Randolph Gordon Erskine Wemyss (1858-1908)
Born the eldest son on James Hay Erskine Wemyss and Augusta Millicent Anne Mary Kennedy Erskine
1908 Chairman of the Wemyss Collieries Trust
Obituary 1908 [1]
The death occurred at Wemyss Castle, Fifeshire, on the 17th inst., of Randolph G. Erskine Wemyss, a man who earned the right to be classed among our chief captains of industry. In 1879, while he was as yet under age, Mr. Wemyss, with the sanction of his trustees, constructed a railway at a cost of £25,000 from the Thornton Junction of the North British Railway to Buckhaven, a distance of four miles, with the object of developing the coal trade of the district. He subsequently acquired the Leven Dock from the Leven Harbour Company, constructed the docks at Methil, and extended the railway from Buckhaven to Methil on the west, and from Leven to Methil on the east. The works, which cost £ 100,000, in addition to large sums of money for the purchase of harbour and other rights, were completed in May, 1887, when the Methil Docks were opened. Mr. Wemyss' mother had previously, in 1870, finished the construction of a dock at Wemyss, and by its means and through the extra facilities of the Methil and other works the coal trade was greatly extended. In 1887 the exports of coal from Fifeshire amounted to 2,295,000 tons, and the increase has since been steady, until last year it reached no less than 8,580,000 tons.
The success of the harbour works provided by Mr. Wemyss induced the North British Railway Company to acquire the Methil Docks, and in 1897 they were more than doubled. The railway company is now engaged in the construction of an additional basin, which will cover more ground than all the former docks combined, and this dock, together with the necessary railway approaches, will cost nearly £500,000. Although the Methil Docks passed from Mr. Wemyss' control to that of the North British Railway Company, he continued none the less actively interested in the further development of the resources of the district. Under his direction the output of the Wemyss Coal Company increased from 700,000 to 2,000,000 tons per annum. He was the original promoter of the Leven and Kirkcaldy tramways, and was prepared to find all the money for that scheme had not the Board of Trade decided that the undertaking should be in the hands of a public company. At the time of his last illness Mr. Wemyss had in hand several important enterprises, which he was intent in carrying to success, among these being a new dock at West Wemyss at a cost of £30,000, and a new colliery at Denheath, which was estimated to require an outlay of about £150,000. Mr. Wemyss, who was only in his fiftieth year, unsuccessfully contested West Fife as the opponent of Mr. Birrell - now Chief Secretary for Ireland - in 1889, and again in 1895.