Memories of going to school by steamer

My grandchildren will hardly believe that I went to school by steamer. The photo shows the 1949 gang of Isle of Cumbrae children that I joined for the last three years of my secondary education, with me on the top left.

This was no life for couch potatoes. At that time the senior secondary school for Arran, Cumbrae and Bute was Rothesay Academy on the latter island. The Millport children from Cumbrae travelled weekly, living in lodgings near the school.

From each October until Easter, the week began before dawn on a Monday morning.
The weather picked our departure point – if windy, Keppel Pier reached by a wee bus – if calmer, one could hear the sound of the paddle steamer Duchess of Fife making her unique sounding beat across the bay to the nearer Old Pier, which was within easy walking distance. This is when I began to love porridge, as my mother filled me up with its warmth before I left.

The boat would first cross the firth to deposit weekend commuters at Fairlie Pier on the Ayrshire mainland, for their steam train to work in Glasgow, then made its way back across the Clyde to drop us just before 8am at Rothesay’s elegant Victorian Pier. My landlady then very kindly served me a second breakfast.

After a typical school week on the winter Fridays, we tore down the hill for a 5.15pm sailing.

This began a most complex journey…
• The boat sailed to the renowned Wemyss Bay pier and we didn’t rush up it to board a train, but to cross the main road and only just catch a routine service bus down the coast to Largs.

• In Largs, a hired bus awaited us. Our numbers varied from the eleven children to twenty. The bus cost had to be shared across the group and if it was small, it was quite a struggle among us, at the end of a week away from home, to find enough coins to meet the fare.

• The coach took us back to Fairlie pier from where we sailed back home.

What happened in bad weather?
I can remember us paddling up and down the estuary all of one morning until it calmed enough for us to reach our digs and school. On the Fridays, we were supposed to be stopped if it was too stormy a night, but once we ended up in Largs Police station where they had a friendly boarding house opened up for us and another night we slept in the bowels of the Fife.

Summer sailings
The summer steamer timetable was quite different as we had fewer hours at home. There was no Monday morning steamer to Rothesay. So we had to get out to Keppel pier for Sunday afternoons and join the pride of the fleet, the steamer Queen Mary II, on the way back from a cruise to Arran. Its cruising passengers never seemed to be pleased to be joined by rowdy schoolchildren, but after a stop at Largs, we soon left at Rothesay.

The 1970s Scottish local government reorganisation changed all the county and education boundaries and Millport children no longer have this complex lifestyle.

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