THE last ever paddle steamer built in the UK has secured a promise of nearly £4 million to return to its glory on Loch Lomond.
The biggest milestone in the two-decade quest to restore the Maid of the Loch, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has pledged £3.8 million to the project.
The team behind the restoration of the famous steamer now need to secure another £1.7m to see it operational again.
The Loch Lomond Steamship Company (LLSC), the charity that owns the Maid of the Loch, has been awarded a 'Round One Pass' by the HLF, meaning it can prepare all the necessary technical surveys, drawings, and specifications for the ship’s rebuild.
The vital first stage of the overall project, the Round One cash is worth £230,400.
Phil Preston, LLSC chairman, said: “This has been a 20-year cause, during which we have raised and reinvested over £1.9m and committed over 80,000 hours to restoring the ship.
"With this promise of around £3.8m from HLF, we now need to do the hard work of raising the other £1.7m."
The Maid, which is capable of carrying up to 1,000 passengers, was built at the Glasgow yard of A&J Inglis and launched in 1953.
It sailed only until 1981 and by the time the LLSC took it over in the mid-90s it was in a poor state, having been extensively vandalised. One of its lower rooms was swimming in five feet of water.
After carrying over three million passengers in its near 30-year history, the vessel has been owned by several different companies but has remained tied up at Balloch ever since.
The owners previously won HLF funding in 2006 to rebuild the Grade A listed Balloch Steam Slipway, has reconstructed Balloch Pier, created new car parking and restored the Maid from its vandalised state to a moored visitor attraction.
Colin McLean, head of the HLF in Scotland, said: “As with all ships, restoring the Maid of the Loch to full sailing condition is going to be an enormous challenge. By giving this initial support, we have given its owners the opportunity to see whether they can meet that challenge, and we wish them well in their endeavours.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel