Pedersen Western Ferries

Taking on Giants
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-85790-863-6
Verlag: Birlinn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

In the late 1960s, drawing on Scandinavian experience, Western Ferries pioneered roll-on roll off ferry operations in Scotland's West Highlands and Islands. This innovative company's original focus, was Islay, where its hitherto undreamt of frequency of service transformed that island's access to the outside world. The company's profitable and efficient operation was, however, deliberately sabotaged by heavily subsidised predatory pricing by the feather-bedded state owned competitor. This shameful policy, initiated at the highest political level, has been uncovered by recently released official correspondence held in the Scottish archives. The Islay service eventually succumbed, but the company's service across the Firth of Clyde between Inverclyde and Cowal, not only survived, but, in the face of many challenges, flourished to become by far Scotland's busiest and most profitable ferry route. Its modern cherry red ferries run like clockwork, from early till late, 365 days a year, employing some 60 people locally. It contributes much back into the community it serves including free emergency runs, whenever required, in the middle of the night.What made all this possible was the extraordinary dedication of a succession of enthusiastic, determined and above all colourful individuals. This is their story.

Roy Pedersen's former career with development agencies HIDB and HIE, where he pioneered numerous innovative and successful ventures, and his subsequent services as an SNP Highland councillor, have given him a matchless insight into world shipping trends and into the economic and social conditions of the Highlands and Islands. He is now an author and proprietor of a cutting-edge consultancy.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pedersen, Roy

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2

THE WAY IT WAS

Cowal (Gaelic Còmhghal) is a rugged peninsula extending some 40 miles from north to south and connected in the north to the rest of mainland Scotland by a mountainous isthmus dominated by the Arrochar Alps. This isthmus is traversed by a hill pass known as the Rest and be Thankful, through which runs the A83. The A815 links with the A83 to provide the only and very circuitous access road from lowland Scotland to Cowal and its principal settlement of Dunoon.

To the east, Cowal is separated from the lowlands by fjord-like Loch Long and the widening Firth of Clyde. To the west, Loch Fyne, Scotland’s longest sea loch, divides Cowal from Mid Argyll, Knapdale and Kintyre, beyond which lie Islay, Jura and the other isles of the Hebrides.

The eastern coast is riven by two sea lochs – Loch Goil and the Holy Loch. Two further sea lochs – Striven and Riddon – penetrate Cowal’s southern fringe whose two extremities Toward Point and Ardlamont Point almost embrace the Isle of Bute. This populous island is separated from Cowal by the narrow and winding Kyles of Bute.

From time immemorial, Cowal was inhabited by a Gaelic-speaking race and by the late sixth century the territory came under the sway of Cenèl Comgall, the kindred of Comgall, from whom Cowal derives its name. Comgall was a grandson of Fergus Mòr mac Errc, the first recorded ruler of the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada and ancestor of the present Queen Elizabeth.

This is not the place to relate the history of Cowal, other than to mention that, like many another Highland province, periodic clan strife was endemic. Clan Lamont dominated Cowal for many centuries, the early chiefs being described as Mac Laomain Mòr Chomhghail uile – The Great MacLamont of all Cowal. Then in 1646, in the Dunoon Massacre, over two hundred Lamont clansmen, women and children were murdered by Campbells, and over time the clan was dispersed. According to tradition, my own family on the distaff side claim descent from dispossessed Lamonts.

In subsequent centuries, as more settled conditions prevailed, one trade above all others came to dominate the economy of the Highlands and Islands. That trade was the rearing of cattle and the droving of them to the southern markets. For nearly 200 years, from the second half of the seventeenth century, throughout the eighteenth century, and into the early nineteenth century, droving flourished. Droves were assembled in the spring for eventual sale at the big trysts. As they progressed slowly across country the cattle had to be managed skilfully to avoid wearing them down. It was a hard and, at times, dangerous life, but the hardy Gaels, with their warlike, raiding past, were perfectly suited to it.

Where a drove had to cross a short stretch of water, cattle would be swum across a sea loch or sound as from Bute to Cowal at Colintraive (Gaelic Caol an t-Snaimh – the swimming narrows). In the case of islands that were further offshore or wider firths, it was necessary to ferry the beasts. To minimise shipping costs in such cases, the shortest feasible crossing was selected.

The contemporary economist Adam Smith explained:

‘Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which transportation is more expensive by sea than by land. By land they carry themselves to market. By sea, not only the cattle, but their food and their water too must be carried at no small expense and inconveniency.’

Such a ferry existed to cross the Firth of Clyde, where it was narrowest, between Cowal’s main settlement of Dunoon and the Cloch on the Renfrewshire shore.

With the peace that followed the end of the Napoleonic wars, the world was set for unprecedented change. Henry Bell’s pioneer steamboat Comet of 1812 was soon joined on the firth, and in more distant waters, by other and more efficient steam-driven vessels. As this newfangled mode of conveyance developed, it became more economic to ship livestock (and people, goods and mails) all the way from island or coastal communities to mainland urban centres or railheads by steamship. The long cattle droves and drover ferries fell out of use.

Then with the dawn of the twentieth century, the steamship itself and even the railway faced a new challenge. From its sputtering and smoky beginnings, the emergence of the motor vehicle had, by mid-century, become a near-universal means of moving people and goods.

Of course, island and peninsular communities were still connected by steamer services, but these were gradually concentrated on fewer piers with more convenient, economic and less polluting motor bus and lorry services connecting with the rural hinterlands. Where ferries had existed for many years to enable travellers to cross narrow sheltered waterways, some of these were adapted to carry one or more motor cars, typically employing a turntable equipped with hinged ramps to enable cars to drive on and off. Transporting a vehicle over more exposed seaways, however, necessitated lifting it by derrick on to a steamer’s deck and offloading by the same means at the destination. In some cases, when the tide was suitable, cars were driven on and off along precarious planks.

In some parts of the world, even when the motor vehicle was in its infancy, enterprising operators developed vessels that motor vehicles could drive on and off at any state of the tide, using specially adapted terminals equipped with a hinged bridge (link-span), to facilitate the ship to shore connection. Although an early pioneer, Scotland was slow to adopt this technology.

In the inter-war years, seagoing drive-on drive-off shuttle vehicle ferries were instituted on the Firths of Tay and Forth. In the west, however, the more cumbersome practices prevailed of derrick loading or driving vehicles aboard precariously along planks, despite ambitions in some quarters for something better. In 1930, in an attempt to explore a more modern approach, Dr Robert Forgan MP asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps had been taken by the government to ascertain the practicability of a motor ferry between Dunoon and Cloch.

There was little comfort from the Minister, Herbert Morrison, who responded dismissively: ‘I have been asked to reply. The proposal to establish a motor ferry between Dunoon and Cloch has not been brought to my notice by the local authorities concerned. I have ascertained, however, that the project has been discussed by the Dunoon Town Council and the railway company, but that it is not likely to mature.’

Further pressure on this matter, however, during the thirties must have awakened fears within the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company (LMS) that, if they didn’t do something, someone else might introduce a vehicle-carrying service, thereby undermining the railway company’s virtual monopoly on the firth. In fact by 1937 some 1,000 cars were carried between Gourock and Dunoon, using planks as tide permitted. By 1939 the LMS Steam Vessels Committee considered design options for a car-carrying vessel to be employed between their railhead at Gourock and Cowal, but the war intervened and these plans were shelved.

Further south, because of the huge increase in demand for conveying cars between Scotland and Ireland on the Stranraer–Larne route, the LMS commissioned Princess Victoria in 1939, the first British purpose-built seagoing passenger and car ferry. She could take 80 cars, loaded over the stern via link-spans. Sadly the Princess Victoria was lost early in the Second World War, striking a mine and sinking with the loss of 34 of her crew. After the cessation of hostilities, a replacement Princess Victoria was introduced along similar lines.

Another scheme that had been curtailed by the war was a proposal for a vehicular ferry across the narrowest part of Kyles of Bute between Rhubodach (Bute) and Colintraive (Cowal). Again the LMS sensed a threat and opposed the scheme, but in 1950 the private Bute Ferry Company Ltd inaugurated such a service, initially with a series of former wartime bow-loading landing craft. Cars were loaded and discharged straight onto the sloping beach at either end of the crossing.

It wasn’t until 1954 that the nationalised British Transport Commission introduced three side-loading vehicle ferries, Arran, Cowal and Bute, fitted with electric lifts or hoists to enable motor vehicles to be driven on and off at any state of the tide. This was an advance on former arrangements for handling vehicles, albeit a slow and cumbersome procedure. The rationale was that side loading with hoists permitted the use of existing piers, thereby obviating the need for construction of link-spans and aligning structures. The main duties of the vehicle ferries were shuttle services between Gourock and Dunoon, Wemyss Bay and Rothesay (Bute), and to Arran and Millport on the Great Cumbrae. In the same year as these new ships were brought into service, all the Firth of Clyde railway vessels were brought under the banner of the state owned CSP, originally a subsidiary of the Caledonian Railway. A fourth and larger hoist-loading vehicle ferry, Glen Sannox, was added to the Clyde fleet in 1957 for the Arran run.

In 1964 the hoist equipped side-loading principle was extended to the West Highlands and Islands when three new vehicle ferries, Columba, Clansman and Hebrides, were introduced by David MacBrayne respectively between Oban, Craignure (Mull) and Lochaline (Morvern); Mallaig and Armadale (Skye); and a triangular route serving Uig (Skye), Tarbert (Harris) and Lochmaddy (North Uist).

Thus by the mid-sixties, as far as carriage of vehicles by sea is concerned, the west of Scotland was...