Troubled waters for lifeline service
SATURDAY ESSAY Its operations are vital for some of our most isolated communities. But CalMac’s ageing fleet, rocketing tourist numbers and outdated practices are testing Scotland’s oldest transport monopoly...
It is a cold Saturday in Uig at the north of Skye and the ferry for Harris should have been here by 6.30. In the event, it is 8.15, the sun near set, when she apologetically hoves in view.
On this busy Easter weekend there is much traffic waiting. Loading takes time. It is 9.20 before we sail, thundering over the Little Minch in the yellow light of a waning moon. there is a humble call from the ship’s office ‘for any passengers who were forced to leave their cars behind’.
We reach tarbert just after 11. It is a long day for the weary, whey-faced crew – and they have still another sailing before they can briefly call it a night.
this ship, the Hebridean Isles, was purpose-built for the ‘Uig triangle’ to tarbert and Lochmaddy. Unfortunately that was in 1985 and to 1970s technology and, the victim of her own success, she was replaced in 2001 by a bigger, swifter vessel.
But, due to an emergency too complicated to explain, the Hebridean Isles had to return here on thursday. She can only carry 68 cars and voyage at a moderate 15 knots.
She is manifestly overwhelmed and no space can now be booked for cars for a fortnight. On Sunday and Monday, weather conditions will prevent her sailing to tarbert at all and by tuesday the outcry such that Caledonian MacBrayne will be forced to return the fat and speedy Hebrides. One of the busiest weekends of the year has proved a tourist debacle.
the Hebridean Isles is not a bad ship. Her accommodation is pleasant and, crowded as she is, everyone manages to find a seat. She has much more character than newer vessels, with abundant opendeck space for passengers and a crew renowned for their kindliness.
But she is so old her lifeboats have oars. She was the last big ferry built with just one bow-thrust propeller – which makes berthing sticky in an unhelpful wind and excludes her from certain ports – and she should have been retired years ago.
the Scottish Government, though, has long treated CalMac with pampered neglect. Slashed ferry fares have overwhelmed its summer operations and only two major ferries have been built since the SNP took office in 2007. Eight of the 30-strong fleet are more than 30 years old. One, the Isle of Cumbrae, turns 41 this month.
CaLEdONIaN MacBrayne is the last nationalised dinosaur in captivity and the only surviving part of the old Scottish transport Group, with vessels of diverse design and size covering 33 routes from Campbeltown to Stornoway. In 2016, the company, which employs some 1,600 people, bore 1,356,396 vehicles and – for the first time – more than five million passengers to their destinations.
there has been no review of its stateowned monopoly status since the high tide of thatcherism in 1988 and it is, since the 2006 redesign, of Byzantine complexity. different companies now operate the ferries, own ships and terminals, employ the crew and exercise overall oversight, though all theoretically answer to the Scottish Government.
Public relations are woeful. When there is a breakdown or a diversion, statements are late, curt and minimalist. different bits of CalMac do not even effectively communicate with each other and political accountability is more in spirit than truth.
Caledonian MacBrayne, for instance, cannot – or will not – give an individual account for any given route or tell you which makes a profit or a loss. Yet the outfit devours millions of pounds of public money a year – and often carelessly.
Back in 2014, the new Loch Seaforth – built at a gulping £42million – could not take up the Stornoway-Ullapool service for the best part of a year because costly new terminals were not ready. Handsome offices at tarbert were completed only in 2004 – and are now to be blithely demolished as the pier is again rebuilt, for the third time since 1984, to accommodate a still vaster behemoth of a new ferry, already taking shape at Port Glasgow before work has even begun on the ports she will serve.
CalMac’s brief, of course, is not easy. the company must maintain safe, reliable and year-round services to a host of islands, many of sparse population and in exposed waters.
the ships must be robust enough for winter service, large enough to handle heavy traffic in the tourist season and by law be expensively dry-docked once a year for a Maritime and Coastguard agency survey, frequently in distant, east coast ports. and winter traffic can be risible.
Grizzled CalMac hands still chuckle over the day the old Glen Sannox made the twohour voyage to Colonsay, without a car or a lorry or a passenger aboard – just 14 copies of the Oban times. and Highland musician Ewen Henderson was much amused, sailing last week from Lochboisdale to Mallaig on the 3,504 ton Lord of the Isles, on finding he was the solitary soul travelling.
In fact that is one of the loveliest voyages in Scottish waters and the sort a private company would market heavily as a grand tourist experience. ‘CalMac really are missing a trick,’ said a Lochaber man last week. ‘they should be marketing that crossing for what it really is: one of the most awe-inspiring sails anywhere in the world.
‘there are people cutting around the Caribbean in multimillion-dollar yachts that haven’t seen half the splendour of a full moon over the hills of South Uist, the snow-capped peaks of the Cuillin and dawn breaking over the Garbh Criochan before you’ve even had your breakfast…’
Yet the Mallaig-Lochboisdale service is repeatedly cancelled, the terse CalMac announcement never offering any more excuse than ‘operational reasons’. But calling Caledonian MacBrayne out on anything is not easy.
In the communities it serves, we all have friends in its employ; a young cousin of mine is a CalMac deck officer. the deep-Left RMt trade union (to which most crew belong) threatens strike action at the least suggestion of serious reassessment. and there is a deeper cultural problem. In Edinburgh, where power lies,
no one of influence really knows anything about ferries or the sea – and cares less; and our politicians are little better.
But an ageing fleet and a most furtive management apart, we might look closely at two issues.
The first is the SNP’s 2007 manifesto-headline promise of a road equivalent tariff (RET), a commitment to slash fares so that a given crossing costs motorists no more than driving the equivalent distance on land. It was pioneered on services to the Western Isles, Coll and Tiree and has now been extended across the entire CalMac network.
But it is not a true RET at all – which would, fairly applied, have actually increased the charge on some very short crossings, such as Rhubodach to Colintraive over 300 yards of the Kyles of Bute. It is but across-the-board additional subsidy, at taxpayers’ expense, which has brought no real benefit to island residents, for the heavily discounted ten-journey tickets one used to buy have been abolished.
Instead, as should have been foreseen, it has swamped the Hebrides with camper-vans and travelling Del Boy tradesmen and overwhelmed us with visitors with whom available accommodation and the tourist infrastructure struggle to cope.
Taking a friend round assorted Lewis attractions on Tuesday – hardly high season – we struggled to find parking at the Callanish Stones and the Garenin Blackhouse Village. Come July, and locals will find they may have to wait weeks to book their car on a ferry off the island.
THIS in turn builds pressure for yet more and bigger ferries. But cooler heads begin to question if yet more enormous boats with, typically, a 22-strong crew is prudent, especially when there is considerable additional cost in expanding piers to fit them and when a ship of great profile is the more vulnerable to wind.
Back in 1980 CalMac ran a fleet of much smaller ferries – some admittedly of goodly age and with obsolete hoist-loading – but operations were far more flexible, with vessels readily shuffled around to cover breakdowns and so on. There was always one boat free during the summer for such contingencies, and two others surplus in winter to cover for annual overhauls. The move from the 1990s to construction of huge ‘route-specific’ ships, on top of new safety demands, has greatly reduced this flexibility.
The Hebridean Isles, for instance, cannot call at Mallaig. The Isle of Lewis, deep of draft and vast of behind, can only operate from Ullapool to Stornoway or Oban to Castlebay and the Lord of the Isles (30 this autumn) is the only vessel left that can serve everywhere.
A new complication – in characteristic SNP virtue-signalling – is the insistence that new ships be built to low-emission environmentally friendly standards. Much has been made of three recent doubleended craft – the Hallaig, the Lochinvar and the Catriona – whose diesel plant is supplemented with plug-in, rechargeable lithiumion battery banks and are extraordinarily smooth and vibration-free in operation.
But, as Roy Pederson – an astute observer of the ferry scene – has written of the 2012 Hallaig: ‘A 20 per cent saving in emissions has been claimed. The £11million buildprice, however, is two-and-a-half times that of a conventional ferry of greater capacity – yet analysis by Professor Alf Baird of Napier University has demonstrated that, compared with more efficient diesel mechanical vessels, there are no savings in emissions per vehicle or passenger.’
No one has seen fit to raise this point in the Scottish parliament and there is extraordinary reluctance in both CalMac’s HQ at Gourock and the corridors of Edinburgh power to stand back and consider what might be learned from other operators.
In the 1960s, the island of Islay was served by the venerable Lochiel, a traditional pre-war MacBrayne mailboat on a leisurely service to four different islands and which laboriously lifted kegs of whisky – and the odd car – aboard by her derrick. A group of frustrated businessmen finally formed a company of their own and ordered a ship of radical new appearance from Ferguson Bros of Port Glasgow. The operation was Western Ferries Ltd and the ship was the stern-loading car ferry Sound of Islay, launched amid a storm of derision. But the lorries of such local hauliers as James Mundell could simply drive on and off her; she sailed to Islay twice as frequently as the Lochiel and she offered lower fares without a penny of public subsidy.
How CalMac and our politicians connived in ultimately driving Western Ferries out of Islay is a depressing saga. But from 1973 the company launched a ‘Clyde Cross’ ferry in competition with CalMac’s Gourock-Dunoon passage and with such success that since 2011 CalMac now only provides – at arm’s length – a passenger-only service.
The Sound of Islay – so stoutly built she still sails in Newfoundland – was the lonely pioneer that has since seen the entire CalMac fleet transformed to roll-on, rolloff operation and the passing of both puffers and the clumsy manual deck-handling of cargo, with all the risk of breakage and stealing.
BUT other lessons have been ignored. Western Ferries operates from ingenious terminals of modest expense, into which its craft can lock for unloading without need for shore-based pier-hands.
They are sited at McInroy’s Point and Hunter’s Quay to offer the shortest point-to-point crossing over the firth: this reduces passage time and fuel costs and allows more frequent sailings by smaller vessels – bought from Europe and usually second-hand. Western Ferries crew live ashore – and at home if possible. There are no pursers and no stewards. Passenger accommodation is minimalist and there is no on-board catering.
CalMac, by contrast, has teams of full-time employees on all major piers, operates mighty voyages – such as the passage from Oban to Castlebay, near five hours – and accommodates crew for a fortnight’s shift on all major units, with bed and board: all at our expense and all a hangover from the era of the paddle-steamer.
And not enough politicians are asking enough questions about it – even as we keep writing the cheques. The operation of our West Coast ferries has long been shrieking for scrutiny and it is time for bold and innovative solutions, whatever the excuses and however cunning the evasion.
Like the time, many years ago, when the old Lochmor suspended her gentle timetable and stopped for a night at Armadale in Skye so the crew might enjoy a wedding.
An irate and lordly passenger wired a furious complaint to MacBrayne’s headquarters and, within the hour, a stern telegram was handed to the ship’s inimitable master, Captain Donald ‘Squeaky’ Robertson – ‘What holds the Lochmor at Armadale?’
His response was swift. ‘Two ropes – one at each end.’