I've copied the following information on the floating church from the website listed below: http://www.nessie.co.uk/index.html An old iron anchor which has been recovered from Loch Sunart is thought to have played an important part in West Highland history. It is believed to be the anchor which held the famous floating church which the people of Strontian used to reach by rowing boat in the mid 1800s. Father and son Gordon and Peter Blakeway, who run the Kilcamb Lodge Hotel at Strontian, discovered the relic while out walking on the loch shore. And they commissioned divers to retrieve the one and a half tonne hook, which is almost six feet long. Peter Blakeway said he and his father had seen only a small part of the anchor jutting out of the water. He said: "We first saw it in an extremely low tide. We just saw the top two inches sticking out of the water. It was half buried in the sand and it was impossible for us to lift it, so we sent the divers in." The floating church was created because in 1843 the disagreement within the Church of Scotland over the right of congregations to choose their own m! inisters resulted in the Disruption. That led to the then laird of Strontian refusing to give the Free Church anywhere to build a place of worship. In 1846, local people got round the problem by having a floating church built in Port Glasgow and towed to Loch Sunart. The following comes from another website : http://claymore.wisemagic.com/scotradiance/flotsam/flotsam9711.htm LOCH SUNART'S FLOATING PULPIT Ships, ships, ships. So many mighty and magnificent vessels have undergone their baptism rites along the banks of the Clyde, but surely none was more outlandish than the floating church of Loch Sunart. The last living link with the strange vessel was broken in November 1949, with the death, at the age of 88, of crofter Alexander Macphee. After the Church of Scotland split apart in the Disruption of 1843, many landowners denied property or potential building-sites to those thousands who had opted for the breakaway church. This was the situation at Ardnamurchan in Argyll where Sir James Riddell refused to have anything to do with the Free Kirk. As a result, there were regular open-air gatherings - winter and summer - at Strontian with congregations of 500 and upwards, and in excess of 2,000 attendants for the summer Communion. Eventually, the worshippers raised £1,400 and launched an incredibly imaginative plan. Shipbuilders in Port Glasgow were commissioned to build a vessel, a timber frame on an iron hull, complete with pulpit, vestry, gallery and packed mews. After construction it was towed around the Mull of Kintyre and headed north to Loch Sunart. Ironically, the most suitable anchorage lay directly under the windows of Sir James's mansion, but tactfully, it was decided to use a mooring a couple of miles along the shore. Inside the vessel there was seating for 750 worshippers, and for ten years rowing-boats conveyed the congregation to and from services. It was said that for every hundred worshippers the church sank an inch in the water so an accurate count of the churchgoers was always available. It was finally blown ashore in a storm but remained in use for some time thereafter. It was on board the floating church of Loch Sunart that old Alexander Macphee had been baptised. Chris Nicolson in Caithness, Scotland

----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy & Chris Nicolson" <andynic@zetnet.co.uk> To: <SCT-ARGYLL-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:11 PM Subject: [ARGYLL] The Floating Church In case anyone was thinking of contacting the Blakeway`s of the Kilcamb Lodge Hotel with ref to the find on the shore of Loch Sunart,...they have since moved away. Stuart.