West Highland Free Press | Friday 25 April 2014 13 focas ᔡ focus

LIFELINE: The ‘’ alongside Tarbert pier Celebrating 50 years of the ‘Hebrides’

T’S 15TH APRIL 1964. development by increasing motorised was an integral part of my childhood in the as breathing, confided that he was convinced CALUM MACLEOD Beatlemania’s at fever pitch, the mobility of goods and people and 1970s and early 1980s. Three times a year — she was going to go over at that point — ICuban Missile Crisis feels like a encouraging tourism on a hitherto- at Christmas, Easter and summer school information I’m grateful he refrained from nuclear nightmare only recently averted unimagined scale. It’s no exaggeration to say holidays — that trip across was the sharing at the time. focus that MV Hebrides was the key to unlocking closest we ever got to overseas travel. None We sailed on the Hebrides many times and football fans are still much of that development potential in the of us ever felt any the worse for that. again after that but not always with good weeping into their scarves a full three Western Isles. In that first year of service Quite the opposite, in fact. For my parents, cheer in our hearts. On our penultimate trip in years after England put nine goals past alone she carried 11,000 vehicles (the boarding the ferry in Uig held out the September 1985 my mother’s coffin lay in the the hapless Frank Haffey at Wembley. equivalent figure for 2013 was 78,000). promise, however illusory, of a temporary hold beneath the foredeck as we took her None of this is uppermost in the minds of Clues to the changing economic and social respite from whatever travails life may have home to be buried in Harris three months the crowd gathering on Tarbert pier today, order can be seen in the film of that maiden been throwing at them and a route back to the after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. however. Change is coming across the Minch voyage. It shows a car and caravan being people and place where they felt most I’d gladly have sat through a thousand gales if to Harris at a top speed of 14 knots in the manoeuvred onto the turntable of the ferry’s comfortable. For me and my younger brother, I could have avoided making that crossing. shape of the MV ‘Hebrides’ on her maiden ramp by the obliging crewmen; an things were far less complicated. Every Two months later, on November 14th 1985, voyage and they want to be there when she understated early cameo appearance by a summer the Hebrides took us on the first the MV Hebrides made her last voyage in the arrives. tourism industry that has become a leading stage of a journey away from school for six Western Isles and then she too was gone — Last week saw the 50th anniversary of that player in the economy of the islands in the weeks and if the sun shone for some of that overtaken by a new generation of faster, voyage by David MacBrayne Ltd’s then intervening years. time so much the better. bigger roll-on, roll-off ferries in the CalMac innovative car ferry (one of three built for the In between shots of a mail truck, buses and Not that the journey across the Minch fleet that made her once-innovative features company in the early 1960s) on the new Uig- a succession of sombre-looking cars being always felt that idyllic, particularly on winter seem like ancient relics from a bygone age. Tarbert-Lochmaddy route linking Skye, unloaded, the film captures a Mini, its white crossings. Despite her innovative fitted She was far from finished, however. Harris and . A charming (ill- roof matching the brilliant white of the stabilisers the Hebrides’ top-heavy structure Renamed the ‘Devonian’, the ferry sailed [email protected] advised soundtrack aside) short film on crewmen’s new caps, driving off the ferry’s left her rather prone to rolling in somewhat between Torquay and the Channel Islands in YouTube captures the first leg of that trip for state-of-the-art hydraulic ramp and onto the alarming fashion in high seas. We had the late 1980s and as ‘Illyria’ she worked the posterity and offers a fleeting glimpse of an pier. For a brief tantalising moment you feel unwelcome first-hand experience of this on a route between Italy and Albania in the 1990s. island society in transition. like the swinging sixties might just be particularly rough crossing to Harris one She crossed the Atlantic (the first The “white heat of technology” prophesied disembarking with it. December afternoon in the early 1980s. Caledonian MacBrayne vessel to do so) and by soon-to-be-Prime-Minister Harold Wilson That feeling rapidly evaporates as the Clinging to the table by our fixed corner seats by 1998 was operating out of Kingston in St As a boy in the the previous year may not have powered the slightly bewildered-looking flock of sheep in the bar (my father’s location of choice Vincent and the Grenadines. That exotic turn Hebrides towards Tarbert that spring day. For that has been sharing the car deck on the when aboard), I recall watching in abject of events didn’t last long, unfortunately. On 1970s and 80s, the onlookers standing on the pier to greet her journey emerges onto the ramp to be terror as chairs, pint and whisky glasses and October 11th 1999 Illyria caught fire in it must have felt like a transformational shepherded somewhat reluctantly into a passengers were repeatedly sent crashing Eleusis Bay in Greece before finally being CALUM MACLEOD moment nonetheless. A purpose-built car waiting pier-side float rather than down from one side of the room to the other and sold to breakers in 2003. ferry, capable of carrying up to 50 cars and London’s Carnaby Street. Their appearance back again. I’m pretty sure just about That feels like a sadly inauspicious end for travelled on the 600 passengers, to replace the ‘crane and nevertheless provides a welcome reminder everyone else must have felt the same way. a ship that was so important in helping sling’ mail steamer ‘Lochmor’ offered a that even in the midst of change crofting still The sole exception seemed to be my transform the Western Isles’ inter-island and ‘Hebrides’ between previously-unheralded ease of vehicle endured as the lifeblood of the community. grandmother. Wedged in the corner and mainland accessibility. No matter. It’s enough transportation between the Western Isles. So It’s also of some comfort to know that the car resplendent in Communion-chic black hat and to know that new economic opportunities and it’s hard to believe that the sight of this deck’s multiple uses extended only to acting coat, she determinedly held on to her handbag profound social changes followed in her Skye and Harris. He gleaming new ship gliding towards them as an impromptu sheep pen rather than the while barely batting an eyelid at the unfolding wake. didn’t quicken the pulses even of these most floating nuclear shelter the Hebrides’ Cold carnage. Some of those changes — such as Sunday looks back fondly at phlegmatic of people. War-era designers intended her to become in Some distance out to sea the Captain made sailings to the Western Isles in the distant It’s also difficult to overstate the economic event of a ‘national emergency’. the decision to head back to port only for the decades to come — must have seemed the history of the and social impact that introducing a car ferry Hebrides to roll at an angle in mid-turn from scarcely imaginable to many of those route between Uig, Tarbert and Lochmaddy HAVE always had huge affection for the which, judging by the close proximity of the standing on Tarbert pier that day in 1964. Be vessel, and its had on the islands. Railways and the electric MV Hebrides so it was with some pleasure sea to the portholes, there seemed precious that as it may, for many islanders of a certain telegraph paved the way in the late 19th Ithat I learned of last week’s anniversary. little prospect of recovering — innovative age — me included — mere mention of ‘the significance. century for reducing the peripheral nature of The fact that April 15th is also my birthday stabilisers or not. Obviously she did recover Heb’ will always stir mostly fond memories the Highlands and Islands by shrinking travel only added to that warm, nostalgic glow. and, thinking better of his earlier decision, the of a ferry that helped set the rhythm of island and communication times to and within the Sailing on the Hebrides from Skye, where Captain decreed that we continue on our life for two decades. region. Improvements to the mainland road my family lived, to Harris where my parents sawdust-strewn way. Years later my father, a Website: calummacleod.info network added further potential for economic were from and where they still had a croft man for whom being on a boat felt as natural Twitter: @CalumMacleod07