Aarla

The steel motor yacht Hecate was launched from the Meadowside yard of D and W Henderson and Co Ltd., Glasgow (Yard No 435) on 27th May 1903.   She measured 161.3′ x 25.6′ x 12.6′ and her tonnage was 439 gross tons, 265 net tons.   She was powered by twin triple expansion steam engines by her builder delivering 100 nominal horse power.  Built for Andrew Coats, the owner of the famous sewing thread business in Paisley, and first registered in Glasgow on 16th September she served as his private yacht for fifteen years before she was sold to the Grech family of London in 1919.  Around 1930 she was purchased by German owners who re-named her Aar, installing new more powerful Blohm and Voss twin 6 cylinder 4SA diesel engines delivering 800 brake horse power.  She returned to British ownership in 1936 and by 1937 was owned by William Hetherington of Glasgow and her name had changed again to Aarla. 

In October 1939 she was purchased by the Admiralty for war service as an anti-submarine patrol vessel. After successful duty in British waters she was transferred to perform the same task based in Freetown and Dakar in West Africa in 1942. By late 1944 the Aarla was beginning to show signs of her continual service and she was dry docked in Dakar during December 1944 and January 1945 for extensive repairs to her hull. As the war in Africa was now concluded, on completion of these repairs, the Aarla set sail for Britain, leaving Dakar on July 1945. On her voyage to Falmouth she encountered some very heavy weather and had to put into Leixos for temporary repairs to a fractured soil pipe below the water line and to the starboard main engine which had seized.

Despite these difficulties, she eventually reached her final destination on the Clyde on the 17th September, 1945. She had been visually inspected by Lloyds at Falmouth en route and again, by the Sea Transport Inspecting Officer at Greenock, at anchor at Tighnabruaich. These visual surveys, which were the only surveys carried out on the Aarla since her last full inspection in 1933, indicated that the owner would need to spend at least £16,000 to return her to pre-war condition.

The Aarla lay at her moorings, off Tighnabruaich, under the care and maintenance of Messrs. Smith Brothers until June 1947, when she was purchased by the Park Lane Shipping Company of London for £6,000, intended for service as a pleasure cruise ship on the east coast of England. The purchasers apparently took no professional advice on the condition of the Aarla, relying on an old picture in Lloyds and an inspection by Captain R. D. Young, who had been engaged to sail her to the south of England, to decide on the condition of the vessel.

Captain Young declared the Aarla fit to sail to the south coast, where she was to undergo an major refit before entering commercial service . On the morning of 26th June, 1947 Captain Young, with eight crew, raised anchor at Tighnabruaich and set sail for Lowestoft, via Ardrossan for fuel, and Torquay. What happened on the voyage has never been established as there were no survivors from the sinking of the Aarla, south of Ailsa Craig, in the early hours of the following morning.

Fragments of the story of the disaster can be pieced together from the testimony of the crew of the SS Lairdsdale who were en route from Ardrossan to Belfast that same night. At just after 2:30am the Lairdsdale was three and a half miles west of Ailsa Craig, steaming into a rough sea whipped up by a force seven south westerly gale. The helmsman reported a flash of light off their starboard bow followed by the flicker of a ship’s lights some five miles distant. The captain of the Lairdsdale ordered a change of course to head for the other ship to offer assistance, if required. When they were about two miles from the unknown vessel, the lights disappeared. They continued their course and soon began to see signs of wreckage around the area where the ship’s lights had been. It was obvious that the ship had sunk. They could hear shouts from the water through the darkness but, despite a desperate search, the shouts stopped before anyone could be rescued. They continued to search but found only more wreckage and one body. The next day the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and the lifeboat joined the search but, again, no trace of the crew or any indication of the name of the vessel could be found. Over the next few days, bodies from the wreck were washed ashore on Kintyre and Arran and finally the six foot nameplate of the Aarla was also discovered on Kintyre, at last revealing the name of the sunken vessel.

The subsequent inquiry into the sinking could not definitively conclude on the cause of the incident. Many believed that the flash of light seen by the crew of the Lairdsdale could have been an explosion caused by the Aarla colliding with some floating debris from a deep sea dump of war munitions south of Ailsa Craig. This theory is supported by many discoveries of such munitions on the shores of the mainland coast, Kintyre and Arran, over the years. It is further supported by the unexplained loss of another vessel in the same area only a month earlier for apparently the same reason. It is however also certain that the Aarla was not in a totally seaworthy condition when she left Tighnabruaich with temporary repairs made on the homeward journey from Africa two years earlier still in place. It is also certain that some, if not all, of the lifesaving equipment on board was not in working order. One lifeboat was known to be unserviceable, while the lifejackets worn by the drowned crewmen should have shown lights when they took to the water. No such lights were seen by the crew of the Lairdsdale despite the fact that they reported hearing shouts when they reached the vicinity of the sinking.

The wreck of the Aarla lies in deep water somewhere south west of Ailsa Craig and to date has eluded attempts to locate her.