Challenging journey

“I was interested in Fraser Elder’s information regarding ferry services across the Forth estuary,” emails a reader with a background in water transport. “I can recall making several crossings between North and South Queensferry in my diminutive but reliable Morris Minor in the early 1960s.

“If my memory serves me correctly (and it doesn’t always) there was also a service for a comparatively short period in the early 1950s between Burntisland and Granton harbours provided by four former Second World War flatbottomed landing craft, with the quartet carrying names connected with the Jacobite ’45 Rebellion – Bonnie Prince Charlie, Flora MacDonald, Glenfinnan and Eriskay.

“In the early 1950s their owners apparently went into voluntary liquidation and the vessels after a period of lay-up, I think, were sold to owners in Goa, the former colonial enclave, a state of India on the western coast of the subcontinent since 1961.

“The delivery voyage must have been quite a challenge over that distance for wartime-assembled military landing craft. Over the years I have occasionally wondered if they all made their assigned destination and what was their ultimate fate.”