Ravages of time

The illustration of St Andrews harbour in a recent Craigie feature intrigued a reader from Montrose with a long-time interest in shipping around the coasts of Tayside and Fife.

He tells me: “Having made a study of small ports and harbours over the past half century, the St Andrews quays are an example of a time when coastal shipping served local communities. Many of those harbours are no longer in the cargo handling business.

“Numerous reasons are given for this: stone quays built in a bygone age which have suffered from the ravages of time and tide, silting up of rarely-used navigation channels, coasters and cargoes being larger than their predecessors, the closure of traditional industries plus sporadic encroachment of housing and retail development and the demands of leisure and entertainment facilities.

“However, St Andrews harbour has an interesting background. A few years ago I tried to find out the name of the last cargo ship to berth there.

“I was assisted by Rachel Clerke, curator of St Andrews Preservation Trust Museum who provided me with a copy of their publication, St Andrews by the Northern Sea. The coaster was named Locksley, Montrose-registered and Stonehaven-owned, which in 1936 had discharged a 120-ton cargo of coal for the local gasworks.

“The Locksley was well-known along the east coast including voyaging to Sark in the Channel Islands, with her modest dimensions allowing her to enter a large number of harbours.

“She was built at Wallsend in 1884 and had carried a variety of cargoes including grain, potatoes, vegetables and coal. She was also thought to have been one of the early MontroseNewcastle beer boats before the Deuchars company acquired their first Lochside.

“Other trading events included being at Perth with salt for Messrs. Pullar, cleaners and dyers, and among the last coasters to use the inner dock area at Dundee which now lies beneath the Tay Road Bridge landfall.

“Her eventual end came when she was lost near Emmanuel Head on March 9 1938.

“More recently the story took a strange twist when I came across a listing in a book on shipwrecks around Scotland’s shores and coastal waters. Under the entry – ‘Locksley - 03/12/1914 – Elie harbour – at moorings – stranded/ total wreck or loss.’ She escaped the breaker’s hammer on this occasion!”