As Argyll’s Western Ferries prepares today to welcome its two new ferries to the fleet for its Dunoon-Gourock vehicle and passenger service, it is looking at running the youngest fleet on the Clyde, with all four vessels purpose-built for this route, a history of continuous investment for the future and steady growth with carryings now standing at 1.3 million passengers and 700,000 cars a year.
All this started just over forty years ago, on 3rd June 1973, when the company started with two second hand bow-and-stern loading RoRo vessels bought from Sweden. At this time CalMac, running the longer town centres route between Gourock and Dunoon, were hoisting vehicles, one by one, on and off their boats; and running the last ferry of the day not long after the end of working hours.
The competition from the western invader was clearly hot, because only a year later in August 1974, it added a third boat, The first two had been renamed Sound of Shuna and Sound of Scarba, launching the brand identity of the fleet, always a Sound and always a sound with an ‘S’. Number 3 – the Lymington, coming up to Dunoon from Sealink’s service on the Isle of Wight, became Sound of Sanda.
Twelve years later, in June 1986, another former Sealink ferry became the first Sound of Seil and later that year a Dutch river boat became the Sound of Sleat and the fifth in the fleet.
A decade after that two more boats from Holland, Sound of Scalpay and Sound of Sanda [2] came onstream and will be retired when the two ploughing their way north to arrive in Dunoon later today, 4th October, go into service.
The new kids Soay and Seil [2] will join the first two boats to be custom built for Western – in 2001 and 2003, at Fergusons’ yard on the Clyde, symbolically a born again Shuna [2] and Scarba [2].
Soay and Seil will do a few days of training and familiarisation and then, after they get their MCA Certificate, will go into service with the last two new boats which carry the names of the first ever Western ferries.
Both the training and the certification should be fairly straightforward because the two new boats have been designed on Shuna and Scarba to the latest regulations, and so are not really unfamiliar. Western’s staff have also been involved with them throughout the working up process, on board for the sea trials in the Mersey and doing the delivery run north for today.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency [MCA] which issues the necessary certificates, has also been involved throughout, at it Glasgow and Liverpool offices.
The major steps in Western Ferries development to this confident forty-years-on commercial maturity came, first, in 1998 when the company moved its HQ from Charing Cross in Glasgow to Dunoon – a final embedded localisation that has seen local employment a key feature of its overall contribution to the Dunoon and the wider Cowal economy and, judging by the health of its carrying performance, strong community ‘buy-in’ to the services it provides.
The second major confirmation that Western was here to stay came with the commissioning of its first two custom-built boats at the start of this millennium, with Shuna [2[ and Scarba [2] about to start showing the ropes to their new partners on the 20 minute service that is by far the most reliable on the Clyde.
Then in 2008 came the two new linkspans – lifting the operations at both Hunters Quay at Dunoon and McInroy’s Point at Gourock to a new level.
And today, 4th October 2013, forty years on, come the gladiators, Soay and Seil, which Andy Mahon has photographed for us at Cammell Laird’s, at their launch, during their fitting out, at their sea trials and yesterday in their ‘leaving of Liverpool’.
Thanks to Andy’s willingness to keep on climbing the 101 steps to the top of the clock tower at the former Birkenhead Priory, we know these boats already; and with their 200 passenger and 40 car capacities, a little more more than Shuna and Scarba, and the number and frequency of the four-boat Western sailing schedule, the Clyde is going to see a lot of them, relentlesly blazing their red trails through the water.
Western Ferries’ MD Gordon Ross, shuns the limelight – by temperament and by philosophy – but he must feel a proud man today, seeing the company’s original business plan still the foundation for the service, the ethos and the success that identify it after forty years.
Its longevity is demonstrable. It is a profitable private sector company. It has constantly reinvested, always looking to the future.
It employs and values local people – the wives of two senior members of staff named Soay and Seil in their formal launching at Cammell Laird. Mrs Glenis Coles and Mrs Maria Chittick who did the honours on 15th August, are the wives of long standing Company employees, Captain Robin Coles and Neil Chittick. Both of these men have a connection with Western Ferries dating back to the mid- seventies – almost as long as the life of the company.
Western has also kept its prices down and has never charged, as it is entitled to do, holders of SPT travel cards.
Today, Western is running a three-four boat service on the route, on 20 minute frequencies, with around 86 sailings a day, starting at 6.10 and ending at 24.00.
At a rough estimate, in its forty years it has carried 40 million passengers and 24 million cars.
This has been a team effort. Everyone in the company has earned the right to allow themselves to be proud today – and who won’t rise to the sight of the two new red hulls shrugging the Clyde off their shoulders as they arrive at Dunoon?