SKELMORLIE and INVERKIP SEA SCOUTS

Thanks to Morris Dixon's father, the family living at The Meigle, to the south of Skelmorlie and
Wemyss Bay's young Tom Kidd, one of the lifeboats from Alfred Holt's 'Blue Funnel' cargo ship
"Dymas", which had arrived at Arnott Young's Damuir shipbreaking yard on April 8, 1954,
was acquired for Skelmorlie's 'Rover' Scouts, they meeting weekly in their clubroom in the
basement of Stroove, the village's then community centre, the lifeboat, with the marking
'DS2' on her mainsail, seemingly the 'No 2' boat from the ship's port side.

The cost of the enterprise was £35, each of the seven prospective Sea Scout members
chipping in £5, a great deal of money for any boy to find or even possess in the 1950's.

Amongst those clearly identifiable in the crew photographed here, as the lifeboat is being
rowed down-river from Dalmuir are Morris Dixon's father, Douglas (left), Dougie Christie and
Carson McCartney, a Clyde 'puffer' coming up-river towards them in the photograph below.

Sadly, moored off the Skelmorlie shore, to the north of the village gas works and the boat slip
near adjacent to 'Johnny A'Things' (Ewen's) shop, she dragged her moorings one night in a
horrendous September 'equinoxial' gale and was smashed to pieces by morning on the rocks in
front of Waddell's 'Craigdhu' Nursing Home, Skelmorlie's Rover Scouts Bill and Matt Shepherd,
Dougie Christie, Neil Wilkieson, John Alexander, Ian McNair, Tom Kidd and the Dixons among
others unable to save her and nothing but the boat's copper rivets, wedged in rocky crevices,
to mark her grave.

In hindsight, as most might agree, it would have been a good idea to lay a proper mooring for
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the boat instead of relying on on an 'anchor' that was 'fabricated' from an old tea chest, it
filled with scrap metal, an eye bolt sticking out the top and filled to the top with cement, that
felony compounded by having only a short length of cable, it indeed 'near vertical', leading
up from the 'anchor' to the boat and the boat thus quite easily able to lift her 'anchor' off the
seabed in high tides and seas and move her mooring wherever she was taken, the mooring in
this case still seen for some time at low tide, some twenty-feet or so below the high water tide
mark.

Despite the loss, it was then decided to obtain another vessel, this time an ex-Royal Navy 27-
foot long 'Montague' whaler, which had been bought by an Ardentinny man and, having been
laid up ashore for considerable time, her new owners, the Sea Scouts, submerged her in the
loch and camped overnight beside The Ardentinny Hotel to give the whaler's planks time to
tighten up before attempting to sail her across The Clyde to her new home.

Setting off next morning, though the vessel was still making water, they soon had their new
acquisition nipping along at a rare lick of knots until, as they opened up Loch Long at Strone
Point, the wind freshened and the mainsail ripped apart due to its recent lack of usage, the
crew then having to resort to pulling the boat's eighteen-foot long oars to get to the safety of a
mooring off Inverkip Point.

With the advent of summer, the mainsail repaired and the boat's planks now fully tightened
up, the whaler, later to be named the "Saloorie", began exploring the environs of the lower
and more open firth, Brodick a favourite destination for its Saturday night dances, the whaler
'careened' over a low sandbar into the overnight safety of the mouth of the burn at the north
end of Brodick's beach.

To make her more habitable for the young Sea Scouts, it was decided to fit the boat with a
foredeck and a small raised cabin 'cuddy' shelter, the modifications, including the fitting of a
two-foot deep 'fixed' rectangular wooden keel and the all-round raising of her gunwhales by
some eighteen extra inches, being carried out by Morris Dixon, his father Douglas, Ian
McNair and Tom Kidd, a few other Sea Scouts only irregularly appearing to help, as 'sweepers-
up and hauders-oaners', they deterred by the then frequently grim weather conditions and
prolonged spells of cold easterly winds, the 'new' boat this time harboured in the relative
safety of 'The Basin' at Inverkip and Inverkip's Sailing Club boathouse used for the safe
storage of equipment.

The Inverkip 'Basin', had been dug out by The Army's Royal Engineers during World War II to
save landing craft, regularly practising with the concrete ramps built along the foreshore of
the private road leading round Lord Inverclyde's estate at Wemyss Bay in anticipation of the D-
Day landings, having to round The Cloch Point in bad weather on the way to and from their
base at Port Glasgow and 'The Basin' forming the foundation for today's vast Kip Marina
development.

Sea Scouts Tom Kidd, Bill Shepherd and 'A.N. Other'

showing some interest in a 'Sea Nymph' at Rothesay

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Skelmorlie's Sea Scout venture was short-lived, lasting less than some ten years and, with
declining support, the ex-navy whaler was sold and the Sea Scouts 'demobilised'.