I was born in Gourock. My father was a Clyde Pilot. Loved watching the ships come and go on the river. Sometimes my father would taken me on a tour of Scott Lithgow Shipyard and the new ships built there as his other role was to take new ships on trial.
I doubt any of the younger generations, that being anyone 50 and below have any idea just how busy and important the Clyde was to the Scottish economy. And of course all of the collective skills of those who worked there, have sadly been lost to times past.
Born and live on the South Bank and can see the outfitting dock the Lusitania was fitted at..... And 100 years of my family lived and worked on the Clyde as draughtsman, carpenters and marine engineers. The significance that river has been in my family and likely 1000s of others made it seem like a beacon of life and to see it as is nowadays.... It's sad... It feels like unless you lived and died near the Clyde you truly don't appreciate the social and cultural significance it had. Walking the banks now, knowing where things were and ships built, to have been ripped down and replaced by boxes of glass and green lined paths is like looking at the Clyde in an alternate dimension. Anyway, I digress. Nothing stays the same. Thanks for the upload, it's cathartic.
As an old Greenockian, from a seafaring family, this was a treat to see. It's shameful, though, what was allowed to happen to Greenock and to Clyde shipbuilding especially.
My dad was a docker on the clyde and when we were kids at the bottomof centrre street the dock sheds was our playground killing the rats no playstatoin then it is a disgrace to see the clyde now compare to other countries we were the best shipbuilding team in the world and we had a large iron ore terminal for the metalworks and also Drydocks for the boats Now There is a developer wants to fill in this historic piece of the clyde and build hoses on them what a disgrace how has this been allowed a joke the clyde ws my pllayground
Grandparents lived in. Port Dundas from the 1930 till the 1960 till their teniment collinton street just out side the Clyde. Port. Always. Busy. With. Boats sadly. Wee. Don't. Have. Any. Part. Of the area. Left. As it. Now the motorway
My grandparents lived above Jeanie,s. Sweet shop wee used to get the penny. Tray and pick our. Sweets the close my grandparents stayed in was one of the last to. Come down and they moved to sight hill flats the were just built fountain well avenue grandparents name was Joyce the joyce,s went to saint Joseph's school girls Margret Betty Mary Isobel Agnes Patricia and one boy. James
QE2 was the 1960s, I can vaguely remember the late 1950s, heavy industry in Parkead Foundry, Colville, steelwork where we saw the furnaces at n8ght, red glowing molten metal, handled by men in leather outfits.
