Now we are three!

This blog has just passed its third anniversary and I thought I'd have a look at the statistics to see where we're now at.

As it says on the cover my idea was to cover everything about boats, more or less in Scotland and it's interesting that there's been a lot of interest from outside our little, perhaps soon to be free, country. In this context it's fascinating to note that there has been an avalanche of hits from Poland on the post I wrote about Don Roberto, which I guess is due to the current interest in Scottish independence. Recently there has been an increase in hits from Spain, I suspect for the same reason.

This being post number 156 means that I've managed an average of one per week throughout. Pageviews are nudging 150,000 to date, about 1,000 per week. Not bad for a non-monetary blog that will not carry commercial advertising.

Recently I've been heavily involved in skiffing and so had less time for research, so there haven't been so many historical posts as earlier. If you're new here please have a look at some of the earlier posts, such as the very first one The Scottie which are I hope still worth reading. One of my favourites is about St Abbs, the little port that had a huge impact on the young me.

Apart from needing to feed a writing habit the main reward from this blog has been the feedback via comments and private emails, resulting in a lot of data being preserved. So, if you have anything to do with boats that you want to share, please let me know.

The image at the top is from a new series of works by Paul Kennedy, prints of which will be available soon. 

Leggy Prawn is blogging

But who is at the helm?

Since this blog started we’ve had occasional gems of wisdom from a strange sea-creature, who styles him(her?)self the Leggy Prawn. Time after time he(she?) has come up with solutions to the mysteries and uncannily accurate information, suggesting that among the seabed’s dark rocky nooks and weedy fronds there is a good old-fashioned library of the type never seen nowadays on shore. Perhaps one of our modern politicians, who value nothing other than saving money, has simply tipped a maritime archive into the deep.

Anyway, this strange, articulate and erudite resident of the seabed has now started blogging and the early results look promising. You can visit the new blog here:-  

Leggy Prawn's Blog

I'm adding the new blog to my list below and recommend our other blogging friends to do the same.

Glasgow Museum of Transport opens

Transport Museum by Paul Kennedy

Today sees the opening of Glasgow's new Transport Museum, housed in an utterly astonishing building designed by Zaha Hadid and built right in the heart of where ship-building on the upper Clyde started. It's more or less where Messrs D & W Henderson constructed gigantic racing yachts to designs of George Lennox Watson for characters such as Kaiser Bill and his uncle and sparring partner the Prince of Wales, about which I've already written here.

In common with many other Glaswegians I was introduced to the ship-models at Kelvingrove as a child and they soon became a weekend pilgrimage. I suffered real withdrawal symptoms when most of them later went into storage, there being insufficient space in the old transport museum. From the elegant creations of Watson and the Fifes to the battleships and liners of John Brown's they were an inspiring demonstration of the range of design and building skills to be found in and around the city in its industrial incarnation. It will be good to meet these old friends again, once the opening crowds have died down a bit.

The building is a huge shiny organic thing that snakes about on the banks of the river, perhaps like a metamorphosis of a few industrial sheds that have fused and twisted themselves together under some cosmic influence. It provides a perfect setting for the city's tall ship, the Glenlee, which together with the Waverley is virtually the last of our heritage still floating.

The Glenlee passes Ailsa Craig, by John Gardner

Like virtually all of Glasgow's municipal attractions the new museum is free. If there were no other this would be a good reason to visit the city. Details of the museum can be found here.

The Waverley passes down river, image by Paul Kennedy