The Glenlee was built in 1896 at the Bay Yard, Port Glasgow by Anderson Rodger, a shipbuilder and leading member of the community of Port Glasgow and Greenock. Rodger & Company Built more than 120 ships between 1891 and 1912.
Glenlee under British ownership from 1896 – 1919, made 14 voyages including four circumnavigations of the globe and 15 passages round Cape Horn.
Glenlee Voyage No 3
In September 1899 she was renamed Islamount.
Master William Fraser
Crew 34
Cargoe; Coal, Wheat
Cardiff — Adelaide — Falmouth — Limerick — Mersey Ports
17/10/1899 — 30/07/1900
Departure Arrival Duration of Passage
Cardiff 17/10/1899 Adelaide 08/01/1900 83 days
Adelaide 17/02/1900 Falmouth 22/06/1900 123 days
Falmouth 30/06/1900 Limerick 05/07/1900 5 days
Limerick 01/08/1900 Mersey 12/09/1900 15 days
On her final leg of her inbound voyage Islamount left the Irish port of Limerick under tow on 1/08/1900. Her destination was the Mersey but an encounter with bad weather in the St Georges Channel compelled her to take shelter in Holyhead Bay, Anglelsey where she dropped her bow and stern anchors on the 6th. Shortly after 8pm that evening a savage northerly gale swept down on the ship buffeting her with such a force that she began to drift in the direction of Nimrod Rocks, a well known local hazard to shipping. at with anchors dragging and the threat of shipwreck increasing by the minute, Fraser ordered the transfer of her crew to the Angelsey lifeboat which had lately arrived on the scene. The storm abated somewhat in the early hours of the following morning and the ship was re-boarded. Later in the day, the Liverpool tug Challenger succeeded in getting a line across to the stricken vessel and, with her assistance, Islamount finally crossed the Liverpool Bar one week after setting out from the west coast of Ireland. Her run of bad luck continued however for she struck the pier at Ellesmere on the 28th August while under tow on an outward bound-voyage to Australia sustaining damage to her bow and hull plating which took a fortnight to repair.
From
Glenlee The Life & Times of a Clyde-Built Cape Horner by;
Colin Castle and Ian MacDonald