Museum member David Wenban begins the first of three articles on the early history of the beautiful barque James Craig. He begins with matters leading up to her launching in 1874 and ends about 1900 describing the period when the ship was in her hey-day.

Most of the information in this article was supplied by Sir Thomas Dunlop Bt., who passed away towards the end of 1999. He was a great grandson of Thomas Dunlop, the founder of Thomas Dunlop & Sons, Shipowners, who commissioned construction of our vessel in 1873. Further information comes from other sources, including the Scottish Clan Macleod Magazine, Vol. 10, No. 65, 1987 and written by Harold Macleod, past President of NSW and Queensland branches of that clan.

The Scots were sailors long before steam was thought of and most came from Glasgow, the Hebrides, the west coast of Scotland or the Shetlands. This suggests that their call to the sea originated in the predominance of Scandinavian blood in the veins of their ancestors.

For many decades Glasgow was one of Scotland's busiest seaports and was home to many shipyards. In Old Monkland Parish of this city of 17 April,1831, Thomas Dunlop was born. He was the first of a family of three and both his parents, William Dunlop and Mary Anne Stirling had died by the time Thomas was ten years of age.

From the letters he wrote we can deduce something of the character of Thomas Dunlop. He seemed to have been God-fearing, temperate and a man with the utmost respect for the importance of family life. In a letter to an acquaintance in 1870, he briefly sketched out his own background.

"I was left without father or mother at ten years of age and my friends left me to fight my own battles. I can tell you I often wished I had mother to tell my troubles to. I daresay the want of a home caused me to get married so soon - at twenty one - which has been a blessing to me. My wife is a good motherly little woman and you would like her if you knew her."

This "motherly" little woman was Robina Jack who Thomas married in 1852. A year earlier, at 231 Cowcaddens, Glasgow, young Thomas Dunlop, a grocer's son began as a provisions merchant, to subsequently found the firm of Thomas Dunlop & Sons.

In 1851 the Cowcaddens was struggling towards pretension as an important city thoroughfare. It was narrow and congested, echoing to the rumble of Menzies' tartan horse buses as they rattled over the stone paving, and to the cries of vendors pushing barrows or driving carts. Pride and poverty mingled as pinched-faced women in shawls haggled over purchases and elegant women gathered their voluminous skirts in ripples of silk as they passed in their private carriages.

Here and there a carter swore at his horse and exchanged banalities with his mates; a whiskered businessman in a top hat, dark coat and shepherd-tartan trousers paused to take a pinch of snuff, and smart little boys from the High School nervously eyed the bare-footed, ragged urchins following with mimicry in their wake.

A few minutes' walk from the Dunlop shop the young couple set up house, in a middle class dwelling, at 20 Buccleuch Street, no doubt typical with its lace curtains, venetian blinds, antimacassars, elaborate gas chandeliers and horse-tail sofas.

It says much for Thomas Dunlop's enterprise that without the experience and wisdom of his father to guide him he quickly made a success of his first commercial venture. So rapid was his success that within a few years he moved to larger premises as grain merchant at 249 Argyle Street, and celebrated his improved commercial position by moving his home away from the madding crowds to the select western fringes of the city at 2 Great Kelvin Terrace, Hillhead.

With his brother-in-law, James Jack, admitted as partner, he looked for wider spheres to conquer and dreamed of owning a fleet of sailing vessels to carry his commerce across the oceans of the world. Thus, 1868 he traveled to London with his friend John Neil, biscuit manufacturer, and for the considerable sum of 2,800 Pounds they bought the wooden barque Wye, a vessel of 334 tons.

Thomas wrote to another brother-in-law, Captain William Jack, that the "Wye is a nice little barque (sic)...She requires no ballast to shift and carries 550 tons deadweight. She sails fast in light winds and I think will do well for us."

Although circumstances forced Thomas Dunlop to be self-reliant from childhood and perhaps accelerated his business success, his self reliance was always tempered by his faith in his God. He was a strict Sabbatarian and amidst a host of practical instruction to the first captain on the Wye he wrote in October,1868. "I hope you will do no unnecessary work on the Lord's Day. I have never seen much peace or prosperity where this has been neglected."

Dunlop's education was not bookish, but learned in the hard school of experience. Often he depended on those whom he assumed to know better than he did for information concerning world affairs. For example, although he had not visited America, he spoke of it with the authority of one who knew the country well. Writing to Captain Dunlop, master of the Wye, in 1869, he remarked: "Should you charter from New York be sure to get put into your charter party 'freight to be paid in gold.' And as there is a very bad lot in New York you would require to have all your wisdom about you."

Perhaps this impression of New Yorkers persisted throughout Thomas' life; initially it was well founded, but other early impressions of foreign places he learned to amend. Such an amendment as the following makes amusing reading now although to Thomas Dunlop, shipowner, it was a matter of considerable importance.

Writing again to Captain Dunlop, he said: "I find I made a very grave mistake in the letter I wrote you by last mail. I stated that if we go into war with France that you would be going into the lion's den by going to Mauritius. Observe my mistake. I thought then that it belonged to France and only found out this morning that Mauritius belongs to Britain."

From one small wooden barque, the Wye, the fleet changed with changes in shipping construction, remaining small but keeping abreast of the times. Tramp shipowning required a high degree of personal attention, and for this reason the small fleet, usually kept close under the eye of the management as far as employment was concerned, was typical British shipping. The tramp owner could do little to affect the circumstances in which he traded; he could not restrict competition as liners can, nor was able to fix the rates at which he offered his ship. In swiftly-changing markets, only an organisation capable of making immediate changes itself could survive. This demand for flexibility reflected itself in the kind of enterprise which managed tramp ships, usually a collection of small separate companies owning perhaps only one ship, but all brought together under one holding for financial purposes. With changing market forms, and particularly the difficulties of collecting enough money to buy new, larger and costlier ships, the Dunlop company had, in later years, new problems to deal with.

Returning to the firm's early history, Thomas Dunlop, while still managing the Wye, added flour importing to his grain merchant business. As he became a leading flour importer he moved his premises to the city's commercial hub in the Corner Exchange (now demolished) at 81 Hope Street, just around the corner from Central Station. In this period Thomas Dunlop was a parishioner of Dr. Norman Macleod and worshipped in the family pew in the old Barony Church, Glasgow.

Within the next six years Wye was sold (1872) and three other barques were purchased jointly by Dunlop, Neil and Reid (Neil's partner in biscuit manufacturing). They were Marion Neil (1871), Andrew Reid (1872) and the Robina Dunlop which was launched prior to the Clan Macleod in the same year, 1874.

As the Dunlop business flourished, his family grew to nine children - five boys and four girls, although three of the boys died in childhood.

In 1873, Thomas Dunlop placed an order with the firm of Bartram Haswell & Co. of Sunderland, in the northeast of England to build a barque which was to become the first ship of the Clan Line.

Although the Clan system of life was nowhere more prominent than on the west coast and highlands and there were a great number of Clans, relatively few achieved the distinction of having a vessel named after them. One that did, however, was the Clan Macleod after which this first Clan Line ship was named. Subsequently the Dunlop "Clans" were to form an impressive fleet of 10 sailing ships and one steamship.

Unlike the Robina Dunlop which was of wooden construction and somewhat smaller the new Clan Macleod was to be constructed of iron. She was to have a length of 179 feet 5 inches below her main deck.

In the following year, the vessel known only as Yard No. 75 during construction, was launched on 18 February, 1874, and was christened by Mrs. McMacallum. In that year Thomas Dunlop's eldest son Thomas (junior) entered the firm and in 1879 he and his brother Robert, were made partners. James Jack then retired from the firm. The creation of the new name, Thomas Dunlop & Sons, ended the first chapter in the history of the firm and marked the beginning of a new and still more prosperous period in its history.

Thomas Dunlop was just 61 when he died on 30 January 1893. He entered the business world as a provisions merchant, a mere nonentity in Glasgow's business life, but he left it as an important trader and the founder of the firm of Thomas Dunlop & Sons, grain merchants and ship owners.

* Allan Villiers