Exactly a hundred years ago on October 29, 1920, the four masted iron sailing ship Lancing of Kristiania (now Oslo) arrived at Ardrossan harbour with a cargo of spool wood from Cap Chat, Quebec.
Lancing was remarkable in many ways. She was launched in 1865 by Robert Napier & Sons of Govan, named Pereire . For her first 21 years she operated as a transatlantic mail and passenger steamship, after which she was sold and converted to a full-rigged sailing ship and renamed Lancing
It was under Norwegian owners that she came into her own. Among her records are an average of 18 knots for 72 running hours, while on passage from New York to Melbourne, another being 22 knots by patent log, for 15 consecutive hours, in the great Southern Ocean – feats that have never to this day been beaten by a sailing ship.
She was seven times in San Francisco, six in New York, she made 10 Australian voyages and was in South America, Africa, India and the Far East.
On October 2, 1906, she arrived for the first time at Ardrossan. Lancing was to make many more calls at Ardrossan over the next 18 years, such that the Ayrshire port effectively became her home port.
At over 100 metres in length, Lancing was a big ship, but her crew compliment was just 27, less than for example the Arran ferry – and Lancing’s crew worked 24/7 for months on end.
It’s difficult to imagine the hardiness of these men rounding the Horne in a snow storm, with nothing but a firm grip and a foot-rope between you and certain death in the angry ocean below.
Lancing’s master was my grandfather Captain Peder Thorvald Pedersen, recalled as a tall, kenspeckle figure, striding up Ardrossan’s Glasgow Street wearing a Homburg hat. Born on the Norwegian island of Nøtterø, he married our grandmother Sarah Agnes Prout in Liverpool in 1897.
Just before the First World War, Peder and Sarah Agnes set up home in Ardrossan at 57 Eglinton Road. Their children were, Peder (Peter), Agnes, Florence Thrine (Flo), Thorwald (Ted), Thora, Hans Norman (my father) and Alfred Carlyle. Their descendants are now widely scattered although there are quite a number in Ayrshire still.
In 1924, Lancing was sold to Italian interests and broken up. And so Norway’s (and Ardrossan’s) most famous sailing ship and the world’s fastest met her end. There is every reason why Ardrossan should share pride in this wonderful ship.
Roy Pedersen is chair of Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba, Gaelic Place-names of Scotland, and serves on the Scottish Government’s Ferry Advisory Group.
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