When the name Ferguson shipyard is mentioned, people typically think of the two notorious CalMac ferries, Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa, that have caused plenty of controversy. However, the Inverclyde shipyard has a long and fascinating history that has been overlooked. In January 1903, the four Ferguson brothers leased the Newark yard in Port Glasgow, which was next to a 15th-century castle. The yard was not a stranger to shipbuilding, and neither were the Ferguson brothers who had worked at their father’s business in Paisley. The first Ferguson Brothers vessel, Flying Swift, a steel-hulled tug, was launched just ten months later.
The occasion was celebrated with a “wine and cake banquet,” according to the Greenock Telegraph, which recently reprinted extracts from its original 1903 report. Flying Swift was followed by a second tug, which was almost completed by the end of the year. The Ferguson family’s connection with the yard ended in 1954 with the death of Bobby Ferguson, son of one of the founding brothers Robert. Flying Swift was eventually broken up in 1957.
The steam tug Canterbury, built in 1907 for £14,126 and 10 shillings, travelled via the Suez Canal to Lyttelton, New Zealand, where it became a port’s tug, pilot boat, and fireboat. Soon renamed after the town it served, the tug is still there, cared for by the volunteers of the Tug Lyttelton Preservation Society. Vehicular Ferryboat No. 3, the first ferry built by the yard in 1908, was better known in Glasgow as the Finnieston horse ferry, where it carried horse-drawn carts across the river near where the Finnieston crane now stands.
During World War I, the yard was building hospital ships and minesweepers and earned the visit of King George V in 1917, who was concerned about growing Communist sympathies. While larger shipyards upriver were building giant liners and warships, Ferguson’s yard carved out a solid reputation for smaller specialist vessels. The most famous vessel was RRS Discovery II, completed in 1929 for the Discovery Committee of the Colonial Office to research whales and their habitats in Antarctica. The ship was equipped with laboratories and built from steel, cross-braced with timber to withstand the ice floes it encountered. In January 1932, the vessel was caught in heavy pack ice in the Weddell Sea and tested its strength when the rivets began to break, making a sound like a machine gun. However, the ship escaped with a few leaks and a twisted rudder stock
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