Name Phantom

PHANTOM was originally built as a Self-Righting Pulling and Sailing lifeboat with a single drop keel and pivoted crescent shape. Unfortunately, her original ON Number was lost when her stem was increased after 1938, but we believe she was built by the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company sometime in the early 1900s. Having been sold off the RNLI fleet, she was eventually purchased in the 1930s by R and C Brooke of Kirn, Argyll and Bute, who named her QUEEN O’ THE COWAL and fitted her with a single inboard engine. She was operated by the Brooke family as a passenger boat between Dunoon and Gourock on the Clyde.

In 1938, the vessel was purchased by O Houston who moved her to the Inchinnan Cruising Club at Renfrew, Renfrewshire, and was named PHANTOM. Houston converted her into a twin screw vessel and sailed her in the Clyde and the West Coast of Scotland. She was eventually moved to a mooring at Tayvallich, Argyll and Bute, until her owner’s passing in the 1970s, when she was slipped ashore and undercover.

PHANTOM remained there until c.1995 when she was purchased by D Hunter, who moved her back to the Inchinnan Cruising Club, and again sailed along the Clyde. In the early 2000s, she was sold and moved to Suffolk under her own steam, and soon after her owner D Elves began making repairs and eventually a full restoration work began. She was purchased by her current owner in 2017 who brought her back to Scotland to the boat yard of A and R Way Boatbuilders, who spent the next 4 years rebuilding and modernising her. PHANTOM was relaunched in September 2021 and is now based at Inverkip Marina on the Clyde coast.