Forth ferry skipper among thousands to walk new bridge

The weekend will be special for one of the last skippers of the Forth ferries.

Stephen Reid, 87, who has already walked across both older Forth spans, will complete his hat-trick when he is one of 50,000 people to traverse the Queensferry Crossing.

“I am looking forward to it, but it is a long way,” he laughed.

Mr Reid did not think in the heyday of the ferries there would be a third bridge.

“We ran the ferries but when the road bridge came that finished them. The ferries could not cope anyway with the volume of traffic.”

Mr Reid, born and still living in North Queensferry, started as a deckhand in 1950.

He thought he had job security for life on the ferries he loved, which only employed from the village but, only able to squeeze around 30 cars on board for one 15 minute trip across the Forth, they became obsolete.

The Forth Road Bridge was opened by the Queen on September 4 1964, bringing eight centuries of the Queensferry Passage to an end – although not immediately.

The plan on the bridge’s opening day was for the Queen to cut the ribbon on the south side, then drive across to Fife and take the final last ferry back across, officially ending the service.

However, Mr Reid recounted such was the rush to get the Forth Road Bridge ready there was still a lot of debris to be cleared off the deck, meaning the bridge was shut to traffic and the ferries ran for the rest of the day.

Mr Reid has one memento of the river travel, however, having kept the bell from the Robert the Bruce ferry.

Mr Reid kept the bell from the Robert the Bruce as a memento.