Wartime Lifeboat
Trawler
Ring-netter
Wind Power

The Scottish Maritime Museum has boats with hundreds of years of history still moored out in the water waiting to be visited. The museum relays Scottish Maritime's history and many of the vessels are still in working condition and provide trips for visitors. 

Irvine Harbour was once one of Glasgow's main trading ports and is thought to date back to the 17th century when ships traded out of the harbour all around the British Isles, Scandinavia, France and later to America. Even up until the 1970's, the small working puffer boats loaded coal from the Ayrshire collieries to go to the Highlands and to Ireland.

The Shipyard Workers Flat is a chance to see the 'room and kitchen' (the shipyard worker and his family's home) restored to its pre 1920's appearance, and also what it would have been like for many right up until the 1950's - one big and very important change between the 1920's and the 1950's would have been the addition of an electricity supply and the family would probably have have bought a wireless by then. The 1950's also brought the luxury of a scullery with a cold water tap and a shared inside toilet.

The open-air collection of boats at the museum is moored in the harbour at Irving, and it's always possible to board at least one. These include:

• ASR-10, a wartime lifesaving barge. It has a watertight cabin which was fitted with heaters, bunks, clothing, food, first aid kit and a radio transmitter. It was designed and moored on buoys out at sea for any airmen who had to ditch their plane for any reason when returning to their bases.
  
• Jane Anne was the last lifeboat to be based at Irvine Harbour. These open lifeboats had no engines but were powered by sails and oars totally dependent on the strength and skill of crew who rowed her. Jane Anne served on the Clyde from 1898 to 1914 after the Irvine station was closed.
  
• Antares is a 57 ft wooden hulled trawler boat which was involved with a submarine incident in 1990 when four of its crew were lost in the Clyde. The Antares was donated to the museum by the boat's widow.
  
• Falcon is an unusual boat and created for a wind power project run by the University of Glasgow in the  early 1980's. It's a small yacht fitted with a windmill, and the small wind turbine on the boat enables Falcon to sail directly into the wind, which is not possible with conventional boats.
  
• Garnock was the last Irvine Harbour tug. Built in 1958, she had an accident in 1984 which brought her working life to a sudden close. The company ICI in Aberdeen had regularly been using the tug to  dump substandard explosives into deep water out at sea but on one occasion a container which had been discharged, blew up. The crew were unhurt but the hull and steering equipment repair cost was too high and it was donated to the Maritime Museum at Irving.

The Pilot House at the mouth of the river overlooks a sand bar, and shipmasters had to know the depths of the water. A system was developed by the harbour master which automatically measured the water depth and he would signal information out to approaching ships - the tall white-painted tower which housed the signaling apparatus still stands at the mouth of the river.

A guided tour starts from the Linthouse Engine Shop which is the biggest historical building in UK - a Victorian heavy engineering workshop, opened in 1872, for the manufacture of marine engines. The building is immense, with 35 iron columns, most weighing 6 tons, and the roof is made up of 26,000 feet of glass. Watch out for the scratches on the columns to find workers' names, dates and the names of their favourite football teams.

Scottish Maritime Museum
Harbourside
Irvine
Tel: (01294) 278283

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Information courtesy Scottish Maritime Museum