AS life and colour slowly returned to Britain’s streets at the end of a long war, so did the country’s docks regain some of their pre-war vibrancy.

“The return of vessels to be shed of their war-time drapings and take on the bright and variegated emblems of their peace-time lines adds colour to the weary sameness of the docks”, the Glasgow Herald observed at the end of December 1947, “and the reopening of peace-time trade routes infuses the area with the spirit of the pioneers who originated them”.

Though trading had not quite returned to normal on Clydeside, it had been steady and the prospects were promising, even if a Glasgow dockers’ strike that year had brought the port to a standstill for six weeks. Substantial money was poured into the Clydeside waterfront in 1947: more than £6 million went into the large-scale reconstruction of Queen’s Dock alone, and another £1 million was sunk into the electrification and improvement of Prince’s Dock.

In January, a 40-ton locomotive, bound for South Africa, was carefully loaded onto the ‘City of Durham’ by a floating crane at the dock.

In August, an Evening Times reporter looked on as food parcels were sent to a divided and occupied nation with which, until a couple of years earlier, Britain had been at war.

His report began: “With the announcement that our weekly meat ration is to be cut from 1s 2d to 1s displayed in all the morning newspapers, it was a case of ‘grin and bear it’ for the stevedores in Prince’s Dock, Glasgow, yesterday who were loading some 31,000 food parcels for Germany.

“The parcels are not a gift from Great Britain to Germany, although they have been stored in the Glasgow area. They were sent over from America through the C.A.R.E organisation [then the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, later the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere], and their destination is Hamburg”.

So far as he could learn, the reporter added, “this is the first time that food parcels for Germany have left Glasgow, although dried eggs and corned beef have been sent across. Each of the 31,000 food parcels weighs approximately 27-and-a-half pounds and is believed to contain lard, cocoa, soup, meat, sugar, tea and cigarettes in varying amounts”. The parcels were carried to Germany by the Marchioness, a well-known coaster.

Read more: Herald Diary

In 1964, 19 new cranes were erected at the Prince’s Dock but containerisation would eventually hasten the end of the dock’s cargo-handling capacities. It was closed to ocean-going traffic in July 1971.

No-one could have foreseen then that the dock would play a key role in the regeneration of Glasgow that began in the 1980s.

In early November 1984 it was announced that the Glasgow Garden Festival was to be built on the derelict, 128-acre site, which was by then owned by a housebuilding company. The 1988 festival was an overwhelming success.