Business

THREE brothers were the first people to engage in the large-scale manufacturing of aerated waters in Helensburgh.

The brothers Comrie from Glasgow had a strong family connection with the burgh as their father, Alexander, had been a Helensburgh-based builder from at least as far back as the 1860’s.

THE TOWN of Helensburgh made a major contribution to the history of Scottish lemonade, thanks to businessmen such as James A.Reid.

This was recalled by a visitor to the town in September 2015. Ian Patrick and his wife Anne, who live in Bristol, travelled north to see where his great uncle, James Arthur Reid, lived and had his own pioneering lemonade factory.

A HELENSBURGH man who died in 1983 at the age of 96 is considered to have made the great single Scottish contribution to the establishment of the gas industry.

David Fulton is best remembered locally as a much admired and long serving president of Helensburgh Golf Club — holding the office from 1963 until his death on May 7 1983, and still making speeches at the club in his nineties.

WHEN townsfolk and visitors walk out the main entrance from Helensburgh Central Station, opposite them is a piece of local history.

Painted on the wall above the shops is ‘Macneur & Bryden Ltd.’, the name of a multi-faceted business which was probably the most used and best known shop in Helensburgh for almost a century.

THE SON of a famous Rhu artist earned fame of a very different kind.

Tom Guthrie was the son of Sir James Guthrie, but he did not inherit his father’s artistic talent. Instead he was an expert pilot and a pioneer of seaplane passenger excursions.

A HELENSBURGH man who rose to the top of the regional newspaper industry recently celebrated a poignant anniversary.

It is just over 25 years since Iain D.McAulay received a kidney transplanted from his brother Archie, and it is still keeping him alive and well.

MANY Helensburgh people were sad to hear in February 2014 of the closure of the town’s oldest hostelry, the Imperial Hotel on West Clyde Street.

A LEADING Cardross resident for nearly 40 years was one of the owners of the world’s largest private steamship company . . . which is said to have been the inspiration for the popular 'Onedin Line' TV drama series in the 1970s.

ONE of Glasgow’s most popular newspapers used to be the Evening Citizen . . . and it was founded and edited for many years by a Helensburgh man who started a press dynasty.

MUCH is known about a popular Helensburgh institution, the Queen’s Hotel in East Clyde Street, but there is a significant gap in the list of owners.

Henry Bell, the town’s first Provost, is believed to have opened the seafront hotel — then named the Baths Inn — with his wife Margaret in 1807, a year after he acquired the land.

FINNART Ocean Terminal is a petrochemical transfer facility on the eastern shore of Loch Long, about two miles north of Garelochhead.

Also known as Finnart Oil Terminal, it is made up of a series of piers which extend into the loch, with a deep berth able to accept tankers of up to 324,000 tonnes.

A BOY who emigrated from Helensburgh to Australia at the age of just eleven went on to become one of the pioneers of early professional photography.

Despite being orphaned soon after arriving Down Under, burgh-born Thomas Mathewson started a family dynasty in the photographic business. This is his story as told by one of his grandsons, Alan Reeve North, who has written a book about him.