West Dunbartonshire Arts and Heritage
Whatever happened to the Erskine Ferry?
The answer can be found in the County Reporter of the 10th of October 1973.
The Erskine Ferry was a passenger and latterly vehicular service which crossed the River Clyde between Old Kilpatrick and Erskine. The first ferry crossing was situated at Ferrydyke in Old Kilpatrick before being moved a half mile up river to its widely remembered position at Erskine Ferry Road. The ferry was originally a private venture operated by Lord Blantyre and his heirs before transferring to the ownership of the Clyde Navigation Trust in 1904.
Despite the crossing only taking around 4 minutes, in later life the service struggled to cope with the demand of the rising car owning population. By the late 1940s queues of traffic, particularly in the summer, were becoming a real safety issue with traffic backing up the full length of Erskine Ferry Road and spilling out onto Dumbarton Road as passengers waited to board. A solution was badly needed and this came in the form of the Erskine Bridge which ultimately rendered the Erskine Ferry redundant. The last sailing took place at midnight on the second of July 1971, the day the bridge was opened.
The route’s 50 year old reserve ferry looked as though it was destined for the breakers yard until an enterprising businessman stepped in with a vision to re-purpose it. James Cuthbertson of James A Cuthbertson Ltd. of Biggar bought the ferry and made it into, in his words, “the best platform on the Clyde”. The firm spent £30,000 on improvements over an eight month period that would allow it to carry 100 tons of machinery when being used in various harbour and off shore building projects. The platform retained the name the Erskine Ferry.
Despite the investment, the platform didn’t have the most illustrious start in its new career, being caught in a force nine gale in its first job at Irvine and sinking! The firm had the platform raised and filled the hull will polystyrene in a bid to make it “unsinkable”. Despite this troubled start, at the time of writing in 1973, the platform had undertaken a further three jobs, including one at the Esso terminal at Bowling. Cuthbertson noted that the platform had “at least another 15 years work left in it.”
The newer of the two vessels covering the route was retained by the Clyde Port Authority and served as the reserve to the Renfrew Ferry.
Image 1: Erskine Ferry, 1903 – 1936.
Image 2: Erskine Ferry & Napier & Miller Yard. C1900.
Image 3: Erskine Ferry & Bridge pre 2 July 1971.
All images West Dunbartonshire Council Arts & Heritage service.
Erskine Ferry & Napier & Miller Yard. C1900