SS Donaghadee

S.S. DONAGHADEE & THE COAL INDUSTRY OF DONAGHADEE TOWN IN THE LAST CENTURY

This print of the steamer S.S. Donaghadee was brought to our attention by Mr Jack Creevy, who worked in the coal business in the town of Donaghadee all his life. The S.S. Donaghadee was one of a fleet of coal boats owned by the firm John Kelly Ltd., as Kelly Fuels was previously called. Jack Creevy explained that, despite its name, the S.S. Donaghadee never came into Donaghadee harbour, for at 662 tons it was too big to do so. Donaghadee’s harbour could normally only take boats of 250-300 tons due to the fact that it is silted up with sand and at low tide the harbour is only about 15 feet deep.

 The coal boats that mostly plied Donaghadee harbour and other small harbours along the coast were those of the Isle of Man Steamship Company, though Jack recalls that one of Kelly’s smaller boats, the River Humber, did sometimes bring coal into Donaghadee harbour. Once, however, a much bigger collier arrived and that was the 600 ton Latvian steamer, the Talvaldus, which came to Donaghadee in about 1938, bringing Silesian coal for the Gasworks.

The Gasworks had been bought from the local landlords, the Delacherois family, by Mr W.H. Roberts in about 1912 or 1913 and in the 1930’s his two sons, Alec and William, were managing the business. Norman Roberts, son of Alec, writing in a private memoir about the Talvaldus recalls that the arrival of this large steamer caused great excitement in the town, with crowds gathering at the harbour to view her. And he describes how, as soon as a telephone order had been put through for a shipment of coal for the Gasworks, his father and uncle would go round the surrounding area by bicycle or in the Gasworks lorry, organising local farmers to come in to work at the unloading. Mr Bob McKay, who lived in Newtownards, manned the steam crane (a permanent fixture in the harbour) and the farmers with their Clydesdale horses and high sided two-wheeled carts lined up along the quay to move the loads. The size of the cargo brought in by the Talvaldus meant that the Gasworks ‘yard’ could not
accommodate it all and further premises had to be hired around the town to store the surplus.

The S.S.Donaghadee was built for John Kelly Ltd. in 1937 by the firm of Inglis, in Glasgow, and was delivered that same year. It was the last coal-burner which Kelly’s added to their fleet, for thereafter they used diesel powered boats. Shortly before the S.S.Donaghadee was delivered, the head of the firm, Sir Samuel Kelly, unexpectedly died and the company was then run by his wife, Lady Mary Kelly. In 1950 she gave a donation to the R.N.L.I which was used to fund the Donaghadee lifeboat, the Sir Samuel Kelly, which became famous when it brought some of the very few survivors and some of the dead back to Donaghadee after the Larne-Stranraer car ferry, the Princess Victoria, sank in the Irish Channel on January 31st, 1953.

During the Second World War the S.S.Donaghadee and thirteen other boats owned by John Kelly Ltd continued to transport coal while the rest of the Kelly fleet was used for war work.

On the first day of April, 1948, John Kelly Ltd passed to new owners and they decided to give all their boats names beginning with ‘Bally’. This way they kept the tradition of the boats having Irish names but made the fleet more easily identifiable by the fact that all the names now began with the same prefix. The S.S.Donaghadee was therefore renamed Ballygarvey, and that is the name it has in this picture, painted by the artist W.A.Hume. In the painting the funnel is painted in Kelly’s distinctive red, white and blue colours. Kelly Fuels have very kindly given permission for this picture to be reproduced here – prints can be obtained from kellyfuels@top.ie.

The S.S. Donaghadee/Ballygarvey was scrapped in 1964 in Dordrecht in the Netherlands..

Jack Creevy, whose reminiscences inspired this piece, was born in 1912. The family home was No. 16, Railway Street and Jack and his four siblings went the National School on The Parade (where the town toilets are now.) Mr Andrew (Andy) Munce was the master. Mr Munce taught the seniors upstairs and Miss Maggie Duncan (later Mrs Andrew Munce) took the juniors downstairs. There was also another woman teacher, Miss Betty Fisher (afterwards Mrs Knox.) Jack left school at 16 and immediately began working for his father, Mr Thomas Creevy. Thomas Creevy had originally had a cartage business and with his horse and cart used to draw bricks from the nearby brick works, bricks that were then used to build some of the houses in the vicinity. were located near The clay pits were later filled in – they were located near where the 3rd tee of Donaghadee Golf Club is today. Jack’s father also drew coal and in 1930 he stopped using a horse and cart and acquired a tipping lorry. Jack and his younger brother, Jim, later took over the business.

No coal boats come to the harbour today but the commodity was, of course, much in demand in an age before oil-fired central heating. There were three other coal businesses in the town in Jack Creevy’s day – Neill’s, Fullerton’s and Angus’s. Creevy’s had their coal yard where the town dump is now and they also had a wooden structure up Saltworks Street. Neill’s coal yard was where the old Community Centre is, Fullerton’s was in Manor Street and the Angus coal yard was in Bow Street. The Gasworks were situated where the flats are today that overlook the Donaghadee Bus Station.

Thanks are due to those mentioned in the text who contributed the above information and also to Ian Wilson, whose book, John Kelly Ltd, a History, provided some of the historical details regarding the Kelly fleet.