SEVENTY years ago, Alistair Thores, then a boy of 10, ventured with his parents down the gangway onto a new paddle steamer, Waverley.

It was June 16, 1947, just two years after the end of the war in Europe. The Clyde-built vessel, the latest addition to the fleet of the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) company, was about to make its maiden voyage, to Loch Long.

Yesterday, Mr Thores, now 80, once again boarded the steamer as it marked the 70th anniversary of that trip.

Cheered by a crowd of people lining the quayside behind Glasgow Science Centre, and watched by assembled media personnel, the venerable Waverley once again set sail for Loch Long.

Chris Stephens, the SNP MP for Glasgow South West, cut one of four special birthday cakes that were then served to passengers. A lone piper played as Waverley cast off.

When it was launched that long-ago summer, the Waverley was capable of reaching over 17 knots and of accommodating 1,360 passengers.

It replaced an earlier vessel of the same name that had been sunk during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940.

The new captain, one J.E. Cameron, had not only been in command of a flotilla of minesweepers in the Mediterranean during the war, but had also been the navigating officer on board the old Waverley at Dunkirk.

Speaking before last Friday's trip, Mr Thores, who lives in Fife, laughed as he told The Herald: “I have the distinction of being one of the very few people left who was on that maiden voyage”.

He said he had been taken on board by his father, Alexander, a marine engineer, who had worked in the Fairfield’s yard on the Clyde during the First World War, and who later settled in Aberdeenshire.

“These were austerity years, the post-war years”, Mr Thores recalled of 1947. “We had been through a terrible war, and afterwards, there was this grim austerity. Nobody had anything, everybody was freezing. Waverley was a wonderful opportunity to get away from all of that, and of course it brought back happy memories for my dad, who had gone up and down the Clyde, even before the First World War.

“As a marine engineer, his engineering had been concerned with the triple expansion steam engine. He thought diesel engines were the invention of the Devil; he didn’t want anything to do with them. He was absolutely taken with the triple expansion engine on Waverley, and he dragged me and my mother – well, he didn’t have to drag me, I was more than happy to go – onto Waverley and we went down the water for its maiden trip to the Three Lochs".

On board yesterday he chatted with Mr James Stevenson, who had also been on the maiden voyage,

At the end of her working life in 1974, the old ship was bought for just £1 by the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society. Her first sailing in preservation took place in May 1975 – a status that continues to this day. Long restored to its 1940 splendour, she has carried an estimated five million-plus passengers from more than 80 ports across the UK, and as the world’s last sea-going paddle steamer has become a Scottish icon.

The year of celebration includes sailings at 1947 prices.

Kathleen O’Neill, chief executive of Waverley Excursions, said: "For over 40 years now, Waverley has been the world’s last sea-going Paddle steamer. Her endurance is a combination of things.

"It is a one-of-a-kind experience encompassing history, heritage, culture, magnificent scenery, engineering excellence and fun and adventure – something for everyone.

"There are people who remember her when she was one of many paddle steamers plying her trade on the Clyde, and there are those who have passed the memory of these journeys down from generation to generation.

"Waverley has harnessed these memories all around the coast of the UK where there were fleets of Paddle Steamers and today provides local communities a chance to step on board an interactive museum."

* waverleyexcursions.co.uk