Lottery Scotland.
In addition to holding a series of public drop-in sessions in Campbeltown, the project has also included site visits and creative workshops with primary schools to connect shipyard workers with a generation too young to remember the ‘yerd’ at Trench Point.
The exhibition at the town hall will run from February 15 to February 22 from 10am to 5pm, opening from 11am to 4pm on Sunday February 16.
Top Skippers’ Choice remains open to anyone online, whether they be in Campbeltown or the other side of the globe, with a story to tell or an image to share about the shipyard and its boats, through the online archive.
People can visit https:// www.campbeltown-shipyard. uk or https://www.facebook. com/CampbeltownShipyard to find out more.