Aberdeen’s bedrock of Tyneside iron shipbuilding
Could I ask your erudite readers for help in putting parentage on a gifted Aberdonian who went south to become a notable iron shipbuilder with two shipyards on Tyneside, between 1840-1862.
He was John Hanry Sangster Coutts (1810-1862) who declared he was born in Aberdeenshire, son of a farmer, Patrick Coutts.
This sparse information was culled from census returns and marriage certificate and is all the background I have on his beginnings.
John Coutts was the eldest of ‘Three Wise Men’ from Aberdeen who were to be the bedrock of the iron shipbuilding industry on Tyneside from c1840. The others were Charles Mitchell (a benefactor to his hometown university) and the Shetland-born Andrew Leslie.
All three were previously known to each other in Aberdeen and had their own independent shipyards on the Tyne.
John Coutts was adamant he was not related to the banking family of that name, and that he was a partner in the Aberdeen shipyard of John Ronalds, who in 1839 build the well-known iron sailing ship John Garrow.
This seems to have inspired him to go solo and he came South to take up an old wooden shipyard at Low Walker on Tyne, where in 1842 he launched the paddle steamer Prince Albert, destined to ply the Thames estuary. This he claimed to be the first sizeable iron ship built on this river.
Coutts would go on to build in 1844 an iron-hulled barque named Q.E.D., which had an auxiliary steam engine and the (world first) innovative feature of water ballast, carried in double bottoms. This would eventually become the norm in the collier trade and elsewhere, replacing the sand-and-gravel ballast previously used.
This volatile and innovative man would build the largest sailing ships of the day, in his time on Tyneside, but suffered two bankruptcies and died alone and seemingly friendless in 1862, in lowly lodgings in North Shields.
The O.P.R. of Keig in 1794 shows a marriage of one Patrick Coutts of Tough, to a local lassie, Isobel Ronald of Keig.
Can anyone out there confirm or deny that these are his (likely) parents? There may be someone who is linked to that family tree or is researching on similar lines. All suggestions considered and letters answered.
Trusting that your excellent magazine can throw some light.
Ron French, 8 Cottage Road, Wooler, Northumberland, NE71 6AA
frenchr@btinternet.com