When the world sailed into Oban
The sale recently of a fine builder’s mirror-back, half model of a steam yacht called Mingary by one of London’s famous auction houses provided a tangible link with Regatta Week in Oban Bay of more than a century ago when, every September, before turning south, dozens of magnificent yachts would gather off Kerrera where their owners partied as if they were already on the Riviera.
During the day they took part in regattas in the Sound of Mull or attended the Argyllshire Gathering to listen to the pipes and to watch kilted supermen throw things up and down a field from the comfort of the heavily-tweeded members’ enclosure.
And, as the sun sank behind the Morvern hills on a clear summer’s evening, every yacht lit up Oban Bay with a brilliant fireworks display before their owners and guests went ashore to attend the glittering Argyllshire Gathering and Yacht Club Balls.
That was Oban at its best and the wealth these yachts and their owners brought to the town and the surrounding area was staggering. Today such a show might be found at Monte Carlo, but nowhere else in Europe.
The Mingary was owned by Charles Dunell Rudd of Ardnamurchan, vice-partner and co-founder of De Beers and Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd and vice-commodore of the Royal Highland Yacht Club.
The Mingary was designed by G L Watson and Co, of Glasgow, which produced some of the largest and most elegant steam yachts in the world for an international clientele which included most of the crowned heads of Europe.
Built in Troon by the Ailsa Shipbuilding Co Ltd and delivered in August 1899, the Mingary, named after the medieval castle on Rudd’s 55,000-acre estate, was 187ft long, 27ft broad and drew slightly less than 15ft. She had a steel hull and weighed 639 tons. Her triple expansion engines, supplied by Dunsmuir and Jackson of Glasgow, were capable of developing 123nhp, giving a respectable 13 knots from a single screw propeller.
The yacht was beautifully designed, having twin raked-back masts, a raised forecastle and a bridge midships, with spacious dining-saloon and other cabins on the main deck. In addition to the luxury accommodation on the cabin deck, she was fitted throughout with electric light, refrigeration, a complete steam-heating system, gearing, windlass, capstan and many other appliances not generally found in private yachts of the day.
Mingary’s captain was Daniel Mackinnon, from Kylerhea on Skye, with the crew almost all coming from Ardnamurchan estate. The 1901 National Census shows seven crew members aboard her as she lay at her moorings in Salen Bay, Loch Sunart, ready to take the Rudds out at a moment’s notice.
However, for a cruise to the Mediterranean in the spring of 1911, a further 18 were added, including two French chefs and a piper.
Little wonder it was said that the yacht cost more to run than the rest of the estate put together.
When Rudd wasn’t using the Mingary, she was chartered out to various clients, including the father of Kenneth Clark of Civilisation fame, whose family had grown rich in the textile trade. Clark’s great-great-grandfather invented the cotton spool, and started the Clark Thread Company of Paisley.
Another wealthy client was Sir Max Waechter, an advocate of a federal Europe.
In January 1915, Rudd leased the Mingary to the Admiralty, which clad her upper decks with armour plating, armed her with single 13-pounder and six-pounder guns, and sent her out as an auxiliary patrol following the
Battle of Jutland.
When the war ended, she was offered back to the family but, as Rudd had died in 1916, they declined. She sank at her moorings but was raised in March 1919 and sold to the Egypt and Levant SS Company, which converted her for commercial use. She was sold again
in 1924 to Turkish owners who renamed her Sevintch. She sank in fog off Cape Bozboroun in the Sea of Marmora on December 26, 1927, after a collision with the Turkish steamer Marmara (1,078 tons) in which 40 passengers were drowned.
Charles Rudd’s grandson, Alan, inherited the builder’s model, which he sold at auction in 1992 to raise money for an extension to the Acharacle village community hall. It was sold to the captain of an English Channel ferry until it was tracked down and bought back by Alan Rudd’s daughter. She put it on the market earlier this year and it went to a collector of marine memorabilia in America, sadly leaving the United Kingdom, most likely forever.