Tour Scotland travel video clip, with Scottish music, of Ardrishaig and the Crinan Canal on visit to Argyll and Bute in the west of Scotland. Ardrishaig, Scottish Gaelic: Àird Driseig, is a coastal village on Loch Gilp, at the southern entrance to the Crinan Canal. Queen Victoria travelled along the canal to Crinan during a holiday in the Scottish Highlands in 1847. She was greeted at Ardrishaig and her boat was towed by four horses, two of which were ridden by postilions in royal livery. At Crinan she boarded the royal yacht Victoria and Albert. Her journey made the canal a tourist attraction and gave the canal an added purpose. Passenger steamer companies operating out of Glasgow advertised the canal as the Royal route and by the late 1850s more than 40,000 passengers passed through Ardrishaig each year and were met by steamers to Oban at Crinan. In 1866 a steam powered passenger boat Linnet replaced horse-drawn boats for tourists. The canal takes its name from the village of Crinan which is located at its westerly end. Nine miles long, it connects the village of Ardrishaig on Loch Gilp with the Sound of Jura, providing a navigable route between the Clyde and the Inner Hebrides, without the need for a long diversion around the Kintyre peninsula, and in particular the exposed Mull of Kintyre.
James Chalmers was born on 4 August 1841 in the village of Ardrishaig, Argyll, Scotland, the only son of an Aberdonian stonemason. The family moved to Inveraray when James was seven. There he went to the local school, and then to grammar school for about a year when he was 13. Then he was employed in a lawyer's office at Inveraray, and before he was 20 decided to become a missionary. In 1861, he joined the Glasgow City Mission as an evangelis. The London Missionary Society eventually sent him to Cheshunt College near London, England, to carry on his studies. He was a good student, though not a brilliant one, and was already showing capacities for leadership. He was also always ready for practical jokes. On 17 October 1865 he was married to Jane Hercus and two days later was ordained to the Christian ministry. It had been decided that he should go to the South Pacific island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, although he had hoped to work in Africa. On 4 January 1866 Chalmers sailed in the missionary ship John Williams to Australia, where he arrived in May. After a stay of three months, he left for the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). The ship ran onto an uncharted rock and had to go back to Sydney to be repaired. It sailed again and was wrecked in January, though all on board were saved. He arrived at Rarotonga on 20 May 1867. In 1877, Chalmers had his desire for pioneering work fulfilled and was sent to New Guinea, then an almost-unknown land. He and his wife arrived at Port Moresby on 22 October 1877. During the next nine years he explored much of southern New Guinea in dangerous conditions, and was everywhere the peacemaker. Chalmers' first wife died on 20 February 1879. In 1888 he married Sarah Elizabeth Harrison, a widow from East Retford who had been a childhood friend of his first wife. Chalmers preached his last sermon in Britain at the Retford Congregational Church. Lizzie died in 1900. There were no children by either marriage. James died on 8 April 1901.
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