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The "Kintyre"
Reckoned to be the prettiest of all the Campbeltown-owned ships, she inaugurated the ‘fiddle bow’ which would become the trade-mark of the fleet. The 314-ton “Kintyre” was 184’ 8” long, 22’ 10” beam and 11’ 6” in depth and her 2-cylinder, 26” x 48” x 30”, vertical, single-expansion, engine was supplied by Kincaid, Donald & Company of Greenock. The engine would be ‘compounded’ when the ship was first re-boilered in 1882 - another new boiler was fitted in 1893.
She was launched on June 10, 1868 by Miss M’Murchy, daughter of John M’Murchy of Dalaruan Distillery and among those present on the occasion were Messrs John Galbraith, company chairman; Alex Giffen, John M’Murchy, Sam Greenlees, Thos Brown - all company directors - John Murray, company manager; John Ross, Alex Love and Alex M’Phail - She was registered on August 17, 1868, just two days after her builders, Robertson’s, acquired the Campbeltown company's “Druid”, in part-exchange.
The Loss of The “Kintyre”
The “Kintyre” was running ‘light’, without cargo or passengers, down-river for Campbeltown, where she was to pick up a special sailing for the ram sales in Tarbert. Her course lay close inshore to the Renfrewshire coast which not only gave her the advantage of the current but also put her on a virtual straight line from The Cloch Lighthouse to Holy Isle on a beautiful day, on a calm sea and in excellent visibility.
The new, Denny-built, “Maori”, a 3,500-ton turbine steamer for The Union Steamship Company of New Zealand - their 1901 “Waipori” and 1913 “Kamo” in fact products of Campbeltown’s own shipyard - had just completed her northward run on The Skelmorlie ‘Measured Mile’.
Continuing to run at speed, she made for the Cowal shore and began turning to head back down ‘the mile’ again on a southern course, signalling her turn to starboard with a blast from her steam siren.
With her engineers no doubt setting up for the southern run, her speed was, if anything, increasing and, now half a mile distant, the little “Kintyre”, instead of slowing down to let the “Maori” pass ahead of her on to ‘the mile’, gave two blasts on her own whistle, turned slightly to port and slightly closer to the Wemyss Bay shore thinking to give the “Maori” more room to complete her turn southwards.
“Maori” on trials off Skelmorlie
To have slowed down the “Kintyre” would have left her vulnerable and had the “Maori” attempted to have come across her stern and she might have misjudged her speed. A collision was now inevitable and, to lessen any impact, the “Maori” put her engines ‘full astern’. At 11.45 a.m. on Wednesday, September 18, 1907, the bow of the “Maori” stove in the starboard quarter of the “Kintyre”, just at the after hatch and close to the engine compartment.
The two vessels remained locked together for long enough to allow most of the fifteen crew of the “Kintyre” to clamber aboard the “Maori”.
Though settling steadily by her stern as the water began to fill her engine room and after saloon, Captain John MacKechnie, having ordered her engine ‘full astern’ and with Chief Engineer William Lennox now beside him on the bridge, tried to run the “Kintyre” on to the shore, to the north of the church and old steamer pier on Castle Wemyss estate but, less than four minutes after the collision, her stern now completely under water, there came the hissing sound of escaping steam and a slight ‘report’ and some twenty seconds later the “Kintyre” sank, her bowsprit being last to disappear.
The two men were thrown into the water and 40-year old William Lennox disappeared below the waves leaving a widow and one child.
The Rothesay-bound “Marchioness of Breadalbane” and the Millport-bound “Marchioness of Bute”, having just left Wemyss Bay pier, now put back and lowered boats to pick up the remainder of the crew from the “Kintyre”.
Pulled down by suction and entangled in wreckage, Captain MacKechnie, a strong swimmer, managed to free himself and reached the surface in a dazed condition where he was rescued by school-boy Ninian Bannatyne Stewart (of 'Dunloe') and his sister who had set out from the shore less than 100 yards away.
Their uncle would have been the same Ninian Bannatyne Stewart who then owned Keil House at Southend, just before it was turned into Keil School. A yacht too had been in close vicinity to the scene of the collision but it was a triumphant Ninian Stewart who then recovered the ship’s log and presented it to Captain MacKechnie in the Wemyss Bay Hotel where he was being examined by Dr Ronald Currie, himself a native of Arran and the builder and proprietor of Skelmorlie Hydro Hotel which sat on the cliff overlooking the northern marker posts of the Skelmorlie ‘Measured Mile’.
“Who on the route did not know her ?” wrote ‘The Campbeltown Courier’ correspondent, “She was inimitable. Her successors were but sorry imitations of her beauty. She was looked on from Greenock to The Broomielaw as a joy for ever and, by every man along the quays, she was known to be a model steamship and the finest design of screw steamer that ever sailed The Clyde, her like will be no more. She sat squat, yet lightly and snug in the water like no other creation. No feeling of top-heaviness ever entered into ones calculation of her poise. By the stern, whether light or loaded, there sat the “Kintyre” with the apparently same draught, ever graceful, ever secure. Forward her beautiful cut-water curving out to the inimitable bowsprit, put her in a class alone and all her lines were in beauteous symmetry.
“In a south-easter, who that ever was but prayed for the “Kintyre” below him. She rose to the onrush like a thing alive : like a knife edge she cleft the mass and, while the spray rejuvenated her decks, the green seas went aft along her fenders. Ask anyone who ought to know, ‘tis the same answer, ‘the finest sea-boat that ever sailed to Campbeltown quay’ .
Launched on May 11, 1906, the "Maori", built at a cost of £108,848, immediately crashed into the opposite bank of the river. Then, in July, whilst departing on her trials with two tugs in attendance, she was caught by a heavy gust of wind and ran aground on Dumbarton Rock, having to go into dry-dock for repairs.
The "Maori" aground at Dumbarton Rock
On September 29, 1907, eleven days after her collision with the little "Kintyre", the "Maori" sailed for New Zealand and promptly ran aground on a sandbank in the Clyde in dense fog. She refloated herself under her own power some fifteen minutes later and made it safely to New Zealand where she plied her trade until 1944.
Three months after the collision, in December 1907, the Campbeltown company took Denny’s, the builders of the “Maori” to court in an attempt to the estimated £10,000 value of the now sunk “Kintyre” but the court, under Lord Salvesen, held that the collision had been the fault of the “Kintyre” and that her owners should shoulder the burden of an ‘uninsured’ loss, she was never replaced and the services were left to the “Kinloch” and the “Davaar”.
As a consequence of dives on the wreck, one of the ship’s original 1868 white porcelain toilet bowls, brought to the surface in the late 1990’s, is now proudly displayed in Armitage Shanks’ Staffordshire works.
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