Shipping Lines - When the big pulp carriers used to berth up near the Chivers factory

One of the best known names in the local shipbuilding industry was that of Birnie who turned out some large barques among a range of other smaller types of vessel.

Eventually the harbour railway was constructed during the 1880s. Around the same period the deep water jetty was built at a cost of around £7000, thus allowing mainly large sailing ships to load dressed timber flooring from Messrs. Millar & Sons planing mills to be exported to Australia, known locally as “the Colonial wood trade” which lasted around 20 years until competition from Norwegian sources then those on the Pacific coast of the USA.

Now fast forward to the early 1970s and the discoveries of oil and natural gas beneath the often hostile waters of the North Sea and the urgent requirement for modern berthing space in ports along the east coast. After a detailed search of suitable ports, P&O decided to invest in developing the port of Montrose. As this would take some time as dredging would be involved, it was decided to reconstruct quay space at the top end of the harbour in front of Messrs Chivers’ factory as a first phase.

Harking back to some of the industrial activities that took place in that area of the port, there was shipbreaking which took place after the Great War when some minor warships were dismantled close to the present site of the RNLI lifeboat station. Apparently some debris can still be seen at certain states of low tide.

In part of what became Chivers soft fruit processing factory, the Montrose Fishing Company mushroomed then shortly after went into receivership in the early 1920s.

Also part of Chivers product range was ‘Potatoes One Minute’ (POM) - a basic foodstuff based on the “humble spud”. Several shipments went to Hamburg to supplement the Berlin Airlift in the late 1940s, which helped prevent near starvation of the West German civilian population. When food production ceased the premises were taken over and fertiliser blending commenced.

In the heyday of the baled wood pulp imports, numerous large pulp carriers made their way to the upriver berths. Among them were the fairly regular ships of the Swedish Gorthon Lines, headquartered in the port of Helsingborg. Names that come to mind include Alida Gorthon, Ingrid Gorthon and Margit Gorthon, all built by the Korea Shipbuilding & Engineering Corporation at Busan in South Korea.

Margit Gorthon was launched in 1977. On her cargo deck were two gantry travelling cranes. At the end of 1980s she was transferred to the flag of Bermuda with a port of registry as Hamilton and could be seen with a brown-painted hull during a call at Montrose. In 2013 she was sent to shipbreakers at Alang as the Forest Trader for recycling.