Scotland and the Sea. Nick Robins
first, by the ending of the British Empire and empowerment of other nations, and second, and more recently, by the ‘flag of convenience’. Today it is convenient to fly the flag of, for example, Panama or the Turks and Caicos Islands, to gain the advantage of tax concessions and laxer laws regarding crewing and general safety. With the exception of the ferries owned by Caledonian MacBrayne, which continue to be consistently registered at Glasgow, the names of Glasgow or Leith on the stern of a ship are now replaced by Nassau, Hamilton, and even Gibraltar. But step aboard and look at the crew list, which shows Poles, Bulgarians, and any nationality you like, but who is in charge of them? As often as not, it is a Scot.
The port of Aberdeen is an interesting and colourful harbour, with its blue-hulled NorthLink ferries to Orkney and Shetland and its numerous brightly-painted oil industry support craft. And who owns and operates most of the oily boats? They are very much multinational these days, but step aboard again, and the Scots brogue can be heard somewhere on the bridge or in the engineering department. Indeed, the problem today is persuading youngsters in Britain that there is still a good career to be had at sea, when British officers are in demand. Demand also prefers British hands on the bridges of anchor-handling ships and tugs, as the skills of these men are recognised the world over.
Of anecdotes there are many, and an entire book could be devoted to the stories passed down by each succeeding generation. One that was told on many a Saturday night with a broad Glaswegian accent by the landlord of a pub in Bevois Valley in Southampton related to his tenure as an engineer aboard BP tankers in the 1950s. On one voyage the entire engineering department came from the Glasgow area, and the boys were allowed ashore at Alexandria for just one night. At the end of the evening they found themselves slightly the worse for wear in a dockside warehouse. It appeared that a case of French perfume had ‘accidentally’ been unloaded from a ship bound from Marseilles to Australia. The collective wages of the engineering department were handed over and the consignment was heaved aboard the tanker, where it was hidden around the ship at leisure before arrival at Stanlow ten days later.
When the Mersey pilot came aboard off Anglesey, talk on the bridge soon turned to HM Customs who were reported to be searching all tanker arrivals from the Middle East. But by the time the ship had entered the Manchester Ship Canal and been brought safely alongside at Stanlow, the engineering department was beyond caring, glazed-eyed and slurred of speech. ‘Well, we were no’ going to waste the stuff, we paid good money for it, so we drank the lot double quick. But I ken we did smell a bit like a French brothel.’
It is interesting to reflect how the Merchant Navy would have evolved without the Scottish maritime influence. It is, however, noteworthy that throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century Scotland took instruction and received policy from England, albeit often from London-based Scots; the agenda, of course, was set by Westminster. It is noteworthy also that the British Board of Trade aspired to the excellence of an English shipowner rather than accepting the label ‘Clyde-built’. This, of course, was Liverpool-based Alfred Holt with its Blue Funnel and Glen Line brands, whose standards were indeed second to none.
Crossing to Orkney – from the Saturday Magazine Supplement for June 1835 from Sketches of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland by ‘PSQR’
The alternative of crossing the Frith in an open boat was fortunately prevented by the arrival of a small merchant vessel, the master of which agreed to convey me … Between three and four the skipper summoned me, excusing his not having done so before, as a gale had been blowing … The weather had moderated, but it was still blowing hard. The hue of the sky was inky black, and threatened squalls, and the Frith was boiling and foaming beneath the dark horizon. … at half past four we bounded forth with the rapidity of an arrow, for the vessel was light, unballasted, and an excellent sailer. The crew consisted of the skipper, formerly in the King’s service, who had fought at Camperdown, another man, and a wretched half-clad urchin … thirteen years of age, who was making his first voyage, having spent just three weeks at sea. Heavy waves rolled before a strong western breeze into the bays of Thurso and Dunnet, which are separated by a narrow ridge, scaling and dashing against the bold headland of Dunnet, which well merits the significant appellation of Windy Knap, bestowed on it by seamen; we pass it at daybreak, and bent our course across the Frith to Cantick Head. The shorter and more direct passage to Stromness is by the Head and Sound of Hoy, and was now rendered impracticable to our vessel by the sea setting upon the island.
The principal headlands of Hoy, in Orkney, the farthest of which is the Head, rose in fine perspective on our left. The waves were majestically high and seemed to form a wall, traversing the Frith from coast to coast. Excepting a fishing smack, off Dunnet Head, making for the harbour, and a large three-masted merchant vessel, beating up the Frith to windward, which passed close to us as she lay on one of her tacks, we saw no sail …
The ebb tide, rapid as a torrent, hurried us along; and as the water was comparatively smooth, we sailed as along a broad majestic river. But violent squalls now burst upon our unballasted vessel through the gullies and inlets of the coast of Hoy, the severest of which befell us as passing under the highest mountain of the island, called the Wart, or Ward Hill of Hoy, we entered the sound which separates that island from Pomona, a channel several miles in length, noted for the turbulence of its waters, which even in calm weather is agitated at its western entrance, as if by a storm, by the mere conflict of the currents. The skipper, fearing lest the vessel should be laid on its beam ends, ran from the helm which he left in my charge, and lowered the fore-sail, while his help-mate was employed in taking in a second reef in the main-sail. Having thus provided for our safety, he lost no time in ordering the unfortunate boy to come on deck and hold to a rope, not that he could be in any degree useful, but that he might be accustomed to dangers to which his life was doomed. The little half-naked wretch obeyed; and after standing, shivering, and drenched with spray for a few minutes, slunk back into his hole. Rapidly crossing the Sound, between the small island of Gremsa and the mainland of Orkney, we approached every moment its formidable lee-shore, lying level beneath a heavy surf. The skipper, perceiving that our present sail was perfectly incapable of making head against the gale, and that wreck was inevitable unless every rag was spread, ordered the fore-sail to be unfurled, the main-sail to be loosed, and put about, having no alternative to face the tremendous swell of the Sound, and to beat up against it, making several tacks, whilst the vessel lay almost on her beam ends, and the waves rolled over her. At length, we were cheered with the sight of the masts of the vessels lying at Stromness Roads, and soon reached the harbour, which was filled by merchantmen detained by adverse winds, very thankful to Providence for our preservation, after a passage of about 35 miles. ‘A very coarse day, Sir,’ was the first greeting that reached my ear, as I stepped on shore, drenched with rain and spray; an expression to which it was impossible to refuse a hearty assent.
The Start of the Steamship Era
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND TO Britain’s global dominance of the High Seas from 1815 onwards is summarised by Archibald Hurd in his book The Triumph of the Tramp Ship:
The close of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 found Great Britain in an unchallengeable position at sea. Her maritime progress had been overshadowed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the great fleets of the Hanseatic merchants and those of the Italian republics; it had been outstripped in the sixteenth century by the immense maritime expansion of Portugal and Spain; it had secured, in the first place, independence and then definite ascendancy in the last decade or two before the opening of the seventeenth century; and this ascendancy it preserved first against the Dutch, and then against the French during the 150 years before Waterloo. There was no other navy in the world even remotely comparable with that of Great Britain, while in respect of her mercantile marine, this country emerged from the depredations of the French and American privateersmen stronger than ever in her history.
Hurd also underlines the important role of the American merchant fleet on the Atlantic until after the American Civil War. He describes the Americans as the only serious competitor to the British during the first half of the nineteenth century. From