Janet Telford 1983

Janet Telford was a project to join two skips together to make a hull of a boat. It was intended for the Winchburgh Canal Society in 1983 andwas the brain child of two lecturers at Telford College (now part of Edinburgh College), Benny Maclean and a Hamish Gilchrist. It had a Lister 2 cylinder engine rebuilt by Stevenson (now Edinburgh) College students.

The problem with the boat was that the hull had not been designed properly and even if you thrashed the engine it took ages to go anywhere. So it was never used at all at Winchburgh and so was offered to the Trust at a time when we were being swamped with bookings with only the original crusader the only boat in the fleet. . There was no disabled lift and the toilet was certainly not suitable for disabled.

Crusader was a wonderful towing boat so the idea was to use Janet's engine to steer the boat, but at the same time being towed by crusader. It could only be used by reasonably fit passengers but it fulfilled a purpose.

In 1987 H.M.S. "Cochrane" Training Centre at Rosyth lengthened the boat and modified the shape of the forward end, thus improving the efficiency.

Later she was transported to the Scottish Garden Festival on the Clyde to run Seagull trips during the festival . From 1988 to 1995 she was loaned to the Linlithgow Union Canal Society and then passed to the Forth and Clyde Canal Society who used her until 2019. It is unclear when ownership passed from Seagull Trust to the Forth & Clyde Society (and hence who loaned her to LUCS) but it was probably in 1988. She is currently privately owned (2020).

After she was complete we did trials around the dockyard and she was great. Her maiden voyage was a quick trip down river toward the Forth Bridge.

By this time the Mackay Seagull project was on the go and we saw an opportunity to advertise Seagull Trust by running a boat on the Clyde at the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival.

She was recommissioned at a service held in the Bridge Inn car park by the Reverend Edwin Beveridge and then transported by the courtesy of McBean Haulage Kirknewton to Glasgow where she was launched by the giant Finniston Crane for an inaugural voyage down the Clyde with representatives from the Trust and Strathclyde Region.

She wasn’t over used at the garden festival apart from the time when the usual trip boat broke down. She was used by the BBC for a broadcast on the Jimmy Mack afternoon programme.