People

SUFFRAGETTES were blamed for setting fire to a huge luxury yacht in the Gareloch in 1913 . . . but did they?

AN IMAGE of a Helensburgh man dominated the front page of a major newspaper published in London 105 years ago.

A 2017 APPEAL for information to solve the mystery of the murder in Germany of a former pupil of Helensburgh’s Lomond School in 1993 received massive traditional media and social media coverage.

Christina Menzies, who was 16, was attacked and strangled near the British military airfield RAF Gütersloh after attending a disco in Club 47 at the base on June 12.

A RETIRED American Ambassador from the Cold War era who lives in Helensburgh was interviewed about his colourful career on successive Sundays on BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Good Morning Scotland’ programme.

Francis J.Meehan, who is 93, spoke to Bill Whitelaw about life in America's Foreign Service.

THE PRIME mover in the formation of Headline Helensburgh, the talking newspaper serving the blind and otherwise visually handicapped in the town and district, had her own remarkable story.

The now twice-a-month local news service on cassette first made its appearance at the end of December 1975, and it is the oldest registered talking newspaper in Scotland

A SHABBY minute book, dating back to 1906, was the starting point for a paper chase that led to a windfall of £900 for Arrochar's local GP surgery.

The minute book of Arrochar Parish Sick Nursing Fund had been kept for over fifty years by Elizabeth Carson, the daughter of County Councillor John H.Carson, who was one of the last signatories on the fund's bank account.

FASLANE Bay today is a massive naval base . . . but it was once a prosperous farming haven.

For much of that time the farm, with its rugged landscape, unforgiving climate and unpredictable weather, was worked by five generations of one family.

SCOTLAND’S Minister for Local Goverment and Community Empowerment, a guest at the opening of Helensburgh and Lomond Civic Centre on March 1 2016, surprised many with his local connections.

Marco Biagi MSP revealed that he was a former Hermitage Academy pupil and that his parents ran the Sun Chip Shop at the corner of East King Street and Sinclair Street for many years.

ONE of Helensburgh’s first leading citizens was a much-admired businessman and benefactor.

A CHIEF Constable as a whodunnit suspect may sound rather unlikely, but a Helensburgh man who was Chief Constable of Dunbartonshire is named as a possible suspect in a modern book about an old mystery.

The book, entitled “Controversy on the Clyde: Archaeologists, Fakes and Forgers”, by Alex Hale and Rob Sands, published in 2005, tells the story of archaeological excavations conducted at Dumbuck Crannog, near Dumbarton, shortly before the turn of the twentieth century.

IT IS remarkable enough that two world famous writers both taught at Helensburgh’s former Larchfield School, now part of Lomond School.

But both actually wrote brief poems for one of their burgh pupils.

ONE of the outstanding men of Helensburgh’s past served as Provost of the burgh twice and is considered to be the father of Clyde yachting.

He is mostly referred to as James Smith of Jordanhill, but Donald MacLeod’s 1883 book ‘A Nonogenarian’s Reminiscences of Garelochside and Helensburgh’ states that he lived in the district almost all his adult life.