Worldwide battle to save the Falls of Clyde
The fight is on to save a famous Clyde built ship, the Falls of Clyde, which is under threat in Hawaii. Here Iain Auld tells of her history and her remarkable link with Arran
There is a rather splendid scale model of a sailing ship in a glass case mounted on the wall inside Lamlash Parish Church.
That same ship has been making national headlines recently due to the threat hanging over the Falls of Clyde - a Greenock-built ship which has been permanently moored at Pier 7 in Honolulu for more than 50 years.
In 1989 she was declared a US National Historic Landmark, but the Hawaii De- partment of Transport has now declared her dangerous and cancelled her permit to remain in the harbour.
Falls of Clyde was the first of nine large four-masted sailing barques built at the shipyard of Russell & Co between 1878 and 1886 for the Falls Line of Glasgow. One of her designers was William Lithgow, founder of the shipbuilding dynasty.
She spent the first 20 years of her life carrying cargoes of timber, jute, cement and wheat between ports in the UK, Australia, California, India and New Zealand. In 1899, she was sold to the Matson Navigation Company of Hawaii for $25,000 - $7,000 more than she cost to build! A good piece of business for her owners and a real testament to the quality of her construction and maintenance.
The ship made more than 60 voyages between Hilo, Hawaii and San Francisco, carrying general merchandise, sugar and passengers, before being converted into a bulk oil (kerosene) carrier by installing steel tanks. Falls of Clyde then supplied all of Hawaii’s needs until 1927 when she was demasted and became a floating fuel depot in Alaska.
Her first rescue came in the 1960s when a group of Hawaiian businessmen heard that she was to be scuttled as part of a breakwater in Vancouver and arranged for her return to Honolulu.
She became a museum ship, but her owner, the Bishop Museum, was unable to fund recurring maintenance and dry-docking and eventually, in 2008, handed her over to a local group of volunteers.
The Friends of Falls of Clyde (FFOC), under their president Bruce McEwan, have worked unceasingly to raise money for essential repairs, but not apparently to the satisfaction of the Department of Transport.
A worldwide campaign has enlisted considerable support, including Dundee’s international actor Brian Cox, and if funding can be raised, FFOC would be amenable to Falls of Clyde returning to her home port of Glasgow. In the interim, FFOC are challenging the impoundment order at a hearing on November 22.
But what of the model in Lamlash Church? A brass plaque tells us it was built in 1919 by Captain McMillan of Cordon.
John McMillan’s parents, William McMillan and Janet Fullarton, were from Lamlash, but he was born in 1860 in Dunbar, no doubt on account of his father being a coastguard and liable to be moved about.
Back in Arran, in the 1881 Census he is described as a house joiner but must have gone to sea thereafter. John married Anne-Marie Mathie in Lamlash in 1899 and the certificate describes his occupation as mate on steamers and his residence as Lamlash when not at sea, which certainly suggests a deep-sea mariner. As such, he is unlikely to have served aboard Falls of Clyde, but spent leisure time ashore making models of ships which he had seen and admired. The model is precision-built and of especial interest are the sails. Instead of the usual cloth, they are apparently crafted from thin sheets of reddish-brown wood, immaculately shaped for their purpose. Anecdotally, he had brought the wood back from a trip to New Zealand, and it may be during his Pacific travels that he saw Falls of Clyde.
Unfortunately, with the passage of time, there is no information as to when or why the model was donated to the church, and any such would be welcomed. Similarly, with the McMillans there is no record of them living in Arran after 1925 and no records in Scotland at any time thereafter.
The most likely explanation is that they moved to England or overseas.