The war in Ukraine has made the Firth of Clyde busy again. We used to have neighbours – he died, she moved away – who could remember the view from their house when it was filled with shipping during the second world war: when big liners such as the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth arrived, as my neighbours used to say, “as regular as clockwork”, packed with troops and supplies on their way to the D-day beaches from the ports of North America.
There is nothing quite as momentous as that now. What happens more frequently is the humdrum arrival or departure of an oil tanker. Two or three tugs from Greenock will sail round the headland and take up their position in the channel; a large tanker will move slowly into view from the lower firth; the tugs will settle ahead, astern and abreast of the tanker; together the small convoy will head across Rothesay Bay towards the Nato jetty in Loch Striven. There, tanks submerged in the green hillside store oil. Merchant ships flying flags of convenience bring the oil in; navy tankers in various shades of warship grey take it away, presumably to Nato fleets exercising in the North Atlantic.
