Islands of the Evening by Alistair Moffat

Author:Alistair Moffat [Moffat, Alistair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn Limited

It is a fine evocation of a singular way of life whose essentials have not changed for millennia despite the advances of technology and the enormous increased speed of travel.

During the depression and the strikes of the 1920s, MacBrayne’s found itself near to collapse as revenue dried up and, because of the miners’ strike, coal to fire its boilers was either in short supply or completely lacking. The company was rescued by another shipping concern, Coast Lines, and by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. Governments realised that subsidies were needed so that island communities could be properly and reliably served. But, despite continuing intervention, service could be patchy, even capricious. Here is a passage from Alasdair Maclean’s beautiful memoir, Night Falls on Ardnamurchan:

For most of the [1950s], however, anyone bound for Ardnamurchan came via Oban rather than Fort William, boarding at Oban a steamer which took him through the Sound of Mull to Tobermory. Disembarking at Tobermory he took a ferry back across to the mainland – if mainland be the right word for Ardnamurchan – stepping ashore at Mingary Pier, Kilchoan.

The main potential trouble spot in this itinerary was the Tobermory–Kilchoan ferry, which was actually a small launch. If the Sound of Mull were at all stormy – and the sound here is more or less at an end and has widened into open Atlantic – the launch crew generally refused to make the run. It did not matter if the crossing, though rough, was yet possible; if they did not feel like it they did not stir and there was nothing one could do about it. Though supposedly tied in with the national transport network, they had in practice a good deal of autonomy. Naturally too, the launch skipper had – or adopted – a sea captain’s authority in regard to his vessel and claimed to be the sole arbiter in all decisions affecting her daily running and risk.

Once in a great while, on the other hand – I think when complaints became too loud and too prevalent even for those conveniently deaf to ignore – the same crew would display all the seafaring enterprise that one could wish, and perhaps a little more to boot. I have made the crossing on days when all was noise and welter, when the launch went from crest to trough like a bobsleigh and from trough to crest like a badly overloaded lift, when I had to wedge myself between bulkheads to avoid being hurled about the cabin and had to leap for my life when the vessel at last made a flying pass at Mingary Pier. But derring-do of that order was very much the exception rather than the rule.

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