Education

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.

A RHU village schoolteacher had a sideline of money-lending — and it led to his murder.

Dominie John Arroll became the focus of a mystery.

AN 1899 copy of John Bunyan’s ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ found in a Glasgow bookshop was donated to Helensburgh Heritage Trust . . . and led to a flurry of research by two of the directors.

The book was presented by the finder, Glasgow man Michael Bar-Lev, who was interested in the Helensburgh background.

BAREFOOT children on the street, as happened in Helensburgh and district in years gone by, is a sight which exemplifies the squalor and poverty of the bad old days.

There must have been instances where the straightened circumstances of some children left them with little alternative.

TO MANY people of a certain age, the school song was, if not always much loved, certainly much sung . . . and that was the case at Helensburgh’s former Hermitage School.

Former Helensburgh man Bill McEwen, who has lived in New Zealand since 1966, liked it, but could not remember it.

HOW HARD a life was it aboard the Training Ships Cumberland and Empress which were anchored in the Gareloch from 1869 for 54 years?

Opinions have differed in recent years, with written accounts of the hardships of being a boy living aboard contrasting with positive views from relatives of pupils and staff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.