Queen Mary 2 and Svitzer Milford: tugging at the heart strings

This photograph sums it all up – on the Svitzer Marine tug, Milford, looking from her bridge at Queen Mary 2, Cunard’s quite beautiful new liner looming up to Greenock’s Ocean Terminal this morning (16th September 2011). You can see the Milford’s screen wipers in the shot.

Our first port of call was the James Watt Dock where the Svitzer Marine tugs are berthed.

Ayton Cross (above) moved across the dock, filling it. We know her from her work towing Maersk’s laid up B-class cargo ships out of Loch Striven; and from her skilled work in returning to Faslane HMS Astute, class leader of the UK’s new generation hunter-killer, nuclear fuelled, conventionally armed submarine who had become overly friendly with a gravel bank near the Skye bridge.

Berthing the tug, her master could be seen on the bridge that is more like a macho birdcage, with 360 degree views – where you really want to be.

We  were at the dock, along with professional photographer, Dougie Coull, (above left) waiting for our host, Douglas MacManus (above centre), Svitzer’s Marine Officer for Clydeport and the west coast of Scotland. He turned up with Andy Perry (above right), five weeks into his new job as the company’s Marine Superintendent UK North West, based at the Port of Liverpool.  Twelve years a submariner, Douglas has served on three classes, Swiftsure, Trafalgar and Vanguard, between them gathering the experience of service in hunter killer and nuclear ballistic missile armed submarines. Andy’s previous service has been with DFDS Ferries on the south coast, the Bilbao route and those out of Newcastle.

Both men have a personal ‘map’ of UK waters, shaped by their specific sea-going experience. Douglas says that when he came here to work for Svitzer, he spent personal time familiarising himself with the Argyll coast above the waves. It’s so easy to forget that submariners lives are governed by channels, passages, depths, shoals and obstacles – a world never seen but made present by electronic readers like sonar.

We boarded the doughty Milford (above), shortly to carry all of us to greet the incoming Queen Mary 2 with a water display – the shipping world’s tradition of ceremonial welcome, performed as a gift by tug operators.

We saw Milford too in Loch Striven and the first time on perhaps the most exciting of all of the manoeuvres these marine sheepdogs carried out there. This was the day when six tugs – summoned by Douglas from the UK’s east and west coasts, arrived there in thick fog (which did lift)  to ease apart the raft of, then, six ships, slide the elderly Sealand Performance out of the middle and push the other five back together again. Sealand was off to work her passage to the  knacker’s yard and she didn’t want to go. She hung on, literally for dear life, eventually having to be cut free from the floor of the loch.

Into service in 2004 from the Baltija yard in Odense in Denmark, the seven year young Milford is rated at 60 tonnes of ‘bollard pull’, is equipped for firefighting (hence her water display duty) and operates with a crew of three – Master, David Allan; Engineer, Ronald Fraser; and Mate, William Green. When she’s firefighting or doing a water display, the demands of the monitor controlling the water pump leaves the Master with no more than 10% of available power for the engines.

She’s an ASD (Azimuth Stern Drive) tug, which, as well as being more efficient and costing less to maintain, encourages the practice of towing bow-to-bow, with the tug ahead of and facing the tow, pulling from her bow winch, with her engine going astern – like a terrier tugging at your sleeve. We saw this feature in the manoeuvres in Loch Striven and again very recently when Svitzer tugs Anglegarth and Milford (with Ayton Cross as rear restraint) brought the first completed aircraft carrier block from BAE Systems at Govan, en route for Roysth in Fife.

Milford’s engineer, Ronald Fraser (above), threw the mooring warp on board and Milford was off out of the dock, the berth at Ocean Terminal empty – but not for long.

In the haze soon to be rain, the shape of the Queen Mary 2 appeared. She needs no tugs to berth, equipped with various thrusters and a propulsion that leaves almost no wake – silent running. If wind strengths rise above 35mph she may use tugs for this manoeuvre – but this is largely as reassurance for nervous passengers.

Her appearance is Milford’s cue to get the water pumped up – and out it comes, with us three guests quickly into camera protection mode. A change of wind brings a drench you don’t want to think about.

Milford gives her both barrels (above) and the massive ship drifts into a curtain of water laid at her feet (below).

Milford’s Master, David Allan (below)  looks appreciatively at her from his bridge, like all of us present, warming to her lines, to her clear identity as a classic Cunard ‘liner’. Asked which is the most beautiful ship he has escorted he says it’s hard not to respond to the Clydebuilt ships. When Queen Elizabeth 2 was making her last visit before leaving service, he – in Svitzer Mallaig, with Anglegarth, went over to take her into Belfast – and then came haring back across the Irish Sea to bring her into Greenock for the unforgettable flotilla that met her.

As the QM2 came past us, she hooted a swop for the water display – which by this time had landed a couple of direct hits on the camera lens – but this shot (below) caught an unexpected playfulness in her lines so we had to use it. She is genuinely stunning, obviously modern but with a sleek and timeless grace that makes cruising seem less tower block and more discreet.

Captain Allan takes Milford bow-to-bow with the Queen, bringing us close in to her amazingly absent bow wave, the start of the thrilling flare of her bows and the surprising pop-out viewing platforms her crew seem to be able to produce from all parts of her hull (below).

Her funnel array (below) is an intriguingly designed wrap around, continually drawing the eye back to its geometry.

The fake windows on the outer ring of the funnel are a feature much used in her design, particularly in the tiered wind breaks protecting her stern decks (below). This is the only part of her design that seems somehow naff. Like the Scottish Parliament building, this is decoration and not design.

Her lifeboats suggest a better class of life support for the gentlemen and a more utilitarian provision for the players. The completely covered one (below) that lets you see where you’re going, is also more stable, with twin hulls; where the blinkered double-ender type for giant ocean rowers (next below) is a more wallowing single huller.

Hard to believe that discrimination between perceived classes exists even in extremis?

Queen Mary 2′s striped paintwork (stern detail below) is a clever sleight of hand that  loses the number of accommodation decks she boasts, creating a sense of the spaciousness that is her defining characteristic.

The openwork steel towers here are, of course, not on but at her stern and are the crane towers of Greenock’s Ocean Terminal facility.

The skirl of the pipes hails the ship and back on the bridge of Svitzer Milford, Dougie Coull (a fellow Ship AIS aficionado – but with a receiver/transmitter) makes a call in a quiet moment (below).

David Allan looks thoughtful as he and Ronald Fraser discuss what they see as the professional challenges in the Clyde and what are its most entrancing passages.

Brandanes will be interested to know that they are the possessor of the toughie – for a tug, bringing a ship into Rothesay docks is reckoned to be a white knuckle ride. There’s very little room and the tide running past the entrance is strong.

Both men agree that the passage escorting tankers up to Ineos Refining’s fuel depot at Finnart in Loch Long is by far their favourite job. As they conjure a sunlit day for a such a run, they sigh in unison with pleasure at the thought of it. They nail this to the glorious scenery in that fjord-like loch. Ronald says he could be in Norway.

This is an interesting end to a fascinating and educative adventure in good company.

We’ve all been out to see and greet a great cruise liner – and here, in the working snug of Milford’s bridge, are men who enable so much of the shipping on the Clyde to go about its business – discovering that what is arguably the key delight of cruising is a recurring feature of their job.

We’ve thrilled to see the liner and to see it up so very close. That has been magnificent. Given the choice of a leisure trip on the Queen or a working one on a tug, though, the puritan work ethic rules. Saddle up Milford. Whatever floats your boat.

Postscript

A group from Svitzer Marine, including some of those we’d met on Milford,  were entertained to lunch and a tour on Queen Mary 2 this afternoon. Knowing that our readers might enjoy seeing something of the interior of the ship and hearing how the team had found the experience, Douglas MacManus has thoughtfully sent us this note on it, with some photographs.

‘Lunch in the Britannia Restaurant (below) onboard QM2 today was sumptuous and our quick tour of the vessel confirmed in our minds how stately she is inside. We were very well cared for when we were onboard. It was very easy to forget that we were onboard a ship and not in a 5* hotel and restaurant.

‘The guys in the photo of six are: Andy Perry (Marine Superintendent North West UK); Rob Chignell (General Manager North UK); Willie Green (Tug Master), David Allan (Tug Master); Stevie Carr (Tug Master) and me.’

DM

We will also be publishing a video on this event, material for which was filmed and recorded today and is currrently being edited.