A Century of Hazardous Cargoes

Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896) was a Swedish inventor of dynamite, gelignite and other high explosives, from which he made a fortune, and he later bequeathed a fund in his will for annual prizes to those who had contributed most to mankind in the fields of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. These prizes were begun in 1901 and a prize for economics was added in 1968, and they are awarded annually on 10th December, the anniversary of his death. He also cleverly invented smokeless gunpowder and the detonator with which to control the blasts. As a young man in Sweden, he worked in the research laboratory of his father near Stockholm. After his younger brother died when some liquid explosive nitroglycerine blew up, he tried to make the substance less sensitive to exploding. In 1866 he added the porous mineral clay kieselguhr to make the explosive solid, and thus much more easily handled.

Nobel called his new product ‘dynamite’ after the Greek word ‘dynamis’ meaning powerful. He then added gun cotton or nitrocellulose to nitroglycerine to produce gelignite, which was much safer and more powerful than dynamite. Dynamite and gelignite helped enormously to progress engineering blasting projects, which had previously used gunpowder or the very explosive when handled nitroglycerine. The construction of the Suez Canal in 1869 would not have been possible without Nobel’s dynamite and gelignite. Nobel founded a British subsidiary in 1871, the British Dynamite Company, renamed Nobel’s Explosives Company (NEC) in 1877. The problem was that there were stringent British Government regulations concerning the transport of high explosives, and a remote site far away from populated areas was sought for a new explosives factory.

Ardeer Explosives Factory

A remote site hidden in the sand dunes on the Ayrshire coast was chosen in 1871 to make dynamite and gelignite. The sand dunes are very high here and would help to contain the blast of high explosives in a small immediate area without setting off high explosives being made a short distance away. The transport of these high explosives by rail or road to the clients was not possible, due to the very tight regulations and the nature of the product, and they were moved from 1872 for the first thirty years from the beach at Ardeer to small sailing ships or steam coasters at anchor. The high explosives were carried in strong wooden cases, made from Swedish imported timber, or even in hatboxes and other small containers to hide their contents from prying eyes.

The first sailing vessel used in 1872 was a small cutter of 30 grt called The Jeannie, which could carry only twenty tonnes of dynamite and ten cases of detonators. She was followed by two equally small cutters purchased in 1873/74, and by the first purchased steam coaster Maggie of 142 grt in 1874. She could carry 85 tonnes of dynamite or gelignite together with eighty cases of detonators, followed by Drumhendry of 162 grt in 1878 and built three years earlier in 1875, and another coaster called Marmion built by Scotts. The twin screw twin funnelled yacht Noumea, built by Barr and Shearer at Ardrossan, was in service in 1891, but her small hold was unable to carry enough high explosives and she was more useful as a passenger ship for the NEC directors’ annual cruise. The need arose for the high explosives to be loaded at a wharf on the north bank of the Garnock river, just downstream from and on the opposite bank of the small town of Irvine. The opening of this Garnock Wharf would allow the NEC to control their own landing from their own property so that they were not subject to the strict controls imposed by harbour authorities.

It is believed that the Automatic Tide Marker Station (ATMS) at Irvine, opened in 1906 by its designer Martin Boyd to measure the river depth of the frequently shifting sand of the river, helped the decision to build Garnock Wharf. The ATMS was an ingenious system of signalling the depth of the tide by a series of coloured balls in daylight or coloured lights at night from a four storey building. Boyd’s Patent Automatic Tide Signalling Apparatus was connected to a float system on the foreshore to indicate whether there was enough water for vessels to enter or leave the river, which was doubly important to the movement of explosives as a grounding could result in an enormous explosion. The purpose designed steam coaster Lady Tennant of 499 grt was completed in 1904 by Napier & Miller Ltd. at Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde and was the first vessel to load explosives from the new Garnock Wharf in 1906. Lady Anstruther of 456 grt was purchased in 1906, she had been built by the Caledon yard at Dundee as a general cargo and cattle carrier on an Irish Sea route to Belfast two years earlier. A third steamer was purchased in 1910 and renamed Lady Gertrude Cochrane of 530 grt and had been built six years earlier by Scott & Sons of Bowling. These three steam coasters carried dynamite and gelignite to explosives anchorages outside British ports, where they were loaded on to deep sea ships for their final destinations of Spain, Portugal, Canary Islands or around the world. After taking dynamite or gelignite to the Thames, back cargoes of Thames cement would be transported to Glasgow.

Lady Tennant was sold in 1913 to Stornoway owners after also being on charter to John Hay & Sons Ltd. for a regular weekly charter to Stornoway, when not required in the explosives trade. She was replaced by Lady Dorothy of 578 grt in 1916, a new ship built that year by the Caledon yard at Dundee. Two more steam coasters were purchased in 1921 in Lady Anstruther (2) of 526 grt built at Dublin during that year, to replace the first coaster of that name sold in 1919, and the larger Lady Isobel of 1,408 grt built at Rotterdam.

In 1918, several important firms merged with NEC e.g. Kynoch Ltd. making cartridges and explosives, Curtis & Harvey (explosives), Eley (explosives), Birmingham Metals & Explosives (cartridge cases), and Kings Norton Metal (ammunition). Kynoch Ltd. had owned coasters from 1896 to the summer of 1919 including Kynoch 264/66, Anglesey 117/91, Marie 191/91, May 236/98 and Eller 249/96, which operated from explosives factories at Queensferry on the river Dee and at Arklow in Ireland. Kynoch Arklow Ltd. sold their last four coasters May, Eller, Glenarm and River Avoca to John Kelly Ltd. of Belfast in the summer of 1919, and this quartet were resold within a few months to Samuel B. Stevenson of Londonderry. The small four coaster NEC fleet with ‘Lady’ names was then merged into the new Imperial Chemicals Industries (ICI) combine in 1926.

Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)

The decision was taken in 1926 to create a British industrial chemical giant in the manufacture of explosives, paint, alkalis, dyestuffs, general chemicals, chlorine, acids, synthetic ammonia, special metals, fertilizers, lime, cellulose and a rubber fabric known as ‘leathercloth’. This was done by the merger of four companies of Nobel Explosives Company (NEC), Brunner, Mond & Co. Ltd., United Alkali Co. Ltd., and the British Dyestuffs Corporation. ICI opened for business on 1st January 1927 with 33,000 employees of the four merged companies in the five areas of alkali products, explosives, metals, general chemicals and dyestuffs, and achieved a good profit from the first year of trading. Brunner, Mond & Co. Ltd. was renamed as ICI (Alkali) Ltd. and had owned coasters since 1889, and United Alkali Co. Ltd. was renamed as ICI (General Chemicals) Ltd. and had owned steam coasters since 1880.

Dr. Ludwig Mond (1839-1909) and John Tomlinson Brunner (1842-1919), had established the chemicals business of Brunner, Mond & Company in 1873 at Northwich in Cheshire and used very small vessels to transport their products down the river Weaver. United Alkali Co. Ltd. of Liverpool acquired its first steam coaster, Sodium, in 1892 and traded her until sold in 1906. The company used her and other small coasters, lighters and steam powered barges on waterways connecting with the Mersey and the Dee. Their coasting trade also included transporting limestone from the Llanddulas quarries in North Wales to the Burn Naze factory at Fleetwood, and the finished products were then delivered around the Irish Sea. In 1917/18, United Alkali Co. Ltd. took delivery of four coasters, Lithium and Helium of 301 grt, and Barium and Calcium of 613 grt, the latter pair of sisters having distinctive goalpost foremasts. Sodium of 608 grt was delivered by Rennoldson of South Shields in 1923, who had also built three earlier coasters for the company, as well as the smaller Indium of 207 grt in 1924. These coasters usually had grey hulls and were transferred to the ownership of ICI (General Chemicals) Ltd. in August, 1932.

ICI Weaver Navigation Trade

The river Weaver in Cheshire is only navigable for twenty miles between Winsford and the Manchester Ship Canal at Weston Point, a transhipment point for both imported and exported goods. The salt producing town of Northwich and the big ICI factory at Winnington could thus easily ship their finished goods out to the world. One Northwich salt mine alone produced 100,000 tonnes of salt in 1880. The Anderton Boat Lift is an amazing piece of machinery built in 1875 by Edward L. Williams, later Chief Engineer on the Manchester Ship Canal. The lift consists of two water filled tanks counter balancing each other in a vertical slide, resting on massive hydraulic rams. The water on the ascending tank is pumped out making it lighter and assisting the rams in moving both tanks with fully loaded long barges in them up or down their respective slides. Barges could thus easily move between the river Weaver and the Trent & Mersey Canal to reach more destinations.

The ICI Winnington factory developed polythene during 1933/35, a versatile plastic produced when ethylene gas is subjected to extreme pressure. Reginald Gibson and Eric W. Fawcett first produced polythene on 25th March 1933 but it took them another two years to produce 8.5 grams of the new product. When mass production of polythene started at Winnington in 1937, polythene was used for plastic bags, plastic containers and in electrical and insulation uses. However, ICI was also expanding rapidly on Teesside during this period.

In 1929, ten per cent of ICI capital was spent on a new fertilizer plant at Billingham on Teesside costing £20 million. However, fertilizer sales fell heavily during the Depression, and an agreement had to be sought with the giant I. G. Farben chemical giant of Germany to establish sales areas and market quotas. I.G. Farben, formed in 1925 by four German chemical companies, was to sell chemicals in Europe, except the U.K., as well as Central America and South America, and ICI was to sell explosives and chemicals in the U.K., Spain, Portugal, Canary Islands and in British overseas possessions. ICI Billingham was later joined by a huge ICI Wilton petrochemical plant on Teesside in 1952, to create an enormous British ICI chemical and industrial giant that lasted until 2008.

ICI Coasters In World War II

On the outbreak of World War II in 1939, ICI Alkali Ltd. owned the coasters Barium 601/18, Calcium 613/18, Helium 301/17, Indium 207/24, Lithium 301/17, Osmium 108/24, Sodium 608/23. There were over a dozen estuary and coastal vessels under 200 grt engaged in the Brunner, Mond trade on the river Weaver, and the explosives coasters Lady Anstruther 526/21, Lady Dorothy 578/16 and Lady Gertrude Cochrane 530/04 operated for NEC. Lady Dorothy was an engines ‘midships raised quarterdecker type with two masts and derricks serving two holds, while the other two explosives carriers were engines aft coasters with three masts.

An engines ‘midships DFDS cargo ship Garonne built back in 1899 at Hebburn on Tyne by Robert Stephenson & Co. Ltd. was cut down at the Garnock Wharf at Irvine into a lighter and was used as a powder hulk during the war at Loch Ridden in the Kyles of Bute. She was of 1,854 dwt and arrived at Irvine on 20th May 1939, having been purchased for £4,900 by NEC, after a long career serving the U.K., Portugal, Spain, France and the west coast of Norway. She was eventually broken up at Faslane in 1957.

ICI coasters played an important part during World War II, with a lost vessel replaced with an order for a new motor coaster of 532 grt from the Goole Shipbuilding and Repairing Co. Ltd. for delivery in 1943 at a time when British yards were full of urgent orders. This coaster was completed as Cerium in December 1943 and was fitted with a five cylinder British Auxiliaries Ltd. diesel. The lost coaster was Calcium under Capt. J. R. Atkinson, which struck a mine off the Welsh coast at 0430 hours on 30th December 1940. She was in ballast on a voyage from Fleetwood to Llanddulas and had sailed in company with her sister Sodium under Capt. Joseph F. Terretta. Sodium came to the rescue of her badly damaged sister to tow her to port but unfortunately collided with her. Calcium sank at 0820 hours in 5.5 fathoms of water off the Little Orme with the loss of one crew member, the stoker James Morris, the remaining eight crew members were then taken onboard Sodium. Capt. J. R. Atkinson and Chief Engineer were awarded the George Medal for attempting the rescue of the stoker and recovering his body.

Lithium rescued sixty crew members when escaping aviation fuel from the escort carrier HMS Dasher which blew up on the Clyde on 27th March 1943 with the loss of 379 personnel. Capt. Joseph F. Terretta of Lithium allowed his coaster to drift slowly towards the blazing wreck several times and hauled the survivors onboard. He and his crew were ordered not to talk about the disaster. Two coasters, Beeston 466/21 and Weston 485/20, were purchased in April 1942 from the Overton Steamship Co. Ltd. (Richard R. Clark, manager) of Liverpool in April 1942 and were present at the Normandy landings in June 1944. Capt. Joseph F. Terretta of Weston nearly lost his ship on one trip to the Normany beaches, but made a total of 57 supply missions over three months, sailing from Southampton, Newhaven, Dover and the Thames estuary as the invasion advanced. Capt. Terretta was awarded the Knight of the Order of Prince Leopold II medal by the Prince Regent of Belgium for his bravery.

ICI Coasters In Post-War Years

Beeston and Weston were sold on for further service in July 1946, and replaced in the ICI Alkali fleet by the new coaster Thorium of 604 grt and 840 dwt in March 1947 from the Burntisland Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. She had a grey hull, two masts and two derricks to serve her single hold, and was fitted with a seven cylinder British Polar diesel engine to give a service speed of ten knots. She proudly wore her ICI roundel funnel markings during her 17 years of trading for ICI.

A devastating flood on the Weaver Navigation in February 1946 halted the soda ash trade from the big ICI Winnington plant of the many steam powered small coasters and barges e.g. Crescent, Eleanor, Madge, Millicent and Frances Poole. This Brunner, Mond trade on the river Weaver received a series of eight new motor coasters of 200 grt between 1946 and 1949 built at the W. J. Yarwood yard at Northwich as Anderton, Barnton, Davenham, Weaverham, Wincham, Cuddingston, Marbury and Marston. They each made two or three trips per week from the ICI Works at Winnington on the Weaver to Liverpool or Birkenhead to transfer chemical products into deep sea ships.

The ICI Nobel explosives fleet of three coasters was reduced to two in 1947 when Lady Anstruther (2) sank in Bridlington Bay following a collision in fog. She was replaced a year later with a motor coaster of 700 dwt built by Kalmar Varv at Stockholm in 1946 with a service speed of ten knots from an Atlas diesel engine and renamed Lady Anstruther (3).

Helium of the ICI Alkali fleet was sold in 1948 and broken up at Hendrik Ido Ambacht in 1957, and her sister Lithium was sold in 1950 to T.G. Irving Ltd. of Sunderland and renamed Maydene and arrived for breaking up at Dunston on Tyne on 14th January 1955. They were replaced by a raised quarterdeck coaster of 330 grt in August 1949 from the Goole Shipbuilding and Repairing Co. Ltd. as Polythene, and fitted with a six cylinder Crossley diesel to give a service speed of nine knots. She was used on the river Weaver trade into the Mersey and named after a new ICI product that had been developed in 1935 by the ICI Alkali Division based at Winnington and was manufactured by the polymerisation of ethylene gas. She occasionally helped out on the Llanddulas to Fleetwood trade with limestone, and gave 23 years of service to ICI before being sold on in 1972.

The ICI coaster fleet in 1950 was a large one of forty steam and motor coasters, steam and motor powered lighters and barges, and included ten large unpowered barges. The Weaver Navigation steam coasters towed trains of dumb barges up and down the river. The largest members of this fleet were only of 850 dwt, but the total included two coasters registered under the ICI Australia and New Zealand Pty subsidiary. These were the motor coaster Taranui 954/35 completed by the Dumbarton yard of William Denny & Bros Ltd. as Bingera and fitted with a six cylinder Kincaid diesel, and the wooden motor sailer Piri 263/17, the former motor sailer Tangaroa built in New South Wales and fitted with a Crossley diesel. The British fleet also contained the former Walford Lines Ltd. of London coaster Jolly Days 352/35, a raised quarterdecker completed by John Lewis & Sons Ltd. at Aberdeen and fitted with a four cylinder Petters diesel engine. However, it is unlikely that the crew of the Jolly Days had jolly sailing weather in the Irish Sea

The ICI Nobel explosives fleet received a new coaster of 762 dwt in 1952 from the Bowling yard of Scott & Sons in Lady McGowan as a replacement for the elderly Lady Gertrude Cochrane sold for scrap that year. She was of bridge ‘midships engines aft design and was fitted out to a very high standard, including a reasonably powerful British Polar diesel to give a service speed of 10.5 knots for long voyages. Thorium built in 1947 was out of service for twenty months after capsizing two miles off Fleetwood on 11th January 1951 when inward bound with limestone from North Wales. Hull leaks were the cause and she was salvaged four months later and repaired at Ardrossan and returned to service in September 1952.

Barium of 1918 was sold in October 1952 after 34 years of service. By early 1957, only three Alkali coasters operated from Fleetwood and three explosives coasters operated from Ardeer, plus the coaster Polythene and a large number of river Weaver steam powered coasters, barges and lighters. Thorium, Sodium and Cerium operated in the limestone trade from Llanddulas to Fleetwood or with finished products from the Fleetwood ammonia soda factory at Burn Naze. Lady McGowan, Lady Anstruther (3) and Lady Dorothy carried explosives, but Lady Dorothy was scrapped that year after 41 years of service. She was replaced by the new Lady Roslin of 707 grt launched in April 1958 by the Ardrossan Dockyard Ltd. and fitted with a British Polar diesel to give a service speed of ten knots. She was named after the old Roslin armaments factory and broke the Nobel tradition of using the names of directors’ wives. She had engines and bridge aft with an unusual rounded top to her bridge and a navigational mast fitted at its rear, and two derricks hinged on a central single mast. She had an orange fo’c’stle and poop to her black hull, and an orange funnel with a black top and carrying the white ICI roundel on the black part.

The new engines aft coaster Calcium of 644 grt and 800 dwt came into service in May 1959 from the Goole Shipbuilding & Repairing Co. Ltd. yard, she had dimensions of 183 feet by 32 feet beam and was fitted with a seven cylinder two stroke British Polar diesel. The old steam coaster Sodium was then retired after 35 years of service and arrived at Barrow for breaking up in September 1959. Calcium was only in service for six years for ICI Alkali as the Burn Naze factory ceased to receive North Wales limestone at the end of 1964 and the jetty was demolished. Calcium was sold in 1965 and renamed Clonlee and then converted in 1973 into a Humber dredger named Humber Lee. Thorium was sold in 1964 to W. N. Lindsay Ltd. of Leith and renamed Roseburn and then had a very long subsequent career under the Greek and Turkish flags for the next forty years until she sank in the Black Sea. Cerium was sold in 1965 to Vancouver owners and traded in British Columbia waters for the next 26 years until scuttled on 10th August 1991. These last ICI Alkali coasters had worn the blue ICI funnel with a red and white roundel as an ICI badge.

The ICI Nobel explosives coasters Lady McGowan and Lady Roslin undertook regular long voyages to the Caribbean and Venezuela until Lady McGowan was sold to Cypriot owners in 1978 as the blasting explosives business was tailing off. Lady Roslin carried on the trade for three more years until she was laid up at Irvine on 14th July 1981. She was then sold in 1982 for service in the Falkland Islands under the name of Aragonite carrying a dozen passengers in some of her former crew accommodation. She disappeared from Lloyd’s Register in 2001 under the name of My Dream.

The last ICI explosives coaster was Lady Helen of 423 grt and 701 dwt, built at Kalmar in 1966 as Tina Christensen and purchased in 1976 and renamed to carry the last ICI cargoes of explosives to many diverse destinations such as Carrickfergus, Oslo, Varberg, Gothenburg, Setubal, Alexandria, and Hamburg. She left Irvine in tow on 22nd April 1985 and was scuttled two days later off the Outer Hebrides in position 58 degrees North eleven degrees West.

The Brunner, Mond trade on the Weaver Navigation ceased completely in the late 1970s and the fleet of esturial steam coasters were sold off. Wincham was sold in 1977 to Bulk Cargo Handling Services Ltd. without change of name and withdrawn from service six years later. She was then rescued by a preservation society and awarded a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2001 to maintain her at a berth in the Albert Dock at Liverpool. However, the cost of her maintenance escalated and the preservation society had no option but to sell her for scrap for £5,000 in May, 2009 at Bromborough. She had a long ICI career of 61 years, the longest of all the ICI coasters. The one off ICI Alkali coaster Polythene managed a thirty year career after being sold in 1972. She was driven ashore and wrecked in Prince Rupert Bay on 29th August 1979 on the Caribbean island of Dominica after her anchor chain had broken following her mandatory ordering out of Roseau harbour on the approach of a hurricane.

ICI Giant Expands Further

The ICI coaster fleet was gradually being reduced in 1975, but ICI controlled 70% of the British market for ammonium nitrate at this time and was using cheap North Sea gas to produce annual profits for the company of £600 million per year. A much bigger ethylene cracker for the production of polythene was in production in the U.K., a fibre spinning factory had been built in Germany, and a huge PVC plant was in operation in Bayonne (New Jersey). Under the charismatic leadership of Sir John Harvey-Jones between 1982 and 1987, ICI was making in excess of 50,000 different products at more than two hundred locations in 55 countries and employed 330,000 people. It’s well known brand names of Dulux, Cuprinol, Hammerite, Perspex, Terylene, Polythene, Polyester and many more brands were money spinning products selling extremely well throughout the world. Sir John then changed the focus of ICI from outdated products to drugs and speciality chemicals by taking over Beatrice Chemical Industries and Glidden Paints of the U.S.A. He further expanded the American operations of ICI, taking over Atlas Chemical Industries and a paraquat plant at Bayport (Texas).

In 1993, ICI separated its bioscience businesses including agricultural chemicals, pharmaceuticals, seeds and biological products from the rest of the company, and demerged them into a new company named Zeneca, which later was renamed AstraZeneca. This was a momentous splitting move for ICI, similar to the momentous merging of businesses in 1926 of the two great fathers of ICI, Alfred Nobel and Ludwig Mond. AstraZeneca was almost taken over by Pfizer of the U.S.A for £69 billion in 2014, but the bid failed after a refusal by the former ICI shareholders. ICI was taken over in January 2008 by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate which then immediately sold off parts of ICI to Henkel of Germany and integrated the remaining parts of ICI into its existing operations. ICI had existed for 82 years and was a barometer of the British economy during all of that time. ICI had a turnover of £4.8 billion and employed 29,000 people shortly before it was sold off and broken up into separate parts. The ICI soda ash products operation had been sold to Brunner, Mond in 1991 to end an association that had existed since the inception of ICI in 1926. AkzoNobel International Coatings Division also own a big factory at Gateshead that manufactures the world beating International Paints Ltd. brand of self polishing underwater hull paint for ships that can last five years before needing repainting.

Postscript

The three parts of the giant ICI chemical empire that employed British coasters had each used them for one hundred years. Nobel Explosives Company (NEC) had first used sailing cutters in 1872 and their last motor coaster was scuttled in 1985. The ICI Alkali fleet had begun with steam coasters in the fleet of United Alkali Co. Ltd. in 1880, and the Brunner, Mond operations had used steam coasters since 1889. The three coasting owning fleets had their own style of nomenclature to distinguish them. All three of these operations never once lost a ship through explosion of their hazardous cargoes. This is not the case today, with enormous container ships exploding with tragic regularity while carrying explosives and hazardous cargoes of all types. The big contribution made by ICI coasters to one of the greatest British industrial giants should not be underestimated.