Comet engine used in brewery!

PORT Glasgow Comet Festival 2004 is well under way and it is appropriate to recall the background to the revolutionary vessel that is being celebrated.

Today I go back 55 years to the words of a Greenock Telegraph writer who stated:

Few of us, I think, really appreciate the heritage which is ours as a shipbuilding community.

Take the Comet, for instance. The first practical steamship in the world, designed by a man whose daily life was bounded by a view of Greenock, built by a Port Glasgow man and propelled by a revolutionary type of prime mover.

What material for a little boasting! Yet we have become so accustomed to our good fortune in being able to claim such distinguished ancestry that we scarcely ever refer to it. In fact, a surprisingly small number of people know the remarkable story of the Comet.

How many readers know, for instance, that the engine of the Comet ended its active days, ingloriously, working the machinery in a Greenock brewery?

Such was the fate of the world's first practical marine steam engine. That such a priceless relic of man's forward march should be consigned to such a task seems almost incomprehensible to our views in the Twentieth Century. But in the opening years of the Nineteenth, Henry Bell and and his new fangled idea was regarded as something of a crank by the majority of folk.

How stupidly wrong they were! Because, although thoughtful men would no doubt have done Bell's work, the fact remains that it was left to him to prove to the world that for the first time in uncounted centuries man did not have to demand on the wind when crossing the seas.

What sort of man was this Henry Bell who shocked the countryside, startled the nations and finally convinced the world?

As he sat at his window in Helensburgh watching the Greenock skyline Bell sketched idly at an idea which was taking shape in his fertile brain. A ship without sails that would go where he pleased regardless of the weather.

Even his wife must have wondered if her husband had taken leave of his senses. But she had more to think of for not long before, in 1808, the Bells had bought the Helensburgh Baths — now the Queen's Hotel (the property has since been converted into flats with a modern extension).

But Bell had the courage of his convictions and faith in the new-fangled steam engine. So over to Port Glasgow he sailed and sought out John Wood, the shipbuilder.

Wood accepted the contract — but died in 1811. His son, also John Wood, literally stepped into his father's shoes and although only 23 years of age, he carried out the job to Bell's satisfaction. And, as all the world was to learn, the Comet took the water from the Port yard the following year.

The rest is history, expect the career of the Comet's engine after the hull had been wrecked. The machinery was accepted by a Glasgow coach-builder in payment for a vehicle supplied to Bell. Subsequently, as I've already said, it was put to work in a Greenock brewery before finding its rightful place as a museum showpiece (the Science Museum, London).

Actually, the Comet's machinery was evolved from an experimental little steam engine which Bell installed in his Helensburgh hotel to pump sea water into the baths.

Replica for 150th anniversary

HENRY Bell and the Comet have received wider recognition since the accompanying words were written in 1949.

A replica vessel was built for the 150th anniversary celebrations in 1962, during which it sailed from Port Glasgow to Helensburgh and back, thereafter going on display in Port Glasgow town centre. The replica was refurbished a few years ago.

And, returning to the present, there is the 2004 Comet Festival which runs until Saturday, 31 July.

This story appeared in the Greenock Telegraph on Fri, 23 Jul, 2004