HOME HOME ON THE RANGER

Probably the world’s oldest Belfast-built working vessel is back home!

BOATS, LIKE PIGS, DON'T FLY.

Not so! 

 Clyde Marine's boat master Luke Conner starts the final approach.

Today a Belfast-built launch called Ranger hovered high over the River Lagan, and then gently descended onto a river she left behind 85 years ago. For the sleek and individual eight-ton airborne motorboat this was a nervous moment in the action packed life of the world’s oldest Belfast-built working launch. As she hung motionless in the sky, strapped to a towering crane’s steel hawser, she slowly turned in the breeze observing her city of birth.

Blowing in the wind.............

Going........

Down........

In history! 

When Ranger left Belfast in October 1923 Titanic’s tragedy was a recent memory of just 12 years. The same shipyard men built them both. Looking apprehensively upwards from an awaiting boat, Ranger’s new Belfast skipper Derek Booker murmured, “If her back’s going to break it’ll break now!”

Derek Booker makes a point!

Booker is co-founder and director of Lagan Legacy, the charitable maritime heritage organisation which is the profoundly grateful recipient of the old boat kindly donated by Clyde Marine Services in Scotland. She’d come from there by lorry and ferry, journeyed down the M2, and was now being intricately lowered, inch by inch, till her gnarled old keel kissed the river.

Ranger finally settled in the waters that originally baptised her, thanks to the gentle workmanship of the H&W men.  An oversensitive onlooker thought he could hear her sigh “I’m home.”

The dozen hardened hard-hatted shipyard men roared in unison, “She was all right when she left here!” quoting Booker’s Titanic Tour company motto.  “And she’s all right now that she’s back,” thought the much relieved Derek.

The Tender team.

Conjuring up ships is becoming part of Derek Booker's routine; two years ago he brought Lagan Legacy’s 800 ton Dutch river barge MV Confiance from Amsterdam to Belfast, dodging storms and high seas. Funding permitting, Confiance will soon be a floating heritage and arts centre at her permanent mooring beside the Waterfront Hall. And Booker has is currently bringing a second double-decked tour boat from Torquay to Belfast, to introduce day-trippers to his beloved Lagan and its heritage. After renovations he shortly intends Ranger to embark on the same vocation.

 

A healthy deep-throated throbbing erupted from within her teak hull, accompanied by a thin blue cloud of smoke. Ranger was ready to rumble!

Her Clyde boatman opened the throttle, her stern dug into the water and her powerful engine encouraged a boiling white wake in the Lagan. She danced a touching tango in the tide, as if happy to be back where she belongs. A shining black rounded head with two dark eyes each side of dripping whiskers poked up from the depths; a timely seal of approval.

But Ranger needs no endorsement. She was built in Belfast as a tender for the 20,847 ton P&O passenger vessel R.M.S. Mooltan. Her main task was to deliver passengers to and from the Mooltan when a port was too shallow for the larger ship to enter.

S.S.Mooltan.

Picture courtesy of State Library of Victoria.

Mooltan, with Ranger on board, set off on her maiden voyage on 5 October 1923, via the Suez Canal for Sydney, Australia.  She arrived on 21st December 1923, calling at Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Melbourne on her way. She would make the voyage to Australia many times carrying countless thousands of immigrants to a new life in Australia. In 1933 she carried Douglas Jardine's MCC cricket test team back home to Britain after the controversial ‘Bodyline’ Test Series. (Bodyline, also known as ‘fast leg theory’ was a cricketing tactic devised by the English cricket team to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's Don Bradman.) In 1938 alterations were made to Mooltan which allowed her to carry chilled beef.

 

After the outbreak of the WWII, Great Britain and her allies needed ships for troops and equipment; on 6^th September 1939 Mooltan was requisitioned for service as an armed merchant cruiser. She was converted and her second funnel was taken off to improve the firing arc of her anti-aircraft guns. Later in the war a shorter funnel was replaced. As an armed merchant cruiser, and always with Ranger at hand, SS Mooltan served in the South Atlantic, and never lost a single merchant ship placed in her care. She personally survived a number of enemy attacks. In 1941 she carried troops to the Middle East Campaign, and in May 1942 she took part in the North African landings at Oran, Algeria as part of Operation Torch. In Nov.1942 Mooltan and Ranger were present at the North African landings at Arzeu. She returned to P & O after the war, was reconditioned and returned to passenger service; mostly Ministry of Transport emigration work, the so called ‘Ten Pound Poms’, an assisted emigration scheme operated by the Australian Government.

 

In April 1949 Mooltan docked in Tilbery after one of her passengers died of smallpox. For three days the Belfast built vessel was placed under quarantine before anyone could disembark. Five more of the passengers died. The incident was discussed in the Westminster Houses of Parliament, and records can still be read in Hansard. On the 23rd of January 1954 Mooltan was sold for £150,000 to British Iron and Steel Corporation (Salvage) Ltd and was broken up.

Ranger survived and was a working boat with Clyde Marine until she was retired at Christmas 2008. Clyde Marine generously donated her to Lagan Legacy. She came home to Belfast only with the enormous help of P&O Irish Sea; Harland and Wolff; Clyde Marine Services Ltd., Greenock; Lagan Boat Company (N.I.) Ltd. and Murphy’s Transport, Bathgate, Scotland. The little vessel is the last of her kind, she deserved this celebrity treatment. After all, she’s a lone Ranger! 

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