A SCOTS journalist has shined some light on the maritime mystery of an abandoned Scottish-built trawler dumped in Majorca by its drunken English skipper.
Two years ago, The National told the tale of the Margaret Alison which, when we saw it, was being rebuilt at El Moll, a small boatbuilding yard being run as a social enterprise in Arenys de Mar.
She had been built in Cockenzie, East Lothian in 1937 and was sold to a fisherman in Tarbert, Loch Fyne, but her full history remained a mystery. Now, however, Jeremy (Jay) Cresswell, emeritus energy editor at The Press and Journal (P&J) in Aberdeen, told us after seeing our original report: “I am that fisherman in Tarbert! I had her for five years ... she was a great boat.”
Cresswell went from fisherman to journalist and has held the energy brief at the P&J for more than 30 years, although he is semi-retired. He said: “She was built as the June Rose for the Clarke family of Musselburgh and registered to Margaret Clarke. She was eventually sold to the Paton family in Gourdon.”
The trawler had two different owners in the Isle of Man, where she was renamed Margaret Alison, then sold to a major in Blair Atholl.
Cresswell added: “I bought the boat January 1977, from Barrisdale, Loch Hourn and put her back on the Manx register. I worked for five years commercial fishing, sea angling, sport diving and light marine contracting including the pilot boat for Loch Fyne ... and sold her south to an English owner who wanted her as a yacht.”
Margaret Alison turned up fishing in the Isle of Man before being sold on to her final owner.
Now, however, she is being reborn, and Cresswell said he was delighted: “They’re doing a remarkable job. She was in reality in a shocking state when the decision to go ahead was made ... hardly anything of the original ship left ... and I’m in close touch with the project.”
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