Bowling Harbour, River Clyde

Sea level

Sea level recorders

The dataset consists of 2580 tiff images of tide gauge charts from Bowling, River Clyde. The images were taken from annual bound volumes of tide gauge charts (~1 page per week, 52 pages per volume). A typical volume measures 37 x 34 x 3.5 cm and pages are single sided. The ledgers for Bowling begin in 1888 and end in 1952, but under this project, only the charts up until 04/01/1939 were photographed. The trace on the original charts was generated by a float tide gauge. The float inside a stilling-well was connected by a wire run over pulleys to a pen that moved up and down as the tide rose and fell. The images were generated by a commercial scanning organisation (TownsWeb Archiving Ltd) using a planetary overhead book scanner. In July 2016 The Peel Group Ltd. (Glasgow) approached BODC to donate their tidal archive, due to office redevelopment. The archive consists of ledgers of tide gauge charts (345 annual bound volumes) and handwritten ledgers (91 bound books) from several locations along the Clyde, with the earliest record beginning in 1841 from Glasgow Harbour. Later that year BODC received a grant from the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN) to photograph a selection of the ledgers. MEDIN released these funds to support small Data Archiving Projects that increase access to industry marine data. Ledgers also exist for Broomielaw, Dalmuir, Gourock, Govan Wharf, Greenock, Partick Wharf Glasgow, Queen's Dock Entrance Glasgow and Rothesay Dock. Most begin in the late 19th Century and run to the mid-20th century. It is hoped that these will be digitised in the future, subject to funding.

British Oceanographic Data Centre
Joseph Proudman Building 6 Brownlow Street
Liverpool
Merseyside
L3 5DA
United Kingdom