Before cheap flights or the car ferry, Portrush had its own direct steamer link to Scotland — locally known as “the Scotch Boats” — running, on and off, for the better part of a century.
Small beginnings
The Port Rush Steam Navigation Company ran a Liverpool service from 1835 into the mid-1840s. The Laird Line began a dedicated Glasgow service in the summer of 1865, using a fleet of small steamers (Elm, Fern, Gardenia, Holly, and the larger Rose), before the Irish terminal moved to Coleraine in 1884. Direct daylight sailings between the Clyde and Portrush resumed in the summer of 1892, running each June through August — what’s remembered as the golden age of the Scotch Boats, with fares as low as 3s6d for steerage passage.
Built for a shallow harbour
The standout ship of the era was the Azalea, built in Glasgow and launched in August 1878 — 706 gross tons, 218 feet long, sold to a Greek shipping company in 1914 and eventually broken up in 1939. Her successor was more remarkable still: the TSS Hazel, purpose-built in 1907 specifically for Portrush’s unusually shallow harbour, with a draft of just 14 feet despite over 1,200 gross tons and a 19-knot top speed. Her maiden voyage on 13 June 1907 was a genuine local event — crowds gathered at Fair Head, Ballycastle and Ramore Head to watch her arrive, and a celebratory lunch was served on board for directors and dignitaries, complete with a period menu right down to a dessert named “Hazel” pudding in her own honour.
The end of the line
The Portrush-Clyde service ended at the outbreak of the First World War and was never revived on a permanent basis. Two short-lived attempts followed: a poorly supported charter service to Oban in 1882, and a single 1978 summer season run by the Norwegian-built catamaran Highland Seabird. The Hazel herself served as an Admiralty fleet messenger during WWI, was later sold to the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company and renamed Mona, ran aground on Conister Rock off Douglas in 1930, and was finally broken up in 1938 — a long working life for a ship built to solve one small Irish harbour’s very particular problem.