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FLEET
FEATURES |
 Main
Fleet Features
The Changing Faces of a Past Legend,
SS Chieftain |
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Surely a contender for the most beautiful ship to be
built at the little shipyard in Ayr and probably the most travelled ex
MacBrayne's ship in history... |
SS Chieftain was ordered by Mr David Hope MacBrayne from the Ailsa
Shipbuilding Company and was launched by his wife from the Ayr shipyard, which
Ailsa took over from Samuel McKnight & Co in 1902 to operate in conjunction with
its established Troon yard, on Saturday 11th May 1907. She was Ailsa yard No
182.
The new ship was the first with a traditional clipper bow to enter the MacBrayne
fleet since 1881. She was fitted with a triple expansion engine for her service
on MacBrayne's' long sea route between Glasgow and Stornoway. Before the Great
War she partnered the equally beautiful first Claymore. However, after
the War the traffic on this route did not recover to support two ships and it
was the newer vessel that was sold in 1919 to the North of Scotland, Orkney &
Shetland Steam Navigation Company (Later P&O, now NorthLink) who renamed her
St Margaret and employed her on the west-side service until 1925 when the
sold her to the Canadian National Steamship Company of Prince Rupert, BC. They
renamed her Prince Charles end employed her on the Canadian coast for 15
years, replacing her beautiful clipper bow with a slanting stem, before selling
her to the Union Steamship Company of Vancouver. This company renamed her
Camosun and she spent the next five years competing with the Canadian
Pacific Steamship Company's steamers on the services between Vancouver and the
coastal communities. In 1945, she recrossed the Atlantic, having been sold to
the Oriental Navigation Company of Tel Aviv. She was renamed Cairo and
flew the Palestinian flag on service in the Eastern Mediterranean. Two years
later the Zarati Steamship Company acquired her and registered her in Panama.
She was employed in a service between Marseilles and Beira but this only lasted
until June 1948 when she went back across the Atlantic to the West Indies where
she remained for a while before returning back across the Atlantic to Marseilles
where she was laid up on 5th April 1950. Nearly two years later she sailed for
Spezia where she arrived on 8th January 1952 to commence demolition.
Thus ended the remarkable career of this beautiful Ayr built steamer. Built to
serve on the Clyde and Hebridean waters, she saw service on the Pentland Firth
and Northern Isles, Prince Rupert Sound and the West coast of Canada, the
Mediterranean and West Indies, traversing the Atlantic four times and the Panama
canal twice.
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Above Left: This view from the 1911
MacBrayne tour guide shows Chieftain passing Kyle in the Western Isles. |
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Above: The former Chieftain as the North of
Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Steam Navigation Company's St Margaret. |
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Left: Chieftain following her emigration to
Canada and removal of her clipper bow. This is her operating as the Camosun
II, camouflaged in grey and armed, on war service to the Queen Charlottes. |
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Following Extract From: “Whistle up the Inlet” |
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The Union Steamship Story by Gerald A Ruston 1974 ISBN:
0-88894-057-2 (Courtesy of Ed Roach) |
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The new master of the Coquitlam on her Islands run
was Captain Alexander Campbell McLennan, a quiet and resourceful mariner with an
enviable safety record. Paul St. Pierre once wrote about him in the Vancouver
Sun: “…he started sailing in the days of wooden ships iron men,” describing him
as “a short, jolly man who’d look well in a Santa Claus suit”. Born at Kyle,
Scotland, he shipped as a youth aboard a Hebrides trawler to drag cod of
Greenland, and got his ticket in the Scottish coastal trade. Before joining the
Union [Steamship Co] in 1921, he served in minesweepers during the war. Angus
McNeill, Captain McLennan’s second officer on the old Camosun II, tells
of this amusing experience with “Big Mac” in 1943 while running to the Queen
Charlottes.
“It was terrible weather, in fact a gale was blowing across
Hecate Striate, and Captain McLennan twice turned the ship back into Price
Rupert harbour. He set out once more and, greatly to my surprise, as I felt for
once the “Old Man” might be losing his nerve, he came back a third time.”
After the storm, when he next went up to the bridge on
watch neither of them spoke for a while, and then suddenly the captain turned on
Angus: “Don’t look at me like that,” he barked. “If you think I’m going to drown
myself, you’re crazy!” Nothing more was said, but the explanation of the
skipper’s antipathy to the Camosun II was revealed two years later when
the vessel was sold to the Greeks. “Well, I’m very happy to see the last of
her,” he told Angus. “Twenty-five years ago I was second officer on that ship
when she sailed the Scottish lochs under the name of Chieftain. My
captain caught me out making love to a highland lassie one day in the steerage,
and that was my finish. I had the strange feeling the ship had followed me out
here to get me.” So the sailor’s spell was broken. This consummate mariner died
on the job in April 1950. Only two weeks after he had given up his command of
the Cardena. |
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Left: The Camosun II performed
invaluable wartime service to the queen Charlotte Islands, serving the lumber
camps and transporting air force personnel and supplies to the Alliford Bay
airbase. |
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