Shipping Lines - Speculating on a brief tale of a ‘lang awa’ ship

A sailing ship leaves the South Esk bound for a faraway shoreA sailing ship leaves the South Esk bound for a faraway shore
A sailing ship leaves the South Esk bound for a faraway shore
Where do the ships sail to when they leave the Montrose quaysides? - is a question I’m regularly asked, writes John Aitken. More often than not they depart for foreign destinations, some with cargo others in ballast.

In the distant past they took the relatively short passage to coastal ports to pick up shipments of coal from harbours along the Forth having discharged timber from Russia and the Baltic ports at Montrose. From the late 1960s, after discharging up to 10,000 tons of baled wood pulp, they would head off to the Continent to load for North America for example.

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Of course in the era of seed and also ware potato exports, Spain, the Balearic Islands and ports in the region of North Africa were favourite locations. There was also a domestic market to the Channel Islands and the harbours in East Anglia and Kent. Add the advent of North Sea oil and gas from the 1970s onwards followed by more recent renewable generation equipment, marine business has added lengthy additions to the ports which have added to the trade of the Angus seaport.

Much related background information can be found in the ‘Port of Montrose’ volume written by the late David G. Adams published in 1993.

A few weeks ago I enquired via my computer as to the destination of some recently departed ships. One quite surprising name came up – Nouakchott in Mauretania, West Africa. The Gibraltar-registered coaster Bonacieux had apparently sailed there with a cargo of locally-manufactured concrete mats. Around the same period the general cargo ship H C Lara arrived during a short spell of drizzly weather and departed shortly after for the port of Abidjan located in Cote d’Ivoire with subsea well control equipment.

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To complete the picture, the Panthera J earlier left for Kakinada on the east coast of India. That port has a street containing 15 cinemas along its length which is quite a record for that part of the world.

Since then during the latter part of August, cargo ships have been quite thin on the ground with one of the few being the Gibraltar-registered Triton. She arrived from Scrabster on the Pentland Firth. Built in 2015, by Royal Bodewes shipyard at Hoogezand, 90m in length, and 4,700-ton deadweight, she sailed in early September bound for the Kent port of Erith with a cargo of bulk rape seed.

Last week I read of a brief phrase, “the lang awa’ ship”, which intrigued me somewhat. It was contained in a story which on further investigation was entitled ‘Montrose Beach’ and listed reminiscences of times along the dunes of the local shoreline - several “cliques” of old ladies comparing the present time with their younger days.

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“Pensively gazing ‘way towards the horizon sat one white-haired old lady quite oblivious to her surroundings. Fain would I have spoken to her the thought occurred to me, but it might have been an intrusion for a stranger to distract her. Who knows but what her thoughts were of “the lang awa’ ship”?

Did it carry her husband, son, brother or fiancé perhaps?