Charlotte Dundas

The first practical steamship ever built was constructed at Grangemouth by a Scottish engineer called William Symington. Supported by Lord Dundas, the steamboat was named after his daughter, Charlotte.

 

Symington, who was the chief engineer to the Carron Company, had already built vertical engines for three steamboats, which had been tested between 1788 and 1801 with limited success. He was confident, however, that his horizontal engine would work better.

 

The Charlotte Dundas made her debut in Glasgow on 4 January 1803, which was followed by a more ambitious trial on the 28 March. Here, the steamboat towed an 80 ton Active and 50 ton Euphemia for 18 miles into Port Dundas at the Glasgow-end of the Forth and Clyde Canal in nine and a quarter hours.

 

Although this was the first time that a steamboat had achieved such a feat, the Canal Company refused to take the project any further claiming that the wash from the paddle would damage the canal banks. Lord Dundas, faced with opposition from his fellow directors, lost interest in steamboats and Symington was left out of pocket. The steamboat remained to the end of her life in one of the passing bays.

 

In 1987, Falkirk District Council commissioned a three-quarter scale replica hull of the original Charlotte Dundas from professional boatbuilders. Work began to fit out the replica as part of a Youth Training Project; this project came to an end with the repositioning of youth employment schemes in the early 1990s.