The job was one the young Fraser Hogg would tackle countless times as assistant pursuer on one of CalMac’s car ferries in the 1970s.
As the ferry’s ramp was lowered, all he had to do was start the engine of the car stored on board, slip it into gear, drive off the ramp and onto the pier.
But this was not any car. This was a very expensive low rise Lotus sports car intended for one of the world’s most famous women, Princess Grace of Monaco, to use while she holidayed on the Isle of Bute.
And driving it off the ferry would be accompanied by an uncomfortable ‘crunch’ and a moment that would give red-faced teenager behind the wheel ‘flashbacks’ for the next 50 years.
Fraser was barely out school and working as an assistant purser on Clyde steamers and ferries at a time when heading ‘doon the watter’ for a summer break was still an annual ritual for thousands of Scots.
To cope with their numbers, the ferry operator needed more hands and young school leavers and students fitted the bill perfectly.
Jim Stirling, aged 16, in his pursers' uniform (Image: Jim Stirling)
It was a mutually beneficial: for a few pounds a week pay they received a young and enthusiastic workforce happy spend summer sailing on the Clyde.
While for the lads, it was a unique life experience, rubbing shoulders with salty dogs with nicknames like Black Bob and the Duke of Argyll – so named because he happened to come from the Isle of Lismore – often on steamers in their twilight years, and with more than few boozy stops on the way.
Within a few years, holidaymakers’ attention turned to foreign trips, rules were tightened up, and more modern work methods and new vessels appeared.
But for one group of lads who went from boys to men working on the Clyde cruises and ferries for CalMac and David MacBrayne, it would leave such an impression that 50 plus years on, they remain in touch, still reminiscing, still going on sailing trips together and still having a laugh.
A Clyde steamer sails down the Clyde crammed with passengers (Image: SMG NEWSPAPERS LTD)
Connected via their WhatsApp group – appropriately entitled ‘Steamin’ – their summers on the Clyde keeping holidaymakers, livestock and even fellow crew in check, was life-changing.
For Fraser, that crunch as the Lotus’ undercarriage connected with the ferry ramp, still makes him cringe.
“Princess Grace was going to visit Lady Jean Fforde,” he remembers. “The Lotus was put on the ferry at Ardrossan to be collected at the other end by her staff.
