FIFTY YEARS AGO Thursday August 14, 1969

New hovercraft visits Campbeltown

Campbeltown harbour has been the stopping-off point of many a strange ship, but none, perhaps, so strange as the hovercraft, ‘D2 003’, which called in on Sunday night.

The ‘D2 003’ was on route from Gourock to Fleetwood where she will be operating between the Lancashire trawling port and nearby holiday resort, Morecambe.

Her 1000 h.p ‘Caterpillar’ engines are capable of driving her along at 30 nautical miles per hour and she is fitted out with bus-type seats which will accommodate approximately 80 persons.

‘D2 003’ was built by Denny Hovercraft for Norwest Hovercraft Limited, which was operating for some time a smaller hovercraft on the Fleetwood-Morecambe run.

The craft took just two and a half hours to arrive at Campbeltown from Gourock and that, according to her captain, was only her cruising.

Lifeboat alert false alarm

Campbeltown lifeboat was called out on Sunday at 10.51pm after flares had been reported over Corriecravie, on the south-west end of Arran.

The sighting was made by a motorist and reported to the gamekeeper at Shiskan, who telephoned the information to Kildonan Coastguard Station.

The lifeboat put to sea less than 10 minutes after the crew was alerted and was in the Brown Head area shortly after midnight. She swept the coast between Pladda and Corriecravie with radar, all the time keeping in contact with Kildonnan coastguards and the mobile coastguard unit searching from the road.

By 1.15am, no craft had been sighted by the lifeboat or the coastguards and it became obvious that the alert had been unnecessary. The lifeboat, however, searched the area further, until 1.40am, when the decision to return to Campbeltown was made.

The theory put forward by one of the coastguards at Kildonan station as explanation of the mystery sighting is that possibly the motorist saw the flashing Corsewall Point light on the Wigtonshire coast. Sunday night was an exceptionally clear one and the coastguard alleged he was able to see the farmhouse lights on Kintyre, as far north as Carradale and Grogport.