Clyde Cruises Boat Cuts Through Ice in 1929
Clyde Cruises’ boat Courier made the headlines when she cut through Clyde sea loch Loch Goil when it iced over. Below is the news report from 1929.
Loch Goil
Passage Cut Through Icefield
Motor Boat Reaches Lochgoilhead
The motor boat Courier succeeded yesterday in breaking her way through five miles of ice to Lochgoilhead.
A thaw had set in on Tuesday night, and Loch Goil was clear of ice up to Carrick Castle.
Beyond that, however, lay a dark and solid sheet of ice extending from shore to shore and stretching right up to the head of the loch. Through this the Courier cut a narrow channel-way to Lochgoilhead Pier.
A Formidable Task
The Courier, which is maintaining the Loch Goil service in place of the MacBrayne motor vessel Comet, left Gourock yesterday forenoon shortly before ten o’clock, carrying six passengers, including three ladies. Bailie Munro, of Greenock, the owner of the boat was in charge. For the purposes of negotiating the icefield in Loch Goil the bow and parts of the sides of the Courier were sheathed in galvanised sheet iron. On the previous day the crew of the motor boat had to break a passage through the ice to reach Carrick Castle Pier, but a thaw had cleared away the ice from this neighbourhood yesterday. A short distance above the village, at Coramonachan Bay, the icefield began and extended right up the head of the loch, a distance of five miles.
Slow Progress
It looked a formidable task for the little motor boat to force a passage, but it set about tackling it at full speed ahead. At the fringe of the field the ice was thin, but after the motor boat had penetrated a few hundred yards she encountered ice fully an inch thick. She made slow but steady progress. Eventually Douglas Pier was reached. Beyond that the Courier found her task more difficult, the ice stretching in a thick, unbroken sheet from shore to shore. By steady perseverance she continued to cut a narrow channel-way, scarcely more than her own breadth, through the ice.
The loud reports of the breaking ice which marked the progress of the boat echoed over the loch, and could be heard for miles. The noise brought to their doors the occupants of lonely cottages on the lochside, and they watched with interest the unprecedented spectacle of a motor boat negotiating an icefield in a Clyde sea loch. Blocks of ice thrown up by the Courier went birling over the surface on either side of the motor boat like curling stones on a rink.
A Remarkable Achievement
The motor boat continued to grind her way forward, and, although at times scarcely more than moving, she succeeded in making Lochgoilhead Pier, the village of which had watched her passage up the loch with intent interest. It was in its way a remarkable achievement for the little motor boat to succeed in forcing her way through the icefield, and she did not escape unscathed, her bows above the galvanised sheet iron protection being damaged and part of the sides torn by the ice.
Not the least remarkable feature of the Courier’s trip was that when she set out on the return passage she found that the channel-way which she had made had frozen over. Consequently on leaving Lochgoilhead Pier she had to force a new passage for fully a hundred yards. Thereafter the original channel-way was clear of ice, and she was able to make her way down it into open water.
Glasgow, Saturday, January 26, 1929
