A Ship Called Machrihanish

A Ship Called Machrihanish*

The Machrihanish by Oswald F, Pennington

She was the first (and fastest) of six sailing ships ordered by Hugh Hogarth & Sons in late 1880’s.They were delivered as follows:

Name

Builder

Date/Type

Tonnage

History

Machrihanish R.Duncan, Port Glasgow 1883 Iron 3 masted ship 1758 1908 sold Norwegian owners. Wrecked Lobos Island 1911
Ochtertyre R.Duncan, Port Glasgow 18885 Iron Barque 1354 1910 sold Norwegian owners. Sunk in ice South Georgia 1911
Corryvrechan R.Duncan, Port Glasgow 1885 Steel Barque 1356 1909 Sold Norwegian owners. Renamed The Svenor and wrecked off the  Tasmanian West Coast in 1914
Ardnamurchan Russel & Co., Port Glasgow 1890 Steel 3 masted ship 1619 Sold Italian owners 1909. Sold Norwegian owners 1912. Broken up Holland 1926
Ballachulish A.Roger & Co., Port Glasgow 1892 Steel 3 masted ship 1901 1909 Sold Norwegian owners. Sold French owners 1923. Hulked New Caledonia 1924
Colintraive A.Roger & Co., Port Glasgow 1892 Steel 3 masted ship 1907 1894 Sailed Newcastle NSW bound San Francisco with cargo of coal and disappeared


Following extract is from “H.Hogarth & Sons Ltd.” published by The World Ship Society 1976:

It is worth recording here that orders continued to be placed for sailing vessels and in 1883 Robert Duncan of Port Glasgow built for Hugh Hogarth the first of several handsome iron, full-rigged vessels which became well known in the ports of the world.

This first full-rigged ship was the Machrihanish, which gained a considerable reputation by proving herself a swift sailor.
In his book ‘The Last of the Windjammers’, Basil Lubbock described her as “A beauty and the clipper of Hugh Hogarth’s fleet.
This enviable reputation resulted from several record passages which stand to her credit and perhaps the most notable of these was when, under the command of Captain J. A. Sanders, a Nova Scotian, she sailed from Portland, Oregon, with a full cargo of tinned salmon and, after crossing the Astoria Bar at the mouth of the Columbia River on 6th January, 1892, she arrived off Fastnet on 5th April, 1892 – eighty-nine days out.
Another of her noteworthy passages was a ballast run from Cape Town to Otago Heads, New Zealand, in thirty days, a feature of this run being that she and the New Zealand Shipping Company’s S.S. Paparoa left Table Bay together and both arrived off the New Zealand coast when twenty-six days out. The Machrihanish was followed by Ochtertyre, Corryvrechan, Ardnamurchan, Ballahulish and Colintraive, but none of these proved as fast as Machrihanish.

The Colintraive was the last sailing vessel to be built for Hugh Hogarth and she had a tragically short life, being lost without trace in 1894, when only two years old, whilst on passage from Newcastle, N.S.W. to San Francisco with a cargo of coal.
The last sailing ship to be owned by H. Hogarth and Sons (as the company was by then known) was the Ochtertyre, sold in 1910 to Norwegian buyers.

To anyone not conversant with some of the place-names to be found in the West of Scotland, it is not difficult to appreciate why these sailing ships became known as the ‘Hogarth Jawbreakers‘!

The Carradale
 machrihanish thecarradale
A four-masted steel barque built in 1889 by A. Stephen & Sons, Glasgow. Dimensions 87,03×11,88×7,18 meters [285’7″×39’0″×23’7″] and tonnage 2085 GRT and 1982 NRT. Rigged with nothing above double top- and topgallant sails.
1889 November – Launched at the shipyard of A. Stephen & Sons, Glasgow, for J.A. Roxburgh, Glasgow. The first master was Captain A. Smith.
1913Sold to Norway [According to Lille].
1914Sold to Rederi AB Aura (J. Tengström), Åbo, Finland. Captain John Lagerström.
1923Sold to Gustav Eriksson, Mariehamn, Åland, for FIM 417.000. Captain K.V. Lindqvist.
1923 December 8 – Sold to Bremen for £ 2950 to be broken up.

A Big Thank You to Capt H Cook for the information.

 

*The artist – Oswald F, Pennington,
Oswald Franklyn Pennington (1885-1953) was born at Southport, Lancashire, England. He went to sea as a youth apprentice in the four-masted barque Carradale and gained his master’s certificate in sail on August 12, 1913. He was cartoonist and general artist of the Liverpool Journal of Commerce in 1913 and 1914 . During WWI he was commander of the HMS Rugby with a complement of one hundred officers and men. He was the DSC and took part in extensive post war clearance operations before being demobilised in 1920. He served aboard the Empress of France, the Empress of Australia, the Duchess of York, the Duchess of Bedford, Montcalm, and the Empire Magpie as well as the Winnipeg II which was torpedoed in l942. These Canadian Pacific Ships were managed for the Government of Canada. Oswald was staff captain on the Empress of Britain when she was torpedoed on 28 October 1940. He lived in Montreal until l952 when he returned to England. Throughout his career he made sketches and drawings of sailing ships as well as the Canadian Pacific liners. Many of these were produced as postcards and given to passengers.
Courtesy of The Reverend Jasper Green Pennington, Pennington Library & Archives, 204 Elm Street, Ypsilanti, Michigan 48197

Shipping forecast information:

The shipping forecast is issued four times a day at 2300, 0500, 1100, 1700 UTC and covers a period of 24 hours from 0000, 0600, 1200 and 1800 UTC respectively.

The waters around the British Isles are divided into 31 sea areas shown on the map. Machrihanish is in the Malin area.

The forecast contains details of gale warnings in force, a general synopsis and sea-area forecasts containing wind direction and force, sea state, weather and visibility.

Gale warnings are issued as required throughout the day (for winds of Gale Force 8 or more).