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THE MYSTERY OF THE CLIPPER SHIP LOCH VENNACHAR - In the first week of September 1905, the clipper ship Loch Vennachar disappeared just two days before she was due to complete her voyage from Glasgow, Scotland, to Adelaide, Australia. She was last spoken to on the 6th of September and requested to be reported as ""All well!"" The final sighting of the ship occurred at dusk the following day, when she was seen by the crew of an outward-bound schooner. Expected to arrive at Port Adelaide on the 8th or 9th of September, Loch Vennachar was soon reported overdue. Aboard were twenty-eight men and boys, only one of whom was ever found-his body badly decomposed and recovered months later. It would be another seventy years, five months, and eighteen days before the ship herself was finally located. Loch Vennachar was a 1,482-ton iron sailing ship, built in 1875 at the yard of James and George Thomson at Dalmuir on the River Clyde. Her principal owners were James Aitken and James Lilburn, who managed a fleet of vessels named after the lochs of Scotland. Belonging to a Glasgow Shipping Company, she sailed the Scotland-Australia route for thirty years. Under his command, Loch Vennachar survived hurricanes, dismastings, collisions and even a sinking. Farewell Beautiful Lady is the story of Loch Vennachar and those who sailed in her, from her launch to her tragic loss off of the coast of Kangaroo Island, and of the events that followed her rediscovery in 1976 by members of the Society of Underwater Historical Research.

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9781764683609

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Paul Simpson was born in the Mid North of South Australia and grew up on Kangaroo Island, where tall ships, shipwrecks, and whaling were still part of the collective living memory, and where the last sailing ketches remained part of everyday life. An English teacher with over 30 years' experience, Paul is the author of a number of books on 19th- and 20th-century maritime history. His book Windjammer was written after he was invited to conduct research as part of an archaeological search on Kangaroo Island for the graves and wreck of the lost clipper ship Loch Sloy. His book Star of Greece helped to rewrite the story of the wreck of the Irish clipper ship of the same name. It also assisted in raising funds in support of the Willunga branch of the National Trust of South Australia for the dedication of a plaque-revealing for the first time the names of all t Paul's books have been published in several countries and can be found in maritime museums and libraries in Australia, Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Canada and the USA. Paul grew up on Kangaroo Island, one of the last places where square-rigged ketches sailed commercially, and where tales of shipwrecks are part of local folklore. He has spent the last decade researching and writing books about 19th-century sailing ships and the people who sailed them. When not trawling through old books and musty newspaper archives, he can be found combing windswept beaches for treasures with his daughter, and fellow adventurer.

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