A Pair of Ships’ Bronze Cannon from the S. V. Jura 1875

A pair of ships’ Bronze Cannon from the S. V. Jura, 1875, Built by Charles Connell & Co, Glasgow, for Sandbach, Tinne & Co. of Liverpool. These fine four pounder cannon, on their original teak carriages, were made for use on the Jura, a fine Clyde-built vessel that was assembled in the Charles Connell and Company yard, no. 96, Scotstoun. Footnote: ‘SCOTSTOUN.-Messrs Charles Connell & Company launched on Saturday a handsome iron sailing ship of 1440 tons B. M., built to the highest class in Lloyds and the Liverpool registry. She has been built to the order of Messrs Sandbach, Tinne & Company, Liverpool, for the East India trade, and is fitted with every modern improvement. As she left the ways she was named “Jura” by the wife of Captain Russell, who is to command the vessel’. The Caledonian Maritime Research Trust site Clyde Ships has a page on the vessel with even more technical information and an image which can be seen here https://www.clydeships.co.uk/view.php?ref=4590#v To summarise, the vessel was 230ft long, 37ft wide and 21ft deep. According to the Trust, the Jura was sold to Alfred T. Parker in 1882 but we have found newspaper reports from as late as 1899 mentioning the vessel still sailing for Sandbach, Tinne and Co when docking at the Brunswick overhead dock in March of that year (see Liverpool Journal of Commerce,10th of March 1899) so there may have been a change of registered owner but not of the company for which she sailed. As late as 1925, Captain Russell, the ship’s captain in its early days, was being fondly remembered. A letter published in the Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 12th of September 1925, reads as follows: ‘Sir,- Captain J. A. Thinne, M.P. For Wavertree, indulged in many pleasant reminiscences in his little chat to seafarers at the Gordon Smith Institute, Liverpool, the other evening. He alluded, amongst other things, to the intimate relationship which prevailed between owners and masters in his younger days, and cited an incident which took place on his firm’s sailing ship the Jura, when the late Captain Richard Russell was in command. I well remember Captain Russell. He was a sterling seaman and a strict disciplinarian, the friend and confidant of his owners, thus very well typifying the relationship which existed between owners and masters in those days. He died some years ago, and even to this day his memory is cherished by the writer’. Caledonian Maritime Research Trust Jura herself is remembered in a fascinating article in the Welsh Gazette, 1st of April 1948, which states: ‘Major Heckstall Smith, editor of the “Yachting World” has pointed out that the full-rigged ship Jura, 1,1988 tones, on her maiden voyage from Greenock to Culcutta (sic), when running her casting down, logged 420 miles from noon to noon in the year 1875. She was owned by Sandbach, Tinne and Co. of Liverpool, and sailed by Capt. Russell. It is wonderful to realise that this vessel on the day’s work would have beaten the fastest yacht by 50 or 60 miles’. Jura was sold to Italian owners Raffaele Ferraro of Naples in 1901 and foundered off of Peru whilst transporting scrap iron to Genoa in 1908, ending the career of this remarkable vessel.