Catching up with ferries

Visitors to the Hebrides, of course, quite often pause on the island pier to take a snapshot of the vessel that has delivered them. They may have little skill in photography, and the weather conditions may be far from ideal, but they will gain a picture of sorts, a pleasant enough souvenir of their vacation on our western seaboard.

Such a haphazard approach would not do Jim Smith. He might travel many miles on a sudden tip-off to catch, say, the Pioneer at Ardgour, or the Raasay at Fladda; but if the day was overcast, too dark and dreich, he would simply abandon the expedition and return home.

Nor would he be content with standing on the pier, or at a convenient loop of main road. Jim took the chase seriously, and over the years he came to know every knoll, summit, and viewpoint bordering the harbours and lochs of the West Highlands.

The point of Jim's game was simple. Every ship of the fleet had to be photographed, and in every condition in which she sailed. In the days of purpose-built, drive-through ferries, the ships of CalMac alter little after launch. But, in the sixties and seventies, many boats were radically - and repeatedly - altered to adjust to new conditions.

The true steamer-dreamer is a fanatic. He will not be content with one photograph, however perfect the view, however glorious the day. He wants an image of the desired vessel in her every incarnation, and if he does not......

Take the great Arran ferry of 1957, the Glen Sannox. You wanted her as built, with hoist and crane and black hull and plain yellow and black funnel and extra white line around the hull? You wanted her in her 1965 colours, with red lion on the funnel and hull of Monastral blue? You wanted her in 1970 trim, with black hull restored and lion retained? You wanted her as altered in 1972, with additional stern ramp? Or...... and so on; the Glen Sannox changed appearance at least six times.

Of course you wanted them, every one of them, and you lusted after the photographs, and like any sensible person you wrote to Jim Smith for them. I did, often, when I was in school. I cannot remember where I saw his address, but when I was 14 I did, and I wrote to him.

I wrote to him for years. And back would come fat little envelopes of photographs, each captioned and dated in his round, characterful hand, and always a letter on thick ribbed paper, handwritten, grumpily funny.He spent years perfecting the role of dreich curmudgeon; I think he rather enjoyed it.

When I drooled for a shot of the Maid of Cumbrae (1953) as altered in 1972 for car-ferry operations, but before the new CalMac colours, I wrote to Jim Smith. When I wanted the Arran (1953) at Mallaig, as altered to stern-loading (and, please, with the side-ramp added in 1975), I wrote to Jim Smith. When all the world was grey to me, until I had acquired the Clansman, as converted to drive-through operation, berthed at Ullapool, I wrote to Jim Smith. I did, you know, and he always answered; he never let you down.

But more. Jim Smith was secretary of the West Highland Steamer Club; he was the West Highland Steamer Club, for he produced its fat twice-yearly newsletter. This was a Herculean labour of love. Every spring and autumn it would appear, and it gave detailed news of every single ship in the Caledonian MacBrayne fleet, and how it had spent the previous six months.

Or, if a new ship had just been delivered, it was described in comprehensive detail. Or, if a well-loved ferry had finally been sold, you learned of the final dispatch to Greek pirates, and in due time - among the many fine photographs published in each issue - there would appear a view of the old favourite, in some obscure part of the Piraeus, the boat now unpronounceably named and painted silver all over. It is hard, to mere laymen, to grasp just how obsessive this publication was - how much this mattered.

James Aikman Smith had spies throughout CalMac, on every ship and at each pierhead. A call might come in the night, to say that such-and-such a boat was going to make an unprecedented visit to such-and-such a pier, and he would thunder west in his car, with inflatable dinghy in the boot and boisterous dog in the back. Jim had ample freedom for this: he never married, and a fortuitous legacy granted him early and comfortable retirement.

Still, he had his scrapes. Once a squall blew up, as Jim paddled across to some viewpoint, and he and the dinghy barely made it to shore. He was arrested three times, by misunderstanding. Police came to seize the ``terrorist'' folk had spotted on top of a Glasgow warehouse, trying for the perfect view of two steamers in dock. On Rona, north of Raasay, he photographed the ferry Raasay making a unique delivery; it was an MoD exercise, and the ``spy'' was seized hysterically.

He lived in a fine house in the Granton district of Edinburgh, where I twice visited him. Jim in the flesh proved gruff but affable. He made coffee and thrust a bag of chocolate chip cookies at me. He went through filing cabinet after filing cabinet for prints. In a display case he had dozens of tiny models - barely thumb-length - of all the MacBrayne boats of all time.

I gleefully checked the near-identical models of the 1964 car-carriers, Hebrides and Columba. But there was no catching him out. The minuscule Hebrides had, indeed, the extra radar-scanner; the roof of her superstructure was red, not green. I bowed my head in the presence of a master.

We spoke of James Aikman Smith last Wednesday, on Tarbert pier. The wee Lochmor was in, her first ever call at Tarbert, returning from Stornoway refit to serving the Small Isles. The sun poured about us and on the sparkling sea. We remembered him, and feared for the future of the club. From Dieraclete flashed a ghostly lens.