JOHN MACLEOD laments the loss of a great maritime tradition as he witnesses one ... trends now
As befits the benighted history of those two Ferguson’s ferries that have already seen two monarchs and four Prime Ministers, everything went wrong at the Port Glasgow launch of Hull 802 yesterday.
The weather was wet and coarse.
At almost the last moment, tug pilots begged delay as a nasty squall began.
Minutes late, newly qualified welder Beth Atkinson was beckoned to do her stuff – then pounded a big button with a mallet as if it were a Test Your Strength device.
But the trebuchet did not move.
After long, dank seconds, it flopped weakly into action. The hooch – a specially bottled Ardgowan single malt – leaked out after a dull crack.
The Glen Rosa’s slide in the Clyde yesterday is likely to be one of the last traditional ship launches in Glasgow as more vessels are built in dry dock
There was one ironic cheer. And then the newly named ship, 3,000 tonnes of steel and aluminium, would not move.
Engineers turned on some unseen hydraulic machinery and, at last, the ship slid down the ways, amidst exultation mingled with mirth, and into the Firth of Clyde.
No longer ‘Hull 802’ – a pile of rusting chunks amidst controversy, delay and disgrace – but, afloat and shortly secured, a glorious thing.
The twin-screw motor-vessel Glen Rosa, originally conceived for Outer Hebrides service, will – in due course – instead join her twin, Glen Sannox, as the boats to Arran.
Wistfully, though, this may be the last traditional ship launch we see on the Clyde. For the ‘dynamic’ launch – thousands of tons of steel and much else hurtling gaily down a slipway after a lady has smashed something interesting on her bows – is increasingly out of favour.
In the age of health and safety, fewer and fewer yards feel serene about leaving everything in the hands of gravity.
There are untold calculations – weight, gross tonnage, displacement – and not one detail is left to chance.
Ferguson’s is the last surviving Clyde yard still to pull off a dynamic launch in style – but in close consultation with experts who, increasingly, are a dying breed.
And, as yesterday was a beginning, it was also an ending – for, on the same day, Andrew Cochrane, 66, retired from Ferguson’s after 51 years in shipbuilding.
