The 'Hidden' Clyde

A recent shot of the tanker ROSARIA BOTTIGLIERI heading up to Finnart. Bill is a subscriber and contributor of great photos to our maritime community website Clydeshipping.

When people think of the Clyde, they tend to think of the upper river, indeed, they tend to think of Glasgow and in their minds they see a rather empty river now. Certainly compared to yesteryear, it is indeed far less busy than it once was. But that isn't the only Clyde, much more goes on elsewhere and for the purposes of this article, I shall stick mainly to two ports that few people - except those near them - give much thought to.

Our tanker here is heading to Finnart which is up the lovely and brooding Loch Long, at the top of which is Arrochar, dominated by the Cobbler - that mountain that looks nothing like a cobbler bending over his last (but that's another story!)

Long before you reach Arrochar you come to the BP Finnart complex, incongruously set in the midst of some of Loch Long's loveliest of places. Here tankers come and go almost daily taking oil to and from the terminal.

The terminal was in fact built by the US Navy in 1942-44 as an oil jetty, with a pipeline to Old Kilpatrick and to Rosneath. Now it services the Grangemouth refinery via a 60 miles pipeline which pumps the crude across Scotland. A return pipe pumps back refined products, and these are exported from Finnart.

A wide and colourful assortment of tankers can therefore be seen, depending on what they are carrying. Finnart is a very deep berth, so quite large tankers can use it. This trade gives welcome work to the tug boats of the Clyde, of which there are usually three that assist with berthing duties. One of the tugs MUST be for standby as a fire tug, a precaution set in law. Just along from Finnart is the MOD jetty and from time to time some very large naval supply ships can be seen there. In yesterday's article I mentioned the FORT GEORGE refiting at Inchgreen in Greenock in 2003, and she is one of the types of Auxilliary ships to use this important base.

If you think the ships that go to Finnart are big - Hunterston is the place for REALLY big ships. Hunterston is on the Ayrshire coast, near to Largs. From Largs you get a pretty good view of this facility, a place that has evolved with the times.

At one time, when the steelworks were in full swing, iron ore was transported in bulk carriers up the Clyde to Glasgow, specifically General Terminus Quay just down from the Kingston Bridge and on the south side. This had three huge ore handling cranes, called affectionately the Three Sisters, but as time went on, the ships got bigger and bigger. Shipowners were moving to very large bulk carriers to cut down operating costs, and Glasgow, wasn't going to be particularly suitable. So Hunterston came into being, designed to offload ore from giant ocean going vessels, and transport it by rail to the steelworks, mainly Ravenscraig and Gartcosh. This picture posted on Clydesite by Stuart Cameron, shows the way things were

Within a relatively short time the steel works were running out of work and inevitably, they closed. Hunterston lost its main customers, but the port operators saw that as the old traditional industries were contracting, so too were the coal mines. Importation of cheap foreign coal saved Hunterston, indeed, it could be argued it has actually made Hunterston and Clydeport's fortunes.

It is a gigantic place, with a mile long conveyor to take the coal from the stockyards up to the railhead where it is quickly deposited into waiting wagons.

The coal mainly arrives from South Africa in immense ships, carrying sometimes over 150,000 tonnes of coal at a time. The coal is deposited into the stockyards and the coal merchants distribute it from there. Most of it will leave by rail, but increasingly, Clydeport have utilised a system common nowadays in the container shipping world, and that is to operate 'feeder ships'. These vessels, self discharging ships, take the coal over to Ireland from Hunterston. So successful is Hunterston it has become the UK's principal coal handling port.

The area of Hunterson is also protected as a deep water facility in the UK's interest. In fact, Hunterston is the deepest port in Europe, and this makes it a very attractive place for large ships to come to. The approaches, with plenty of deep water for them to operate safely in, could also be used for the new breed of giant container ships now being designed and built in Asian yards. These superships are so big, they will not be able to use many of our existing ports, either because they are congested, or the amount of dredging required to give them sufficient draught would likely be opposed on environmental grounds. Hunterston needs no dredging and is ideally placed to serve quite a proportion of the UK, Irish and Iberian trades. As with the coal ships, the giant container ships could offload their boxes at Hunterston, and smaller feeder ships could then take them to the ports they are destined for.

Clydeport have been for some time now investigating this and are poised to announce very soon what the next stage will be. If successful and planning application is granted, the Clyde, the Clyde most people don't see or think about, could almost rival it's past with a future as one of the UK's major container terminals

Hunterson - Picture by Calum McCulloch