Education

INFORMATION about the boys training ships Cumberland and Empress which were moored in the Gareloch is quite plentiful . . . but another strand of the story came to light in the autumn of 2014.

It links the two vessels, as it is the story of a ‘boy’ who was trained on the Cumberland and returned to be a member of the staff on board the Empress.

FOR A few months in the spring and early summer of 1913, inhabitants of Rhu would have seen a handsome vessel moored there, not far from the wooden bulk of the training ship HMS Empress.

A VERY special prizegiving took place aboard the Training Ship Cumberland moored in the Gareloch in 1871.

Not only were the prizes presented by a daughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Louise, who spent much of each year at her Scottish home, Rosneath Castle, but also the event was pictured and reported on in the Illustrated London News.

A TALE of three generations has been told by a well-known Helensburgh man in a compelling book which combines biography with autobiography.

The first headmaster of the town’s Lomond School, David S.C.Arthur, MBE, has written “An Avenue In Time”, which has been published by Austin MacAuley Publishers Ltd., of Canary Wharf, London, price £8.99 and as an e-book.

WORK began in September 2013 to restore and give new life to one of Helensburgh’s architectural treasures.

The former Clyde Street School, later the Clyde Community Education Centre, which has looked increasingly derelict in recent years, is to become a major Civic Centre.

TRAINING SHIPS were a way of life — and a hard one — in the Gareloch from 1869 for 54 years.

But Helensburgh and Rhu benefitted in various ways from the two former sailing ships moored off Kidston Point and the boys who lived on them.