Archibald Douglas Bryce-Douglas
Archibald Douglas Bryce-Douglas (1839-1891)
Seafield Tower, Ardrossan.
Managing Director of the Barrow Naval Construction and Armaments Co.
1891 Died aged 51.
1891 Obituary [1]
ARCHIBALD DOUGLAS BRYCE-DOUGLAS was born at Ardrossan in 1839.
After receiving a good education at the High School of Glasgow, and subsequently at the University, be was apprenticed by his father, Rev. John Bryce, first to a joiner at Ardrossan, and afterwards to Messrs. Randolph Elder and Co., Glasgow, at the time when they had just added shipbuilding to the construction of engines and boilers.
After remaining there only two or three years, he went to New Zealand, where he had been offered a position to superintend machinery; but on the outbreak of the Maori war he proceeded to the west coast of South America, where he acted for some years as resident engineer of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, having charge of a fleet of forty steamers, and erected their workshops at Callao.
In 1869 he became superintending engineer of the company in Callao, and held that position for six or seven years.
Returning to England he was appointed in 1877 engineering manager to Messrs. John Elder and Co., afterwards the Fairfield Engineering Company, and built there the engines for many well-known steamers of the Cunard, Orient, North German Lloyd, and other fleets, as well as for the British and various foreign navies. He introduced many important developments in engineering practice, and also availed himself largely of all improvements which he recognised as important.
Early in 1889 he became managing director of the Naval Construction and Armaments Company at Barrow-in-Furness, and soon succeeded in giving renewed life and activity to the shipbuilding and marine engineering industries of that town. Here were lately constructed under his direction three steamers for maintaining a high-speed service between Vancouver and Japan and China, in connection with a scheme which he was engaged in developing for a new direct route from England to Australia, across the British territory of Canada, in connection with a fleet of fast steamers intended to make the sea passage between Plymouth and Halifax, or St. John's, Newfoundland, in five days, this passage being 600 miles shorter than that between Liverpool and New York.
His death took place after a week's illness at his residence, Seafield Tower, Ardrossan, on 5th April 1891, at the age of fifty-two.
1891 Obituary [The Engineer 1891/04/10]].
1891 Obituary [2]