History
Until 2007, there had not been an Argyle on the Clyde for over a hundred years, but the present vessel is the seventh of the name. The first was a paddle steamer built only two years after the pioneer steamship PS Comet appeared on the river in 1812. The second was commissioned in 1815; the third and fourth had connections with Loch Fyne, while the fifth was a cargo steamer sailing to the Outer Hebrides.
In the mid nineteenth century the spelling of the county changed to Argyll. The old spelling, however, is appropriate as the ship’s most prominent ancestor was a paddle steamer built in 1866 and sold by her original owner within a month to the Wemyss Bay Steam Boat Company. She was the successor to their PS Bute and remained on the Wemyss Bay route for almost quarter of a century.
Built in Poland, she was launched on 12 September 2006. Following delivery, the fitting out process took into account design modifications based on lessons learned from MV Bute. She was formally named at Rothesay Bay on 4 May 2007 before joining the Caledonian MacBrayne fleet later in the month.
Read more about this topic: MV Argyle
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)