Issued: 27 September 2002

More Sun, Sea And Smokies At Museum

The Sun, Sea and Smokies exhibition at Arbroath Signal Tower Museum has proved so popular that it will remain open for another week until Sunday 6 October.

The museum continues to add to the display and the fascinating archive of material that has been generated by the exhibition.

One of the fascinating aspects of the exhibition is the role that pleasure boats played in the holidays of Arbroath visitors.

In the early 1950s there were many boats taking visitors for tours of the coast and even out to the Bell Rock Lighthouse. People may remember names such as the Waterlily, the Bluebird, the Ella and the Modern Girl.

One family who have been kind enough to provide the museum with the story of their time running boat trips from the harbour are two generations of the Ferriers.

This family took the Swallow, the Compass Rose, the Maidstone, Fairway and Canberra out of Arbroath Harbour packed with delighted tourists for whom the trip was one of the highlights of their holidays.

In the 1970s the numbers of tourists began to decline and eventually, in the 1990s, the Ferriers decided to stop taking holidaymakers out for excursions on the coast around Arbroath.