Glasgow Herald 6 October 1886
From the time when steamers first began to ply on the Gareloch there was a ferryboat station in connection with them at Shandon, where all of the steamers used to call. For the long period of half a century the Shandon ferry continued under the management of Mr Duncan McKinlay, who still survives.
But in 1882 the erection of Craigendoran steamboat harbour by the North British Railway Company, involving the calling of their Gareloch steamer both at Craigendoran and Helensburgh, led to its withdrawal from the Shandon ferryboat station. This for a period of fully four years has been felt by the inhabitants of the Shandon district, the most populous on the east shore of the Gareloch between Row and Garelochhead, to be a very great inconvenience, and to supply a want, amounting in many cases to a positive hardship, the new pier now completed at Shandon has been erected by the following neighbouring proprietors:- Messrs Henry Bell, Summerhill; William L Brown, Linnburn; John J Kerr, Ardgare; Andrew C Henderson, Shandon; Andrew J Kirkpatrick, Lagbuie; William Swan LLD, Ardchapel; and William J Walker, Garemount.
In terms of an agreement made by the promoters of the pier with the trustees of the late Sir James Colquhoun, Baronet, the pier, as now completed, is handed over to them, and becomes their sole property as a portion of the Colquhoun trust estates, to be used and maintained by the trustees on the same conditions as their other piers on the Gareloch. The new pier, situated at a point on the shore directly opposite Shandon Free Church, has been erected solely at the expense of the promoters above-named, and including the obtaining of a feu-disposition for its site from the Board of Trade, and other necessary expenses, will cost them, it is understood, somewhere about £1500.
The piles throughout are of greenheart timber, faced and coped at the pierhead with elm wood. The structure is an exceedingly handsome one. The gangway and terminal platform are of creosoted pitch-pine, and on the pierhead there is a commodious waiting-room and piermaster’s office and store-room. The pier has been built by Messrs Watt & Wilson, contractors, from a design by Mr W R Copeland, CE. Now that it is completed, it should afford to the inhabitants of the surrounding district the means of easy communication with Helensburgh and Greenock, and thus also with the Clyde river steamers generally, of which the want has been of late years so severely felt by them.
Shandon People and History 