Ghost ships

“On the plane, you think you’re going to die; on the boat…you wish you were dead…”

I’ve been remembering the old ships, the P&O vessels that used to sail between Aberdeen and Shetland come hell or the highest of winds. Battered old third or fourth-hand ro-ro ferries, rusty and rolling like buckets in the surf. Stinking of diesel and sheep and cow, with those below-the-water-line  ‘E Deck’ dormitory cabins, where shoals of empty red tins would clank across the floor all night.

The St Clairs, two of them in my Shetland lifetime: one ended up owned by an Indonesian company before being scrapped. The other, currently the Noor, most recently used in the Mecca pilgrim trade, has damaged herself so badly on a reef that she too is currently limping across the Red Sea on a single, 51-year-old engine,

waiting for her final destination to be decided. There’s a story that she rolled so badly as the St Clair she had to have extra flotation tanks welded onto her hull. It’s certainly true that on one force-10 trip in 1995 a road tanker carrying lubricating oil flipped over, writing off ten cars (a Golden Retriever called Ben in one escaped unharmed, I recall). And that wasn’t the first time there had been…let’s say ‘weather-related readjustments’ on the vehicle deck.

The St Sunniva entered service on the Lerwick run in 1987, memorably encountering a freak wave on her maiden trip that smashed the bridge windows and caused my prospective replacement as Shetland Times news editor to get the first plane back to the mainland. She was a wobbler, though there was a grim determination by P&O, it seemed, to set sail in almost any conditions. I remember once being stuck sheltering in Scapa Flow during a trip that I think lasted 36 hours. She was sold in 2002 and headed for the Middle East, before being scrapped in 2005.

They’re gone now, vanished from these harsh northern climes; ghost ships still alive on the internet, full of memory: fear, discomfort, anticipation, the occasional glorious voyage into the simmer dim. Nowadays NorthLink’s twins, Hjaltland and Hrossey, simply don’t sail if the weather’s too threatening. These are more genteel times, and those flat-bottomed stabilizer-dependent boats have all the appurtenances of miniature cruise ships. Truthfully? I’m happy with NorthLink’s more cautious approach. I’m too old to be taking headers down stairways. And the steak pie is at least as good as P&O’s.

I’ve been remembering the north boats because the last week or so has seen numerous delays caused by Storms Alfonso and Derek, or whatever they were called, with some truly horrendous winds up to almost 80-mph hitting Shetland on Saturday. There were power cuts, a run no doubt on sun-dried tomatoes, fresh foreign veg and flabby sooth bread, but then there often is in these post-Brexit days. Our supermarket shelves have never been so bare, so often, and prices have never been so high. Tonight, minor squalls keep battering the old house, and I’m listening to the rumble, creak and howl, carefully tending the Rayburn so that the chimney doesn’t erupt and hoping the power stays on. And thinking about the Noor, the old St Clair, wallowing, according to Shipfinder, somewhere in the Arabian Sea, empty and hot, a skeleton crew slowly nursing the old hulk to her final resting place, probably on the polluted beach at Alang in India.

I miss those old boats. Two pints waiting to board at Aberdeen’s Ferry Inn. The on-board cottage pie, an (almost) guaranteed stomach-settler. The morning bodies draped over bar tables, six-foot-high pyramids of red cans beside them. The midweek and Sunday stop in Stromness, with time to get off and have a wander, maybe catch a glimpse of George Mackay Brown, or just the notice on his door: back in half an hour. Though those Sunday night trips north after the Orkney County Show had to be heavily policed and were sometimes more than riotous. The sound of the chief steward’s voice as he did his Arthur Askey impersonation, every single night, every single morning: Thengyoo!. The summer-season holiday camp bands, condemned to try and entertain a drunk or seasick crowd that could contain some of the best musicians in the world ( Ian Bayne from Runrig told me his stint drumming on the Shetland run was one of the lowlights of his career).

Right now I’m looking at the worrying red notice on the NorthLink website:

Early disruption warning to customers

Present weather forecasts indicate the possibility of disruptions to our services from Thursday 3rd February throughout the coming week.

More detailed updates will follow as forecasts are updated.

Oh, to be on dry land. Wait a minute…I am! That sober spinning is just the labyrinthitis. Or a stroke. Anyway, I’m thinking about the advice for anyone thinking of travelling to Shetland for the first time in a storm: On the plane, you think you’re going to die; on the boat…you wish you were dead.

Not always. But sometimes.