RECENT news of a survey of shipwrecks off the west coast reminds us all how important the sea and ships have been to Scotland, especially the River Clyde and its firth.

We have all been brought up on the stories of Clydeside and its importance to Scottish industry but perhaps not too many people realise why "Clyde built" became the gold standard of shipbuilding.

The simple reason is that while steamships were built in several countries around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, Scotland pioneered their use for passengers and developed a whole industry based on Scottish engineering and design plus our abundant natural resources at the time – coal, iron ore, and water, which would eventually make steel the material of choice for ships.

No single man or woman can claim to be the creator of the Clyde’s reputation for excellent shipbuilding, but there was a pioneer who should always be acclaimed as the father of passenger travel on the Clyde and around the coast of Scotland.

Henry Bell was born at Torphichen Mill in what was then Linlithgowshire in 1767. He was the son of Patrick Bell and Margaret Easton, the former a millwright and the latter from a family of engineers.

Schooling was not a success for young Bell, and he spent a great deal of time in the fields of what is now West Lothian, making water wheels in the many burns of that part of Scotland.

He grew up in what might be termed an unfocused manner, and a later account of him said, “his mind was a chaos of extraordinary projects, the most of which, from his want of accurate scientific calculation, he never could carry into practice".

Bell served apprenticeships both as a millwright and a ship modeller before moving to London, where he worked and studied under the Scottish engineer John Rennie, the elder. Rennie was an East Lothian man from East Linton, who worked under James Watt himself at the firm of Boulton and Watt. Rennie would go on to become a famous builder of canals and bridges, including the Crinan Canal and London Bridge.

In 1790, Bell returned to Scotland and settled in Glasgow, where he worked as a carpenter at first. The following year, he entered into partnership with James Paterson and they worked as builders in Glasgow for seven years. During that time Bell married his formidable wife, Margaret Young.

The records of the Glasgow Corporation of Wrights show that in 1797, Bell made an unsuccessful attempt to join them and become a civil engineer. Undeterred, he was becoming fascinated by the possibility of hitching steam engines to boats.

He corresponded regularly with Robert Fulton, the American engineer who built the North River Steamboat and used it to operate the world’s first commercial steamboat service, in New York in 1807.

Inspired by the work of engineer and inventor William Symington in putting steam engines into boats – particularly the Charlotte Dundas, which could tow barges along the Forth and Clyde Canal no matter the condition of the weather – Bell’s genius was to see that the power of steam meant a passenger vessel was no longer dependent on a favourable wind. A shallow draught vessel could also negotiate the River Clyde and, crucially, a steamer could make its way against the current of the river.

His visits to the builders of Symington’s steamboat machinery in the Carron Ironworks eventually caused him to write to the Admiralty, proposing the creation of steam-powered vessels capable of carrying guns and marines to sea.

This was way ahead of anything any other engineer was doing at the time, so Lord Melville and other members of the Admiralty were extremely dubious about Bell’s steam-powered ships.

One man wasn’t. Admiral Horatio Nelson himself told the Admiralty in 1803: “My Lords, if you do not adopt Mr Bell’s scheme, other nations will, and in the end vex every vein of this empire. It will succeed and you should encourage Mr Bell.”

Rejection only served to spur on Bell, especially after Fulton’s success in the USA.

He had moved to Helensburgh, a new spa town on the Clyde west of Dumbarton that had been laid out by Sir James Colquhoun of Luss in a grid pattern inspired by Edinburgh’s New Town.

Bell and Margaret ran the Baths Inn, later the Queen’s Hotel, on the esplanade at East Clyde Street, she managing the business while her husband worked as an engineer and builder.

All the while, however, he wanted to build a steamboat, and in 1811 he decided to take the plunge, mortgaging their house and business to raise the money to build what became Europe’s first passenger steam vessel.

She was called the Comet, after the Great Comet of 1811, and was launched in 1812 from the shipbuilding yard of John Wood across the river at Port Glasgow.

Comet was a paddle steamer weighing 30 tons with an engine that could develop three-four horsepower. She was more than 40 ft long but drew just four feet of water, meaning she could navigate the silting Clydewith ease. The Comet could also transport 40 passengers in relative comfort.

Bell had designed her, but the engine and other parts all came from different firms – in truth, she was a model of engineering cooperation.

After her successful maiden voyage up and down the Clyde between Broomielaw and Greenock, Bell advertised for passengers: “THE STEAMBOAT COMET BETWEEN GLASGOW, GREENOCK AND HELENSBURGH FOR PASSENGERS ONLY.

"The subscriber, having at much expense, fitted up a handsome vessel to ply upon the River Clyde from Glasgow, to sail by the power of air, wind, and steam, intends that the vessel shall leave the Broomielaw on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays about mid-day, or such hour thereafter as may answer from the state of the tide, and to leave Greenock on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in the morning to suit the tide.”

Bell set the fare at “four shillings for the best cabin, and three shillings for the second.” It was proof of the entrepreneurial spirit of Bell that he realised that his invention had to be marketed. She was soon the wonder of Scotland, and shipbuilders and newly emerging shipping lines rushed to copy her and offer services up and down the Clyde and elsewhere around Scotland.

In 1819, Bell had the Comet rebuilt and lengthened so that she could make sea voyages to Oban.

Disaster struck there in 1820, when she foundered on the rocks at Craignish Point. All the passengers and crew made it safely on to dry land, and parts of the Comet were salvaged – some of those parts are preserved in various places to this day.

Bell soon set about building a bigger and better paddle steamer called, with no great imagination, Comet II. She began plying her trade on the Firth of Clyde, where dozens of competing vessels had been launched, all of them from the hugely increased number of Clyde shipyards, which by now were leading the British Empire and Europe in ship production.

Yet Bell himself did not benefit, for he never patented his designs and rivals ripped him off mercilessly – and then came an even greater disaster. In the early hours of the morning of October 22, 1825, Comet II was involved in a horrendous collision with the steamer Ayr in the deep waters off Kempock Point at Gourock. She sank in three minutes, and 62 of the 80 passenger died.

A newspaper account of the day said: “The Ayr, we learn, had a light out upon her bow, but the Comet had none. As the night, however, was clear, it is obvious that a bad lookout had been kept up, and most reprehensible neglect shown on both sides. At the moment the accident took place, those on the deck of the Comet were, it is said, engaged in dancing. The passengers who were below were in high spirits, amusing themselves telling and listening to diverting tales.

“The first stroke hit about the paddle of the Comet. The captain and passengers immediately ran upon deck to see what was wrong; when – the next fatal stroke took place with such force, that the Comet filled, and in two minutes went down head foremost. The moment this took place, the Ayr, instead of lending any assistance, gave her paddles a back stroke, turned round, and went off to Greenock, leaving them to their fate.”

The tragedy broke Bell’s heart and spirit. He never took part in any steam navigation project again.

Unable to work properly, Bell, who had been first provost of Helensburgh in 1807, soon descended into poverty, but benefactors raised funds on his behalf, recognising what he had done for the Clyde.

He was granted an annuity of £100, which was continued to his wife after Bell died in Helensburgh at the age of 62 in November 1830.

He was buried in Rhu churchyard, along from Helensburgh, following a large funeral when the town closed for the day and flags were flown at half-mast. There is a statue at his grave and monuments in Helensburgh and at Dunglass further up the Clyde.

There should be more to commemorate this pioneer, for as no less a person than Isambard Kingdom Brunel described him, Henry Bell was the “planner of Europe’s first practical steamer” and its sister ship, which is still at the bottom of the wild seas off the west coast.