At first it was all about waiting. Then it was about learning. We’d expected today to be about the two new boats – and it was – but it was really about family, the extended family that is Western Ferries.
The company hired the Clyde Clipper to take former staff and families of current staff out to intercept Sound of Soay and Sound of Seil who were completing their overnight passage to Dunoon from their builders, Cammell Laird, in Birkenhead.
And there, emerging from the blur of the rain and mist, they were.
Now it was about watching, waving, mobiles to the ear, talking to friends and family in the delivery crews – issuing instructions. ‘Alan. We need the horns.’ ‘I’m waving to you here.’
They were here, They were real. And they were red.
Glenis Coles was onboard with her sister Janet Gillespie. Glenis launched Sound of Seil at Cammell Laid back in August. Her husband, Captain Robin Coles, was skippering Sound of Soay today – so she had a foot in both boats, so to speak. Captain Michael Anderson was doing the honours for Sound of Seil.
Stephen Boyd, a former Boatmaster with Western who had to retire through ill health [on 11.11.2011] after 31 years [he says it must have been 40 years if you counted his overtime] couldn’t take his eyes off the new boats. He’d have given anything to have done this delivery trip. ‘I am SO proud of Western’, he said – and that was the feeling everywhere.
This was a genuine family, all of whom live and breath the boats, whether or not they work on them.
As the boats closed with Dunoon, so did the mist, making even more of a romance of it. First Soay passed the skerry then Seil.
If you look you will see that Soay is going ahead normally and Seil, below, is going forwards stern first.
Operations Manager, Derek Mackay, was aboard Seil so the guess is that the reverse heading of the ships was all about his management of the fabulous choreography for the passengers and the town that was about to mark the arrival of the new twins.
As everyone watched, spellbound and laughing, the boats treated their audiences to rhythmic gymnastics afloat, horns hooting, pirouetting in tandem down the length of the Dunoon waterfront. Their twin screws and twin rudders allow them to spin on a pinhead – and they did.
This was Seil doing a power twirl for Dunoon’s High Kirk, above.
They loved it in the Gallery. And there was more to come. No detail had been neglected in making this arrival a family welcome in every possible way.
Waiting for them ahead, between the town centre and company HQ at Hunter’s Quay, was the old Sound of Sleat, Western’s fifth acquisition, a Dutch river boat, joining the fleet in 1988. She was later sold and converted as a dive boat, based ’round the corner’ in the Holy Loch.
Then they were within pirouetting distance of HQ and, with even more urgent mobile messages pleading for more horns hooting, they did a show for Hunter’s Quay.
Aboard was a degree of dissatisfaction with the horns. ‘They’re only peeps. They’re not horns.’ ‘Tell them to take the horns off the old ones before they let them go – and swop them over.’
You had to wonder what boats reared in the Mersey, passing the Langton Lock Scrap Berth on their way out yesterday, made of their first sight of home, in all its moody splendour? This lets Andy Mahon – whose photographs shared Soay’s and Seil’s Liverpool experiences with all of us, see where they are now.
Everywhere you looked, their were red boats.
Part of the welcome was meeting up with Shuna and Scarba, the newest of the current fleet of four boats; and also purpose built for Western. They were working this morning, of course, but the schedule was arranged to allow them all to be present together briefly at Hunter’s Quay.
When the two new kids enter service, they will be doing the first and last runs of the day, so Shuna and Scarba can look forward to a little – a very little - ease in a hard working fleet.
Mrs McCartan’s granddaughter works for Western and she could not have been more delighted to have been invited to be part of a day like this.
As Clyde Clipper swung us away, back to the pier at Dunoon, the twins already seemed at home as we left.
Tom McCutcheon and his wife, Molly, were aboard. One of Western’s first maritime staff, Tom ended up with Western because of a chance meeting in Trinidad. Based then in New York, working with Booth and running to the Carribbean and south America [trips up the Amazon to Iquitos to take on cargos of Brazil Nuts were 2,600 miles and weeks long], he was in Trinidad when he bumped into Alan MacKellar, Western’s earliest employee on board today.
Alan told Tom that he was off home shortly because he’d got a job with a new company there, Western Ferries. Tom made a mental note of the possibility, chased it up himself and joined Western about six months after Alan, below right with Stephen Boyd..
Alan joined the merchant navy at 16, in the late 1950s. While he was still 16, he went round the world: through the Suez Canal, down to Australia and New Zealand, home through the Panama Canal. Package holidays didn’t exist back then. People holidayed on home territory, at the traditional seaside resorts. No one had a clue about the places he’d been to.
Stephen, who at one stage had worked on Western’s earlier Islay route, had done the delivery trip for the company’s former Sound of Islay when she was sold on – to Newfoundland – 2,800 miles and two weeks.
This family has a lot of mileage on the clock and a hunger-making wealth of experiences.
Then it was over. Back at the pier, it was disembarkation time.
Young Archie Butler and his mother, Carli – husband Graham is Purser on Soay – said goodbye with their friend Ena McGrath, whose husband Iain [Ena and Iain, Iain and Ena - try it] , is a member of the Western crew.
We weren’t quite finished though. We wanted to see what was happening back at HQ when the carnival was over – so we headed straight to Hunter’s Quay.
And there they were, wasting no time, on the linkspans together.
Crew came off both boats, with their families waiting for them at the barriers – and both sides with stories to tell. Soay’s crew, below, couldn’t wait to get the ramp down…
… and when they did, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Then there was the very special boarding party, as families got on to the new ships. Their fast retreating backs said a lot about the fun of it all. Some staff, on a day off, had come in anyway, just to see the new boats arrive.
We witnessed Seil’s most appropriate ritual christening – with a Western Ferries van driven on board, turned and driven off again. Result.
Seil then closed up her ramp and got her classy ass out of the way.
Shuna was due in to unload and take another over to McInroy’s Point at Gourock.
And she did. You can imagine what she was thinking: ‘Some of us have to work.’
Today made one thing shiningly clear. In forty years Western Ferries has not just built a business. It has built a family – and a very proud family
Today was about that family and for that family. It could not have been more refreshing to see a company pay tribute to its staff and to its community by putting on a show like this. Now these boats belong to Dunoon.
Note: Andy Mahon’s photo-journalism piece on the ‘Leaving of Liverpool’ for Soay and Seil is here.
