History & Heritage

The Sea

Ferries

In 1792 Scarinish was recoded as having a harbour in need of considerable improvements. At that time there was a regular ferry boat sailing between Coll and Tiree, and between Coll and Mull, "but there is no stated ferry between Tiree and Mull, although there is a great need."

Even by 1845 it was reported that there has been no ferry to Tiree for some years. “Our means of communication are accordingly extremely irregular and uncertain, depending on any casual conveyance that may occur."

The Dunara Castle was the first steamer to make regular trips to Tiree in 1875, sailing weekly from the Broomielaw on the Clyde to most of the Hebridean islands for the Orme Company. The Hebrides, built in 1898 for the McCallum Line, sailed a similar route.

The completion of the railway to Oban in 1880 opened up the west coast and in 1886 the Highland Fisheries Company began sailings with the Trojan from Oban to Tiree and Barra three times a week, a dramatic improvement. In 1889 this route was taken over by David MacBrayne using the Clydesdale.

However, no worthwhile pier had been built on the island, and steamers had to lay off Scarinish. The biography of Lady Victoria Campbell, who frequently travelled to Tiree between 1886 and 1909, paints the following picture: "The steamer always ‘passes’, but there are many mornings when the mails and the passengers in the cargo-boat cannot go out to her, and this may happen for a week or ten days in succession.

Very often it turns on the number of young men present, and willing to take a hand, and with two or more men at each oar, they assist the agent of MacBrayne to get the boat out of the narrow straits of Scarinish Harbour to the steamer." The Reading Room in Scarinish (now An Iodhlann) was built for passengers waiting to board.

After years of political pressure, the Gott Bay pier was completed in 1914 by G. Wolfe Brennan of Oban. It was extended in the 1950s. Originally a railway ran down the centre of the pier with a bogey pulled by horse. During the First World War, Tiree had a weekly boat from Oban, the Plover, which was attacked by a German submarine in the Sound of Gunna with no loss of life.

After the war the Cygnet, a small and uncomfortable boat, was put on the Obanto Tiree run. One passenger wrote "… to have one’s feet hanging in mid-air, and one’s back supported or forced forward, are serious aggravations of the wet and cold, the driving wind, the pitching deck, with the sight of the misery of one’s fellow-travellers, in an unventilated, evil-smelling saloon, for sole alternative." Alasdair Sinclair, Brock, remembers "there was nowhere at all to sit on the Cygnet. You just stood on deck, ankle deep in water, and watched your luggage floating about."

David MacBrayne’s company was in financial difficulties and there was widespread dissatisfaction with the service. In 1928 the company was restructured with a promise to deliver new boats and in 1930 the Lochearn was delivered for the Tiree run. The Cygnet was scrapped. The new vessel had much more comfortable accommodation but managed only nine knots. She continued on the run until 1948.

The building of an RAF base on Tiree in the Second World War meant an increase in traffic to the island and MacBrayne’s chartered the Hebrides from MacCallum Orme to serve the Oban-Coll-Tiree route.

In 1955 the second Claymore began serving the island from Oban. Well fitted-out, she was the last MacBrayne boat to have first and second class. She had no side ramp and animals and cars had to be winched ashore.

In 1973 David MacBrayne and the Caledonian Steam Packet Company merged to form Caledonian MacBrayne. Within weeks the new company’s services to Tiree were badly disrupted when the Loch Seaforth, which had just come down from Stornoway, struck a rock in the Sound of Gunna. Passengers and crew abandoned ship with no injury, and the stricken vessel was towed to the Gott Bay pier. She sank soon after, leaving the pier blocked for two months until she was salvaged by a Dutch floating crane.

The third Claymore was launched in 1978. She was fitted with a side and stern ramp, and was capable of 15 knots. The Lord of the Isles was launched in 1989 and was the first vessel to use the new linkspan pier in 1992. The Clansman, launched in 1998, is the latest ferry to serve the route.