Yesteryear revisited

“The annual Merchant Navy Day seemed an appropriate occasion for a sail along the upper navigable reaches of the River Tay,” emails Perth Harbour chronicler John Aitken.

“The trip was aboard the Badger, registered in Dundee and proudly flying the Red Ensign. She made the passage from Lairwell, near the Friarton Bridge, to the Fergusson Pontoon at Shore Road and back, with an hour or so ashore in Perth.

“I recalled my first trip upriver from Dundee to Perth in the autumn of 1956 on the coastal collier Cornel. I had intended to be present at the launch of a cargo ship, Canadian Star, at the Caledon shipyard but had met a river pilot on the train and accepted the offer of a ‘return trip’ back to Perth.

“After almost 50 such trips between Dundee, Newburgh and Perth, my last such venture on a cargo ship along Perth’s river highway took place in the mid-1990s on the low air draft coaster Turbulence, registered originally at Rochester on the Medway.

“Much earlier in 1951, I had seen my first ship at Perth, the Hull-owned and registered Robrix. The common denominator running through all four vessels is they were under Britishownership and flew the Red Ensign. Today this flag is not seen so often, other than as a courtesy flag flown by foreignregistered ships visiting UK ports.

“Over the years, trees and vegetation have grown up along the banks of the river and traces of Perth’s industrial past are almost totally hidden from view. Perhaps there is potential for an ‘energy trail’ here, pointing out the few remaining properties of the gasworks still to be seen near the bend in the Tay bearing the same title, the former coalfired North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (previously the Grampian Electricity Supply Company) generating station and the early unique waterworks building which currently houses the impressive Fergusson Gallery.

“In the course of the short trip there is evidence of Perth’s industrial past ranging from shipbuilding to river sand and gravel extraction and the ice factory etc. At the Upper Harbour quay in the early 1900s, cases of Dewar’s whisky were loaded from horse-drawn carts into steam puffer/lighter-type vessels for transhipment to Dundee and Leith and ultimately to worldwide markets.”