Tragedy and its aftermath

“May I add to Douglas Neilson’s recent item regarding the loss of the ill-fated Dundee-owned sandboat Islandmagee in late October 1953,” emails Montrose Port honorary archivist John Aitken. “I have taken an interest in the vessel since I first saw her in Aberdeen harbour in 1949 when she was still coasting.

“Some years ago, I researched Tay sandboats on behalf of an author based in Weymouth who was compiling a volume on the subject of sand and gravel dredging around the UK. While involved in an extensive search of local newspapers, shipping registers etc, I came across the following reference to the tragedy and its aftermath in a local Montrose newspaper of December 10 1953.

“The item initially concerned a report of the AGM of the Montrose branch of the RNLI which stated that members, together with the crew of the Montrose lifeboat, had attended the funerals in Arbroath of their late counterparts from the Robert Lindsay.

“In another brief report in the same edition reference was made to ‘Body Ashore – Mr Charles R Hunter, gamekeeper, Sea View, Lunan Bay, was out for a walk with his dogs (on Tuesday morning) when he found a seaman’s body on the shore at Lunan Bay.

“‘The body was later identified in the mortuary at Arbroath Infirmary as that of Jean Andre Messager, 33-year-old second engineer of the Dundee sandboat Islandmagee which was lost on the night of the Arbroath lifeboat disaster. It was thought he had previously been a crew member of a Free French submarine based at Dundee harbour during the Second World War. This is the fourth member of the crew of the Islandmagee to be recovered. Six men were lost when the ship foundered’.”

An old postcard. Read about it at the top of the left-hand column.