The name Wemyss Bay is applied to two quite distinct places. The best known of them is the departure point for the CalMac ferries to Rothesay on Bute, and for the associated terminus of the railway from Glasgow. A little to the north, between Wemyss Point and the A78, is the upmarket settlement of Wemyss Bay.

Both aspects of Wemyss Bay date back less than 150 years, to the arrival in 1865 of the railway from Glasgow. Until then many steamers serving the fashionable Victorian watering holes of Rothesay on Bute and Millport on Cumbrae sailed from Glasgow itself. But even in those days, making the maximum use of limited leisure time was important, and the Wemyss Bay Steamboat Company and the Caledonian Railway hoped to steal a march on their competitors by carrying passengers by train to Wemyss Bay before embarking them on steamers making much shorter crossings.