Margaret Alison is a Scottish fishing vessel of the ringer type, originally dedicated to herring fishing. She was built in 1937 at the Weatherhead shipyards in Cockenzie, commissioned by the Clark family, fishermen from Fisherrow, near Edinburgh, a port right next to the Scottish capital.
Her original name was June Rose, which was changed to Margaret Alison when a change of ownership brought her to fish on the Isle of Man.
Her professional life spans various fishing activities and ownership changes. For forty years, she operated from various ports along the Scottish coasts and the Isle of Man. In the late 1970s, her Scottish skipper suffered a serious accident, and she was abandoned in Barrisdale, at Loch Hourn, where she was recovered by Jay Cresswell and taken to Tarbert, who restored her and gave her a new recreational purpose.
In 1990, she arrived in Porto Colom (Majorca) with a new British owner who passed away in the same port, leaving her neglected for a time. Miquel Àngel Cerdà bought her and carried out a complete restoration in 1991.
During the 1990s, she was actively used for summer trips across the Mediterranean, reaching the coasts of Corsica, Sardinia, and Tunisia. At the turn of the millennium, she changed ownership again and moved to the port of Blanes, where she operated tourist trips along the Costa Brava and Maresme. Her activity gradually declined, and she was eventually moored in the port of Premià.
In the summer of 2014, she arrived at the port of Arenys with the goal of being restored and returned to the sea. This marked the beginning of a long and complex project that became the driving force behind a broader initiative for maritime heritage preservation, known as El Moll d’Arenys.
The restoration, which turned into a full reconstruction under the direction of Canarian shipwright Agustín Jordán, allowed Margaret Alison to touch seawater again in January 2023, and she began sailing a year later. It was exactly 10 years after her arrival at the port of Arenys, where she is now geared towards tourism and promoting maritime culture.
