Shipping Lines - A look back at the shipbuilding past of the Montrose Wet Dock

Years ago I used to spend a Saturday afternoon with the late harbour historian J.M.D (Jack) Smith at the base of the Lower Light.

The historic building was adorned with a colourful maritime–themed mural. Jack would recall the former Wet Dock, when crowded with sailing vessels, later coastal and deep sea steamers and ultimately a wide miscellany of mainly Continental motor ships including some of the early low air draft-type built in central European, Dutch and German shipyards. A market in which British shipyards had also participated in.

The aforementioned enclosed dock structure had been excavated with walls built in early Victorian times in an effort to put Montrose on the map of expanding East Coast ports.

Montrose also had its shipbuilding industry but that latterly flourished in fits and starts. Ship launches were regularly reported in the pages of the “Review”, the predecessor of this title. For example, in the early 1920s the following news item appeared, “Launch at Montrose – The London and Montrose Shipbuilding and Repairing Co. which commenced operations at Waterside Yard last July, successfully launched their first vessel last Tuesday. She is one of two steam drifters of 85 feet long and is for London owners. She will be engined at Dundee.”

A slightly earlier group of fishing craft by Montrose Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. including a number for the Admiralty, but were completed too late to participate in the Great War. They were said to have been named after naval personnel who appeared on Admiral Nelson’s muster rolls at the Battle of Trafalgar. I undertook some research a few years ago to ascertain the source of this story. There was no confirmation on board HMS Victory but in a nearby museum/shop one of the staff found the exact information I was searching for.

It relates to an incident in 1919 when, “One of the more unusual call-outs for a lifeboat came only a few days after the end of the First War. On 20th November, 1919 the steam trawler Isaac Dobson was launched from the Waterside shipyard of the Montrose Shipbuilding Co. She was one of a large flotilla of trawlers built for the Admiralty during the First World War to participate mainly in minesweeping duties.

“A strongly receding ebb tide caused the ship with 12 people on board to ground on the Annat Bank. The local lifeboat Sarah Jane Turner was launched and took the stranded crew off. A motor patrol boat pulled the lifeboat upriver while a steam tug towed the Isaac Dobson upriver and into the Wet Dock on the next high tide.”

Built in the same yard as Alvei/Tweenways, the 112-year-old veteran steam tug Viking, now Kerne, is still sailing under her original engine along the River Mersey. An email from her owners gave details of a forthcoming trip from Canning Dock (Liverpool) to a berth in Huskisson Dock.