The Skye boat swansong

time across the narrows of Kyleakin; Monday sees the opening of the Skye

bridge, and Monday sees the end of what, for most of us in this country,

was the definitive Skye ferry.

Actually, the crossing from Kyle of Lochalsh to Kyleakin is neither

the oldest nor even the shortest passage from Skye to the mainland. That

route is over the narrows of Kylerhea, some miles to the south, where

the channel is only 300 yards at its narrowest. Here, almost until

living memory, drovers would ''swim'' roped herds of cattle to the

mainland, bound for the south and the great market at Falkirk. Cows and

men slipped to Skye by this passage when Kyle of Lochalsh did not exist

as a community.

But the Kyleakin crossing, if broader, has become the most convenient

door to Eilean a Cheo. Since early this century, Kyle had a railway link

to Inverness. That's brought hotels, shops, churches, and every

convenience for the tourist. Then, Kyle (and Kyleakin) are easy to reach

from landward; the roads are good and follow the level shore. To reach

the Kylerhea ferry you must climb crazy single-track roads over

precipitous mountains. The views are majestic but it's not for nervous

drivers or coach tours.

True, Kyleakin is an exposed stretch of water, open to the Inner Sound

and all the forces of the North Minch and the Atlantic beyond. It can

whip up a fair storm, now and again, and even in the past decade

Caledonian MacBrayne have had some hair-raising escapades with their

ferries. But the Kylerhea passage has a notorious tide-race -- as high

as eight knots on the ebb -- and is much more demanding on seamanship.

In the old days, of course, no-one in the West Highlands gave a hoot

for short and convenient crossings. Roads varied from poor to

non-existent; land travel was always arduous, and often unpleasant.

Folk, even Victorian tourists -- travelled to the West Highlands by sea.

And, into our own century, most serious travellers came to Skye by

long-haul steamer -- from Mallaig, from Oban, from Stornoway. The

crossings at Kyleakin and Kylerhea were of little account. Locals in the

immediate vicinity used them, of course, and they were handy for the

freight of livestock. And that was that.

What made the short sea crossing was the coming of the motor car. And

metalled roads. And the rise, after the First World War, of motoring as

a hobby for the well-off, and increasingly as an essential skill for

professional gentry. The Great War was not long over when car-ferries

began to ply at Kyleakin and Kylerhea, and, by the time the Germans came

at us again, Kyleakin had emerged as the handiest and best-known route.

The railway companies promoted it -- the LMS owned the vessels and, in

the Second World War, took over operation of the service, through its

marine subsidiary, the Caledonian Steam Packet Company, Ltd, of Gourock.

The ferry passed by a bonnie ruin, the crumbling Castle Moil, above

Kyleakin. Kyleakin itself was a bonnie village. And, in publicity to die

for, the Duke and Duchess of York -- she still lives, of course, as our

everlasting Queen Mother -- made an official trip to Skye, by the

Kyleakin ferry, in the thirties.

The Kyleakin route has stood the rest of time. The Kylerhea ferry has

repeatedly suspended operation and, since the early seventies, has not

run in winter at all.

The first ferries at Kyleakin, of course, were ordinary boats -- big

rowing cobles, sailing dinghies, latterly motor-launches like the Skye

and the first Coruisk. The odd car -- and cars were unusual things in

Skye 75 years ago -- had to board amidships by a pair of planks and be

tied in precarious balance for the crossing -- or be towed over on a

pontoon

Car ferries are not easy things to design. A ramp is one thing, but

where do you put it on a classic hull shape? You need the stern for the

engine, rudder and so on, and the bow is pointed. The landing-craft

design is the first that comes to mind, with a single ramp on a square,

planed bow. But landing craft are not cheap to build and, in those days,

were hard to make sufficiently seaworthy for West Highland winters. And

then there was this darned awkward thing called the tide.

The identity of the guy who solved the problem, and came up with an

ingenious ferry design ideal for West Highland conditions -- moreover,

it was cheap, and traditional beamy boats could be readily adapted -- is

lost in history.

We know he was based at the Ballachulish Hotel and in charge of the

Ballachulish ferry. And, in the early twenties, he came up with a boat

called the Glencoe. The Glencoe's car deck was a turntable. It stood on

a swivel amidships; the Glencoe could berth alongside a stone slipway,

the crew could turn her car-deck to point ashore, and the single jalopy

could drive triumphantly off. At any state of tide. And the driver

didn't even have to reverse.

The turntable ferry is unique to the Scottish Highlands and, in its

day, was something of an institution, a sight as Teuchter as mist on the

hills, shaggy cattle by the burn, and those jars of whisky-flavoured

marmalade with the silly frilly caps. Turntable ferries, in their day,

operated at Luing, Bonawe, Corran, Ballachulish, Dornie, Kylerhea,

Kyleakin, Strome, Scalpay, Kylescu, and even Kessock, by Inverness. They

were brilliant. There's only one left now, the Glenachulish at Kylerhea,

and it should be listed at once as a national monument.

The first turntable ferry at Kyleakin was called, for want of

something more imaginative, Kyleakin. She was built in 1928 of timber

and could carry a singe car. She was later lengthened and re-engined to

carry two cars. She was joined, about 1932, by a similar vessel called

the Moil.

They ran in conjunction with motor launches, like the Coruisk. Traffic

grew steadily. The slipways at Kyle and Kyleakin were improved. Early in

the Second World War the ferries acquired a new sister. The Cuillin was

also limited to two cars, but she was built of steel and was a sturdy

sea boat. All three were purposeful car-carriers. They didn't even have

shelter for the crew, never mind the passengers. And they were all

single-screw ships.

And so it grew, and grew.

1951 brought another ferry, the Lochalsh. She was little more than a

repeat of the Cuillin; but Easter of the following year brought the

Portree, built by Denny's of Dumbarton. She was larger and much more

sophisticated. The Portree had twin screws, powerful Perkins diesels,

and could carry four cars on her big turntable. And, at her stern, she

boasted a commodious passenger saloon topped by two enclosed steering

positions for the chargehand.

She was a great wee boat. The new de luxe design was most successful,

and in 1954 the Portree was joined by the very similar Broadford. The

Lochalsh was retained as a spare and the older boats, redundant, were

sold.

It was the age of affluence. Motoring boomed and tourism boomed. More

and more folk. every summer, drove to Skye. By 1957 the CSP needed more

capacity. It came in the form of a six-car turntable ferry, a new

Lochalsh. Built by Ailsa of Troon. The old Lochalsh was sold. In 1960,

as traffic continued to expand, Ailsa repeated the work, with a new

six-car ferry called Kyleakin.

It was in the sixties that the CSP began to lose control of things.

They now had four ships on the Kyleakin station; at peak periods they

were increasingly forced to operate all at once. The jetties had to be

improved, on either side of the channel, to allow simultaneous loading.

By 1963 they had three berths at Kyle and two at Kyleakin. Still the

tourists came. For the first time the disadvantages of turntable ferries

became apparent. They were cumbersome to operate, wearing on their crew,

unable to carry very long or heavy loads.

The CSP was now a marginalised subsidiary of British Rail,

underfunded, unambitious. The Kyleakin ferry was, by 1964, a veritable

goldmine. But it was increasingly marked by lengthy delays, mile-long

queues, frustration and bad publicity. Kyleakin had replaced the old

Portree mailroute as the front door to Skye. Worse, it was now -- for

many -- the front door to Lewis, Harris and Uist. MacBraynes, in 1964,

had started a car ferry service from Uig in Skye to Tarbert and

Lochmaddy. The new service was a big hit and brought many more vehicles

through Skye.

The old Portree and Broadford were withdrawn and replaced by namesakes

of optimistic design. The new Portree, built by Lamont of Port Glasgow

in 1965, had no turntable and no passenger shelter. Her little

wheelhouse was in the bow and she loaded nine cars by angled side ramps.

The Broadford of 1967 was like her, save for a wheelhouse in the stern.

Finally -- desperately -- the CSP built a new Coruisk, like the

Broadford but complete with passenger shelter. They now had five little

ferries on the Kyleakin station; the delays grew worse by the summer,

and the new side-loading design wasn't a great improvement.

The Skye ferry needed money and vision. It got it that same year,

1969, when the new Scottish Transport Group took over British Rail's

Clyde marine arm. The STG also took over David MacBrayne Ltd. It wasn't

until 1973 that they were officially merged, but Caledonian MacBrayne

was born, as a state-owned Highland ferry fleet, at the end of the

sixties. And it was born with big money and big ideas.

The new management saw the solution at once. The five wee ferries

should be replaced with two big ones. And these should be end-loading

craft -- double-ended, in fact -- with neither bow nor stern, but a ramp

at both ends, and a high steering position looking both ways, and

Voith-Schneider propulsion units for great manoeuvrability. (These,

invented in Germany before the war, aren't like propellers at all. They

look like big food-mixers pointing from the bottom of the ship and have

vertical vanes, the pitch of which can be turned for thrust in any

direction you choose. A boat with Voith-Schneider units can go forwards,

backwards, sideways, or spin like a sixpence.

So the CSP happily invited tenders for two big 28-car double-ended

ferries with Voith-Schneider propulsion. An order was placed with a yard

in Monmouthshire, South Wales -- the first the company had ever

allocated furth of Scotland or even furth of the Clyde. And Inverness

County Council began building big, steep new slipways at Kyle and

Kyleakin.

The new craft were due for the start of the 1970 season. Things went

badly wrong. The ferries were not delivered on time. Parts shortages,

teething troubles, and strikes caused delay upon delay. The new

Kyleakin, in the end, was towed to the Clyde by a hysterical CSP to be

finished off properly. She didn't start service to Skye until September.

(Building the new slipways, by the way, had left only one side-loading

berth operational either side of the passage: the five small boats had

to queue to unload, and the delays that summer were appalling.)

The new Lochalsh wasn't sailing until August 1971. But, after assorted

kinks were ironed out -- hydraulic faults, ramp faults, engine faults --

and the crew were trained in the new modern operation, the service was

transformed. Queueing vanished. Mighty pantechnicons and long,low

coaches could now make the crossing. Like two huge and elegant swans

gliding over the channel, the new ferries made the service their own.

They were relieved in winter by various little bow-loaders and, from

1986, by the 18-car double-ended Isle of Cumbrae.

There might not be a Skye bridge at all if CalMac had kept a note of

rising traffic and ordered a third vessel, of similar size, for the Kyle

service about 1980. But they didn't. And, in 1986, a big new ferry on

the Uig-Tarbert-Lochmaddy run encouraged more Lewis traffic to go by

Skye. By the late eighties delays and bother had returned. The old boats

were now too small. They were also buckling with age. Engine breakdown

became frequent; sometimes the tide would strand one on a slip, and

block the route for hours.

The threat of a Skye bridge seems, absurdly, to have deterred CalMac

from ordering new tonnage. But then perhaps the Scottish Office, eager

for a freemarket bridge experiment, was not unduly upset at the

deteriorating ferry service. A spectacular mishap some eight years ago

-- when the Kyleakin, heading across in a strong wind, broke down and

was blown as far as Loch Duich, quite out of control, tossed by foaming

billows, laden with cars and terrified passengers -- could have been a

major tragedy.

It was a big public relations disaster for CalMac. It emerged, among

other things, that the ferries weren't even equipped with ship-to-shore

radio. So the campaign for a Skye bridge became a clamour.

Only when the bridge deal was finally approved and announced did the

Scottish Office suffer CalMac to order new Skye ferries. The 40-car Loch

Fyne and Loch Dunvegan, Clyde-built, took over at Kyle in 1991. The old

ferries were sold for further service in Ireland.

The Loch Dunvegan and Loch Fyne are unlikely to follow them. They have

many years of useful life left for CalMac, and the company has already

employed them on various routes. But the Scottish Office has forbidden

CalMac to compete with the new bridge. And the efforts of a last-ditch

ad hoc private company to find a suitable ferry -- even, indeed,

permission to use the terminals -- have, so far, come to nothing.

Two final memories:

In 1965, an uncle of mine, the Rev Angus Smith (he was then Free

Church minister at Snizort, Skye) made world headlines by blockading

cars disembarking from the very first Sunday ferry to Kyleakin. He was

arrested and briefly put in the cells. The CSP's insistence on

introducing a Sunday service against the manifest wishes of the

islanders -- three-quarters of them signed a petition against the

innovation -- showed contempt for local feeling which would not, I

think, be essayed today. But Smith and his followers, having won their

moment of glory, failed to stop Sabbath sailings. They have continued

and expanded.

From about the 1930s, more and more people -- many of impeccable

character, sobriety and scepticism -- were shaken by the sight of a

ghost car, near the Kyle ferry, heading for it or away from it, both on

Skye and Wester Ross. This car was black, extremely fast, and you saw it

hurtling towards you on the single-track road. So you pulled in, and

waited, and waited in the passing place -- and saw it no more. It would

vanish into thin air. Or it would disappear into an intervening bend and

never emerge.

One man had a real fright; the car actually passed him, and he glanced

to see if he knew the driver -- and there was no-one, no-one at all, in

the car.

Through the forties, through the fifties, sightings of the Wee Black

Car continued. It became an institution. I've met some who, as children,

used to look out for it.

And then, in about 1960, a Free Presbyterian minister boarded the

Kyleakin ferry. He was travelling with two women and a child. The car

was not his own, but the lady owner had asked the minister to do the

difficult job of boarding the turntable craft. He must have made a

mistake. The car boarded, did not stop, ran the full length of the deck,

knocked the opposite ramp down, and plunged into the sea.

The water wasn't deep. The car roof actually broke the surface.

Aghast, onlookers could see those inside. A crewman leapt from the

ferry, balanced on the car roof, and battered on the windows with an

axe. They refused to break. Somehow the minister, a corpulent man,

struggled free. The women and the child drowned.

Yes, it was a black car. And yes, the other car, the mystery one, was

never seen again.