Cromarty Image Library

The Bonnie Lass was registered in Wick. This picture is from 1899. This topsail schooner was owned by Captain John Maclean (picture #719) who lived in "Ivydene" in Cromarty.

In about 1908 while on passage in the North Sea an Aberdeen trawler crashed into the schooner's bow and a man working on the gib boom stowing the flying gib fell onto the trawler's deck. The two ships parted and four days later the rest of the crew of the badly leaking Bonnie Lass were saved. Both sections of the crew thought that the other was drowned until they met ashore.

Captain John Maclean died in 1912 aged 54. His son John Maclean known as Jock, lived in Cromarty in his youth, left and worked in Alloa, then retired and moved back to Cromarty and lived in Lonemore until his death in about 1980. His sister Natalie lived in Lonemore before Jock and she used to teach in Cromarty School.

The Bonnie Lass's cargo was mainly coastal coal but she did on occasion I'm told, sail to the Baltic carrying herring to Danzig.

I don't think this is the Bonnie Lass. Has a squarer stern and looks much broader in the beam.

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