Skipper of the Cromarty Rose ferry boat for more than a decade, Ronald Young, 34, was clearly born to go to sea, starting work on oil boats the day he left school.

I got an ‘O’ Level in seamanship and nautical knowledge from Fortrose Academy when I was 15. Sandy Mackenzie was the teacher. He was the second coxswain of the Invergordon lifeboat and he was also a technical, woodwork and metalwork teacher. We used to get three hours of seamanship a week. The school had a dozen Mirror dinghies and a 26ft launch called Red Wing. It was great for the Avochies, who were going to follow their families into the fishing. I can honestly say without that background I would never have gone near a boat.  The school no longer teaches seamanship, which is a pity and a sign of the times. It has long since sold off all its boats. I think the janitor bought the launch.

I also used days off school to get out to sea. ‘Study leave’ I called it!  I left school at 15, on Friday 30th May 1988 and started night-shift on one of the oil boats at half past six the same day at Invergordon. Things really got started when I was a cellar boy in The Byre. Whenever he came in, I kept getting on to Derrick MacDonald of MacDonald Ferries to let me have a run. I had a moustache, a very small moustache, which made me look older and made sure I didn’t get asked too many questions, and I probably got away with a lot more than I should have at that age.

Derrick’s father was old Somerled MacDonald, the farmer at Sheeppark Farm, who operated the Invergordon-Balblair ferry service, and then when the oil business got under way they ran all the workboats to the rigs in the firth. These were stand-by boats: cargo boats, tugs, landing craft – anything between 30ft and 95 ft. They were all named after birds. The first job I had was on a boat called Gannet, before I left school! My friend Erwin Roehling was the skipper. Then I was on Tharos, a semi-submersible support rig which was later involved with the Piper Alpha disaster. I was crewing with my uncle ‘Buller’ Mackay, and Erwin. Then there was Merlin – that was my company car, so to speak! I used to take it home and tie it up next to the fishing boats in the harbour at night, then take it to Invergordon in the morning. It was a 40ft tug, mostly taking passengers to the rigs.  I was also skipper of Skua, a solid steel workboat, and the rig was Trident 10, a jack-up rig sitting on top of Kawala barge in the wet dock at Invergordon. The pay was £1.60 an hour and I was loaded at the end of the week. I was doing 80 or 90 hours a week. At one point I was working more hours than my father, my mother and my older brother put together. I would go to work at 5 o’clock in the morning and not get home till 10 o’clock at night. I can remember times getting a call at 10 at night to go back to Invergordon. From the age of 16, I got £3.20 an hour. I didn’t have any time for drinks, parties, girls. Most people that age have pop singers’ posters all over the wall. I had RNLI lifeboat posters. I knew every single boat in the MacDonald Ferries fleet – their length, their width, their horsepower, all at the top of my head.

I don’t drink, never have done. I just don’t like the taste of it. I think I can count on one hand all the times I’ve touched alcohol. There was the games room upstairs at the Royal was all I did. So my wages stayed more or less intact. I gave the money to my mam and she banked it for us.

Cromarty Firth with rigs © Calum Davidson

Oh they were lively times, taxi service for the rigs. There were a few guys you knew, drinkers you’d drop off at the rig, and you knew fine you’d be back an hour or two later to take them ashore again, they’d been sent off by the rig boss, the OIM (Offshore Installation Manager). Some of the OIMs were little Hitlers. We weren’t caring – we were getting the money for the runs. The heaviest drinkers, who would have been drinking right through the night and only had an hour or two’s sleep, they’d be scaffolders. Don’t get me wrong – they  were the greatest guys to work with. Nothing was a problem with them. Although they were party animals, blazing drunk, they’d always be polite, good with you; they were family, the scaffolders. As far as rig crews themselves were concerned, they were mostly very good too. With rigs stacked in the Firth for a long time, you’d get on first name terms with them.

When I finished on the rig boats I worked briefly at the fish farm here and at Ardersier for a short time, then the fishing over at Gairloch, but I wasn’t keen on that. Then, it was 1993, I got a phone call saying there was a new owner of the Cromarty-Nigg ferry.  My contact said,  “There’s a guy coming up from the Department of Transport (DTI) next Friday, do you fancy sitting your boatman’s licence?” “Yeah, okay,” I said.

The DTI man was Captain MacFarlane, a Shetlander, a big, huge old tall man. We were sat at the big conference table in the Cromarty Firth Port Authority office, and there was this model boat. He pointed: “This is you, and that’s a ship towing a rig. Who has the right of way, what lights would be displayed?” and so on. One of the questions I always remember was, “You are leaving Invergordon proceeding east, and on your starboard side you see a yellow flashing light. Mr Young, what would that light be?” I was still young, quite nervous, and to try and break the ice, I said, quick as a flash, “A snowplough on the Black Isle.”

He pulled his glasses down, looked over the top of them, and said: “Is that your final answer?” I says, “No, it would be a hovercraft.” “Thank you very much,” he says.

One question he kept asking, and I didn’t know the answer, and he said if you don’t get it I’ve got to fail yer: “What fog signal does a vessel under 50 metres make when it’s at anchor?”  I said, “I don’t know, do I guess?” Old MacFarlane said: “You must know, you have to answer it. I will give you five minutes. I will leave the room and come back.”

So I sat and thought desperately. At anchor, it had to be one of three: a horn, a gong, or a bell. The penny dropped: it was the bell. He said, “There you go,” and signed the form, and that was it. It’s a lot harder now. These days a boatmaster’s certificate involves a three-day sea survival course, two-day firefighting, four-day first aid, a full day VHF radio operator’s course, your oral and practical exam. A couple of weeks, and probably a couple of grand. Not an hour in the Port Authority office and £45 as it was when I did it.

Cromarty Rose

So there I was on Cromarty Rose, and here I still am, fourteen years later. Yeah, I’ve had a few accidents. In the early days I was too busy yapping, and she got stuck on the slipway and stayed there until the next tide. I’ve broken down in the middle of the channel, due to a lot of seawater getting into the diesel. We managed to make it into Nigg. I had a farmer’s wife with two young kids on board, one in a pushchair, one barely walking, and she was white as a ghost. She said “I’m never coming back.”

On a good day, a nice calm day, if you wanted to learn anything about boat handling you probably couldn’t pick a better boat. But if there’s a strong tide or wind, anything you know about seamanship can be thrown out the window. You are always taught you should be head into the wind or head into the tide or whatever, but the way it is with the ferry you are always side on and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s a landing craft boat, and if you don’t get it right on the slipway approach, you could fill with water in seconds. The first shot I had, it was on the Nigg side which is much tougher than Cromarty. Cromarty, you know where the wind is, and the tide, but at Nigg, it’s so close to the deep channel. You’ve got wind and tide and you’ve got eddies as well. The tide is ebbing in the middle but coming in at the shore, so the Nigg waters swirl round. And then you’ve got groundswell; because the channel’s so deep the water wants to come on to the beach so quick and then you’re surfing. Nigg’s the nightmare. Well, my first time, it was October, pitch dark and a howling westerly gale. I was the most relaxed I’ve ever been because I thought, there’s no way I’m gonna do this, this boats’s gonna end up on the beach and I’ll be able to walk off and get a taxi home. And the landing went just fine.

You do 44 landings a day and you never do the same one twice, because by the time you get back to the slip the tide’s further up or further out; spring tides you are hitting the bottom. There’s no easy steering. We’re conventional: we’ve got two propellers, two rudders and you’ve got no control of the bow, so you have to line your bow up first. You use your ramp as a brake, lowering it quick on to the slip so it holds your bow there while you work her stern up into the weather, or the tide, or whatever.

She’s an old bucket sometimes but you’ve got to love her, I suppose. When she’s coming in with the ramp still up she looks like somebody just belted her in the nose but she’s a good toy to play with, she really is. She’s underpowered and she traps a lot of wind. When there’s a birl of ebb tide and a strong westerly wind, it can take an hour to get from Nigg to Cromarty, y’know. I’ve seen us get from Cromarty to Nigg in less than three minutes and then 48 to get home.

When Nigg Yard was on the go, it didn’t matter what the weather was, you crossed for the men, although you wouldn’t for the normal day-to-day passengers. You made a special effort for the Nigg men. I remember going in to Nigg at three in the morning, the back shift coming home, and it was a right hoolie of a gale and the swell was so large you were seeing all of the slip one minute and none of it the next. We went in on the top of a wave and landed on the top of the slip and the wave fell away and left us there, high and dry, propellers turning in mid-air. That was pure luck, because if I’d misjudged this wave it would have slammed us down hard on the top of the slip and burst the boat open. There was nothing to do with skill at all, just guess, hope and pray. All the Nigg men ran on real quick, and then another wave came in and lifted us up and took us off again.

First shift we would leave Cromarty at half six in the morning, then staff, half seven. The shuttle would start at 8.00a.m. Then at half past four we took the back shift over; at quarter past five we took the day shift home. The back shift would be taken at the back of three in the morning except Fridays when they finished at eleven. Nigg work went up and down and more or less finished by 2000.

I never had any trouble with any of the workmen. We’ve had to carry a few boys out of “The Piggery” (Nigg pub) to help out. When it was rough, they all knew not to take their bikes, because they wouldn’t have time to run on with them. They’d leave the bikes at the top of the slip. They’d give you a bit of stick if you were ever late. The biggest worrier of the whole lot when we were on the water was my father Andy, he’d always be up in the wheelhouse with me when it was rough.

I have never ever been afraid on the ferry. Always wonder what I’ll do if an engine fails. You could have a flexi coupling in the shaft might break, or the engine could pack in for some reason or another. She handles like a pig with one engine down. There’s nothing worse. You can only turn her one way then. Takes half the firth to turn her in.

Visitors normally come in waves – it’s all Australians one year, then Italians. The last two years it’s been all Brits, very few foreigners at all. Kids make your day. You say to them, “You take it across,” and they get their photograph taken and they love it. On a good day you can tell them to turn three spogues of the wheel to the left or right and they think they’re steering the boat in! The rudders aren’t hardly moving, you are actually taking it in on the engines, but they think they’re doing it, right into the slip, it’s great.

A lot of old war service people come up, an incredible number. They hear the name on the shipping forecast and they think ‘I must go up there again’. We have the charity walkers and cyclists doing the John O’Groats to Land’s End thing.

A few years ago there were army guys going all over Scotland’s war memorials laying wreaths, and we picked them up so they could lay a wreath over the wreck of  Natal about 7 in the morning.

The public often ask, what chances do you have of seeing dolphins, and I tell them the same chances as the moon at night! You can see them at the top, middle or bottom of the tide, first thing in the morning or last thing at night. There’s no pattern at all. What we do when we sight them is call Sarah Pern of the EcoVentures dolphin cruises up on the radio. We keep her updated, especially when we saw the minke whale last summer. We thought at first it was a big tree and we should warn her. It was just off the Cromarty Harbour, and we thought we’d tell Sarah to watch out for this tree; then the tree disappeared, meaning, the whale dived.

The crew is always two: the skipper and the deckie. It’s quite funny how it’s turned full circle, with Erwin Roehling having been the skipper on the rig boats when I left school and I was the deckhand; now it’s the other way round on Cromarty Rose; I’m the skipper and Erwin’s the deckhand.

I think the ferry’s getting busier since Johnny Henderson took it over. During the winter we seem to get a fair bit of rig work too, which is quite good. We are the only boat in the firth with a passenger licence for 50, whereas all the MacDonald boats can only carry up to 12. When we had a lot of rigs in, in the 1990s, we thought the Stena Rigs were the worst, we called them much cheapness because they tended to lie out a couple of miles outside the Sutors to save money on berthing fees. Cromarty Rose, best of luck to her, is not the fastest ship in the fleet, so it was a long steam out and you might be home putting the kettle on and get a phone call saying “Oh there’s a bloke just turned up at the harbour wanting out.” Jack Bates was the best, just off the harbour. We knew all the guys on Jack Bates, and the whole crew were just fantastic with us. Anything that we wanted, it was no bother.

Why were there so many rigs coming in and out back in the 90s? Well, say a rig is inspection surveyed by Shell for a contract. Three months later, its next job is for BP. BP will survey it again; three months later, Conoco hires it – same all over again. For an inspection you’d have a full complement aboard I would think, which could be anything up to 90 men. If a rig’s just in to lay-up, it would be a skeleton crew of between four and eight.

Rig transporter ship with two jack-ups aboard ©Peter Tilbrook

The reason we’ve had so few rigs in the last couple of years is the high price of oil. The one in the firth now is getting made seaworthy to go to India, I believe. I think as long as the oil lasts, the firth will never be empty of rigs because it’s such a good anchorage.

But they do nothing for Cromarty’s economy. There’s nobody from here employed on these rigs. There’s only one side of the firth working – everything’s done out of Invergordon. The Port Authority when they had the lease of the harbour, they never did anything with it. Okay, they put that stupid ugly Bailey bridge on, but that was it. The Port Authority states they pile money back into the communities round the firth. Well, they’re not spending a penny of it round here that I can see. They could be putting money into subsidy for the ferry, but they say it’s not an economic development, which is all wrong really. An all-year, north-south route would be a lifeline for the Black Isle and the Nigg side.

Nor do we see any benefit from the liners. They take all the passengers off to

Oblivious ©Calum Davidson

Dunrobin and Loch Ness. What’s Loch Ness compared with Cromarty? Why take all the cruise parties there and none of them here? Loch Ness, it’s like walking down a lobby, just a stretch of water with hills either side. There’s a lot more character in the town, and there’s a lot more character in The Sutors than there is in Loch Ness. The visitors could be bussed from Invergordon to Nigg, then cross on the ferry and have a look round. Then their bus could take them on through the Black Isle and wherever. I’m sure there’s a lot of people who’d find that more fun than just going down Loch Ness.

I often think Cromarty’s a thorn in the side of Highland Council. They’ve got to look after the West Coast, that’s supposed to be God’s country as they see it, but Cromarty’s out the way, out at the end.

The future of Cromarty Rose? She’s over 21 years old now. Her hull is sound, as good as the day she left the shipyard really; all she’s got is a lot of superficial rust. Mechanically, she could do with a serious overhaul: engines, rampwork, gear, turning table and maybe a bit of modernising in the wheelhouse. She’s probably the only boat afloat today that still works on a compass and compass only. No radar, no echo-sounder, no GPS – the most technological thing on the ferry is my mobile phone.

I could maybe do with a change some time. It does get a bit boring. The practical boat-handling side is always a challenge though, and the craic with the passengers can be good.

On a good day, the sea is the biggest invite on the planet. I’ve gone to Newcastle from here in one of the tugs and it was like a mill-pond the whole way down and through the night, sitting on the afterdeck looking at the moon – it was just absolutely great. Just a sheen for miles and miles. I see all sorts of nightfall on the Rose; in the season we’re sailing before sunrise and after dark.

I can’t swim, still can’t swim a stroke. If you asked a hundred skippers, I think you’d find 90 of them would say ‘oh, I don’t like getting wet’.

I don’t believe much in the superstitions of the sea myself but there’s still a fair bit of it about. You can’t mention pigs on the boat, you’ve got to say curly tails or grunters. There was a farmer over by Fearn who came on board with a rubber pig’s head as a cover for his towing hitch, and Michael (Roehling) said “we can’t let you sail with that on”. You’ve got fisher boats which will only turn the direction the sun goes. Salmon are either ‘red fish’ or ‘queer fellas’; rabbits you call ‘underground jiggers’ or ‘thumpers’. You shouldn’t whistle or you’d raise too much wind. You’re not allowed Swan Vesta matches on board – very unlucky – and if you meet the minister, you’ve got to turn round and go home.

One thing we still do is pay our dues to the sea. We get coppers from passengers and put them into a jar, and at the end of the season we throw the jar in the middle. We say, we’re making our living by the sea, so thanks, we’re giving you something back.

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