Dredge Bridges - Lochy Bridge and Bridge of Oich

Today, I came across the picture above of the road bridge across the River Lochy at Fort William, the one which carries the 'Road to the Isles' (A830) west to Mallaig. It's not the present bridge, obviously, but I sort of had it in my mind that the previous bridge here had been a suspension bridge. There was nothing for it: I had to research the history of the bridges at this spot. So here it is in reverse order.

The present bridge was built in 1968 and replaced the one pictured above. It was built in 1928, designed by Sir Owen Williams. I'd heard that name before and thought it might have been him who designed the two distinctive bow shaped bridges from the same era on Rannoch Moor (you know - these ones). But according to this article these weren't actually by Williams although he was responsible for a number of road bridges in Scotland, mostly on the A9 and mostly now by-passed (see here).

The 1928 Lochy Bridge replaced a suspension bridge built in 1849 pictured below: this was the first bridge across the river here and, as you can see, its towers were retained in the second, 1928 bridge (although just for decoration as the deck of the 1928 bridge was supported by piers on the riverbed rather than suspended from wires running between the towers).

Lochy Bridge 1849-1928 looking west. Picture credit Aberdeen University Archive

Now I called the 1849 bridge a suspension bridge but strictly speaking it's not, it's a taper suspension bridge. According to the Wikipedia entry for them, they:

differ from the conventional suspension bridge design in that they effectively function as a double cantilever bridge. Each opposing cantilever system is self-supporting. The cantilever half-deck structure of each cantilever is suspended from angled chains, which hang from a tapered main attached to the top of the tower and to the outer end of the half-deck. The main chain taper is achieved by incrementally reducing the number of links stacked across the chain's width as it moves farther from the support tower.

No, I don't understand that either. Maybe it just means it's sort of half cantilever (like the Forth Bridge) and half suspension? Anyway, taper suspension bridges were also called Dredge bridges after their inventor James Dredge who patented the idea in 1836. Their advantage was that they were cheaper and quicker to build. Lochy Bridge cost £1,790 (about £200,000 in today's money), paid for by the local landowner Cameron of Lochiel. That was considerably cheaper than the lowest offer received to build a traditional stone bridge which was £8,000 (about £900k today). The Dredge bridge also took just five months (August to December 1849) to build.

Although a road had been built from Fort William to Arisaig by the Highland Roads and Bridges Commission in 1805-1808, no bridge over the River Lochy was provided at that time and travellers had to continue to use a ferry across the river. A newspaper report of the building of the 1849 Dredge bridge to replace it referred to the ferry as "well and attentively managed" but nevertheless a "plague of careful shepherds and a cause of dread to nervous travellers".

To anyone who has had occasion to cross the river in the old ferry-boat, even in a calm fine dry day, it was unnecessary to say that there was loss of time and much inconvenience experienced; but in a dark wet Lochaber night how very much were all the disagreeables of the ferry increased? The ferry has this day given place to the bridge, and Lochiel has thereby conferred, not on his tenantry merely, but on the public at large an important boon.    

So said Sheriff Fraser at a dinner to celebrate the opening of the bridge held at Robertson's Hotel at Banavie on 20 December 1849. Sadly, Lochiel's health prevented him from being there but James Dredge was: he had supervised the work personally and the sheriff praised him for having paid for cakes and oranges for the 400 local schoolchildren who had turned out on opening day.

But wait a minute - was Lochiel actually as generous as he'd been cracked up to be? The 1875 Ordnance Survey 6 inch map (below) shows a toll gate on the bridge. Does that mean Lochiel had merely fronted the price of the bridge but was expecting to get it back from his dutiful tenants and shepherds over time through tolls? I don't know but no toll gate is marked on the 2nd edition of the 6 inch map surveyed in 1899 (here) so perhaps the price had been paid off by then.

National Libraries of Scotland 

 

There's nothing left to see of the Dredge bridge at Inverlochy but you can still see another one not far away. It's at Bridge of Oich where the A82 crosses the River Oich as it debouches from Loch Oich at Aberchalder just north of Invergarry.

Bridge of Oich from the east. Picture credit: Shawn With the pediments above the arches, I wonder if Dredge was consciously evoking the Georgian architecture of nearby Fort Augustus in contrast to the medieval architecture of Inverlochy Castle he'd sought to evoke with the decorative battlements on the towers at Lochy Bridge?

The Bridge of Oich was built a year after Lochy Bridge, in 1850 (not 1854 as its Historic Scotland and Wikipedia entries say). It replaced a traditional stone bridge which had been washed away in a storm in 1849. (The same storm carried away half of the bridge over the River Oich at Fort Augustus, the rest of which is still standing today (see here), and the whole of the 17th century seven arch bridge across the River Ness at Inverness (see here)). The Bridge of Oich took three months to complete and cost just £620 although it was much shorter than the Lochy Bridge (145 feet (45 metres) as against 240 feet (75m)). Dredge had also stipulated that he would be able to use free of charge the stone from the fallen Bridge of Oich his was to replace.

Dredge also gave a two year guarantee on the Bridge of Oich meaning he would rebuild it at his own cost if it was damaged from any cause within that period except lightning, earthquake or civil commotion. I'm not sure if he gave a similar guarantee at Inverlochy but it was brave of him to do so at Aberchalder because three bridges at this spot had been washed away by floods in the last 35 years. And it's a testament to Dredge's design and workmanship that his guarantee was never called upon and the Bridge of Oich is still standing today. It was bypassed by a new road bridge 100 metres up stream in 1932 (see here and here) but was left as a footbridge. By the 1990s it had fallen into disrepair but was restored by Historic Scotland in 1995-97 and today is a Category A listed building. You can go for a virtual walk across it here.

I leave you with a photo of an interpretation board at Bridge of Oich explaining the Dredge design. (It looks far more cantilever than suspension to me but what do I know ...?)

This board also has the error that the bridge was opened in 1854 but contemporary news reports are quite clear that it was built and opened in 1850. Picture credit Adam Fagen

 

The Korean plane crash

This has got nothing to do with Kyles or Western Isles but it’s another subject I’m interested in and I found myself writing this to try and make sense of it in my own mind so I’ll just publish it here anyway.

So, video of the plane on its original final approach shows a puff of smoke and flame from the RIGHT engine consistent with bird strike.

Moments later the pilot tells control:  “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, bird strike, bird strike, going around”

First thing puzzling the YouTuber 737 captains (Dennis is very good) is: why did they decide to go around (overshoot the runway) instead of continuing to land?

Second puzzle is that a bird strike, even one which wrecks an engine, is a not a Mayday because a 737 is perfectly capable of flying on one engine so there’s no immediate danger.

One minute later, the pilot tells control he’s going to land on the same runway from the other end, do a U-turn, in other words. The experts will tell you that’s a very bad idea, unless absolutely necessary, due to the risk of making an arse of it by doing things in a hurry.

The decision to do a U-turn suggests that, in fact, the plane had lost BOTH engines and therefore going the long way round to land in the original direction wasn’t an option.

This is corroborated by the fact that the experts are saying that you can see from the landing video that the LEFT engine appears not to have been running when it landed (no exhaust visible) whereas the RIGHT one (the one the earlier video showed emitting a puff of smoke and flame) appeared to be running (visible exhaust) although we can’t tell how much thrust it was delivering – maybe not much at all.

The second (left) engine might have been lost from a subsequent bird strike not caught on camera. Or it might be that the pilots misidentified the engine which had been hit and shut down the good engine (that’s happened before – British Midland at Kegworth (East Midlands) in 1988.)

Kegworth 1988 - didn't reach the runway and hit motorway embankment. Lucky not to burst into flames

And we know that the plane landed with its flaps and wheels up. That could be because, in their haste to land from a U-turn, the pilots simply forgot to lower them. Or it might be that, with insufficient thrust from either engine, there wasn’t enough hydraulic pressure to lower them. (Wheels – but not flaps – on a 737 can be lowered without hydraulics by pulling a rip cord on the cockpit floor which opens the hatches and lets them drop out by gravity. But apparently, this can’t be reached from sitting in the pilots’ seats so maybe no time to get up and do it when you’re performing a U-turn.)

But there was apparently enough hydraulic pressure available to control the plane’s ailerons and elevators to direct it onto the runway at the right attitude so the other (more likely?) possibility about why no wheels or flaps is that they were deliberately kept up because, with no (or not enough) power from either engine, the pilots wanted to keep the plane as aerodynamically ‘clean’ as possible so that it would glide as far as possible to reach the runway and not land short of it.

And finally, the plane landed very far down the runway. No doubt very difficult to plant it on the correct spot when you’re going very fast due to no flaps. If it had landed in correct place, it MIGHT have been going a bit slower when hit that concrete bund with the antennae and there MIGHT have been fewer fatalities. (I gather a plane will take much longer to slow down skidding along its bottom than rolling on its wheels with its brakes applied – do pilots get trained that?)

So two overall possibilities: the pilots apparently disregarded all their training and made a complete and utter howling fuck of the whole thing from the moment of the (first?) bird strike – went around when they should have continued to land; did a U-turn when they should have gone all the way round (or had to do a U-turn because they shut down the wrong engine); and in their haste, forgot to put the flaps and wheels down again …

Or, more charitably, they erred by not continuing to land and going around instead but then, after that mistake was irretrievable, found themselves with no (or very little) power due to multiple bird strikes so HAD to do a U-turn and keep the flaps and wheels up to ‘stretch the glide’. But unfortunately, just stretched it a little too far, which might be forgivable under pressure.

The latter is the more plausible scenario, I think. (I’m thinking about the British Airways 777 which lost power on approach to Heathrow in 2008. The co-pilot there managed to ‘stretch the glide’ almost to perfection by pulling up the flaps (but not the wheels because that would have momentarily created more drag as the wheel well hatches opened) and dropped it onto the grass at the near end of the runway which wrote off the aeroplane but with no loss of life or even serious injury.)

BA38 almost made it to the runway

What about Sully, Miracle on the Hudson? He lost both engines due to multiple bird strikes. He judged he was too far away from the runway he’d just taken off from to do a U-turn back to it so he landed on the river where there were no obstacles to hit. Maybe the Korean pilots should have aimed for the sea instead (easy to be wise with benefit of hindsight). Maybe the takeaway from this accident is that, if you find yourself with no power, don’t aim for a runway where there’s too much of a risk of getting it slightly wrong and hitting something around the runway. Instead aim for open water (or, I gather, landing on trees if you can’t make a runway is very effective because they break up the momentum by the branches ripping off the wings and engines and whatnot but leaving the fuselage intact. Don’t try it at home, though.)

We haven’t mentioned the concrete bund thing at the end of the runway the plane crashed into. That’s what killed everybody. I get the argument that runs: (1) runways are designed so that you can stop in their length and if you can’t do that, then don’t try to land on them; and (2) if you’re going to keep space clear around a runway, you might as well tarmac over it to build a longer runway (in relation to which point (1) will then re-apply). But on balance, I think I’d be in favour of not gratuitously putting obstacles around a runway unless absolutely necessary. I gather these antennae don’t need to be mounted on anything and are themselves designed to be ‘frangible’ (breakable if hit by anything heavy like a 737).

Tom Hanks as Sully in the movie

 

Faslane #3 - Metal Industries: shipbreaking

Looking north along the deepwater wharf at 'Military Port No. 1', Faslane. Photo credit - Media Storehouse

Following on from my last post, the military ports at Faslane and Cairnryan were never intended to be permanent, only to last for the duration of the War. But even though elements of their construction had deliberately been skimped for that reason and in the interests of getting them up and running in as short a time as possible, nobody could quite imagine just dismantling the ports and returning their sites to nature: instead, the question was what to do with them now that peace had returned? 

Faslane's future was determined in August 1946 when it was announced that it was to be leased for 30 years, at a rent of £12,500 a year, to a company called Metal Industries Ltd for shipbreaking. This company was founded by three Scotsmen in 1922 and was originally called Alloa Shipbreaking Company Ltd but, having been refused space by the town after which it was named, it traded from Charlestown and Rosyth on the Firth of Forth. (Looking at Charlestown today - here - it's hard to imagine shipbreaking having been done there but it was, until 1963). 

Alloa Shipbreaking changed its name to Metal Industries in 1929 and a significant part of its work was breaking up the ships of the German Imperial Navy which had been scuttled in Scapa Flow (in Orkney) after World War 1. A firm called Cox & Danks bought the sunken hulks from the Admiralty (a battleship cost £1,000-£2,000 but you could get a destroyer for £250: it led to the eponymous Ernest Cox gaining the soubriquet 'The Man Who Bought a Navy' in the title of his biography), raised them and delivered them to the Forth where Metal Industries (MI) bought the ships, broke them up and sold the scrap metal. MI took over Cox & Danks in 1933.

The German battle cruiser Hindenburg sitting on the seabed in Scapa Flow. She was raised and broken up by Metal Industries at Rosyth in 1930, the largest ship ever to be salvaged.

The acquisition of the former military port at Faslane was to be an expansion of MI's business employing 1,500 new employees but there was still unfinished business at Scapa Flow. 

The last battle cruiser to be salvaged, the 690 feet long SMS Derfflinger (for comparison, the Titanic was 880 feet long and the QE2 963 feet) was raised in the summer of 1939 but the outbreak of World War 2 that September prevented anything further being done with her due to the Admiralty requisitioning MI's premises at Rosyth. So she floated at anchor in Scapa Flow, upside down, for the duration of the War: in fact, she spent longer afloat upside down (7 years) than she ever did the right way up (6 years). Then, in September 1946, she was towed, still upside down, down the west coast, through the Minches and round the Mull of Kintyre, to MI's new premises at Faslane. The tow was carried out by five tugs and took five days going at an average speed of about 3 knots (3.5 mph). As well as the tug boat crews, fourteen men (plus, the newspapers of the day reported, a collie dog called Roy and a cat called Corky) remained on board the Derfflinger, living in the huts erected on her flat, upward facing bottom to house the equipment supplying the compressed air pumped into her hull to keep her afloat.     

On arrival at the Tail of the Bank, between Greenock and Helensburgh, the Derfflinger, still upside down, was transferred onto a floating drydock which MI had also just acquired as part of their expansion on the Clyde: it had been used for the repair of shipping during the War and for the last few years had been moored off Rosneath Point. This operation was necessary because the inverted ship drew more than the depth of water over the bar at the entrance to the Gareloch at the Rhu Narrows whereas the drydock drew less and could cross the bar.

The bar at the entrance to the Gareloch as seen on an Admiralty Chart (when Rhu was still spelt 'Row'). See the full chart here

Now as I understand it, a floating drydock works by being partially submerged, the ship is floated into it, then the drydock is raised by having air pumped back into its flotation chambers and the ship is lifted out the water with it. I can see how that works with a ship the right way up so it comes to rest on its keel but how on earth do you chock an upside down one up so that the superstructure doesn't crumple under the weight of the hull as the dock dries out? And as if that wasn't difficult enough, the drydock couldn't be sunk far enough to get the Derfflinger into it so she had to be given added buoyancy to float her higher in the water. All in all, it took over a month to get her into the drydock before it could be towed up to Faslane: below is the arrival at the deep water wharf (and there are more pictures here: scroll to the bottom).

(A footnote about the Derfflinger is that one of her two ship's bells hangs outside the church on Eriskay (picture). But I don't know how it got there - I'm wondering if a local rowed out as she was being towed past the island and asked for a souvenir? The other bell was donated to the West German Navy in 1965.) 

In fact, the Derfflinger wasn't the first ship to arrive for scrapping at MI's new facilities: she had been preceded by a couple of months by a British battleship, HMS Iron Duke (620 feet long), which had also been towed to Faslane from Scapa Flow (although upright and able to pass the Rhu Narrows into the Gareloch afloat). She had been decommissioned as a battleship in 1931 and at the beginning of WW2 was stationed at Scapa Flow as an anti-aircraft platform. But she was damaged in an attack by German bombers in October 1939 and beached for the rest of the War (still acting as an a/a platform) until MI refloated and towed her south to Faslane for scrapping in August 1946. Much was made in the press at the time of the fact that the Iron Duke and the Derfflinger had both fought on opposite sides at the naval Battle of Jutland in 1916 during WW1 but had ended up being scrapped beside each other in the same port. (In December 1948, after she'd been cut down to the waterline, the remains of the Iron Duke were moved to Port Glasgow for final demolition there.)

The Iron Duke being towed into the Gareloch in August 1946: British Newspaper Archive

There is a series of three very good articles about MI's operations at Faslane, the biggest shipbreaking facility in Britain, which you can read here, here and here so I'll give just a few highlights: first, amongst the notable ships scrapped at Faslane was the 1914 Cunarder Aquitania (900 feet) in 1950.

The Aquitania passing the Rhu Narrows on her way to Faslane for breaking in February 1950 - Illustrated London News via The British Newspaper Archive

Scenes from the 1958 film about the sinking of the Titanic A Night to Remember (starring Kenneth More as Second Officer Lightoller) were filmed aboard the 1925 liner RMS Asturias while she was being scrapped at Faslane: apparently the port side of the ship had already been demolished so scenes on that side of the Titanic had to be filmed on the starboard side of the Asturias and reversed with a mirror!

The Asturias seen over the bow of HMS Anson both being scrapped at Faslane in 1958 - The Sphere via The British Newspaper Archive

Another notable scrapping at Faslane was HMS Vanguard (814 feet long). Ordered during the War but not commissioned until 1946, she was Britain's largest, fastest but also last battleship. Almost obsolete as soon as she was launched in the era of submarines and aircraft carriers, she was placed in reserve in 1955 and sold for scrapping in 1960: there's an excellent quality colour video on YouTube about her tow from Portsmouth and demolition at Faslane here. 

Naval ratings watching the barrel of one of HMS Vanguard's main guns being cut off in a still from the video linked to above. Note in the background Belmore House, one of the lochside mansions which had its ambience rather spoilt by the creation of the military port during the War. It served as Metal Industries' offices at Faslane

Naval ratings depart the Vanguard at Faslane in another still from the video

A final factoid from the Helensburgh Advertiser articles I enjoyed was that Metal Industries had a sale room for the sale of furnishings removed from the ships: an escritoire from the Aquitania would fetch a pretty penny on Antiques Roadshow nowadays, I'd imagine!

1950s were the heyday of shipbreaking and MI's business suffered a bit of a downturn in the early 60s due to depressed demand for scrap metal. They closed their yards at Rosyth and Charlestown on the Forth in 1963 and with the Admiralty sniffing round Faslane looking for a suitable place to station their Polaris submarines, there was probably a deal to be done. We'll come to that in the next episode.

Faslane #2 - Military Port No. 1

Photo credit Wikipedia

In 1940, the Port of London was being pounded by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz. The port which handled almost half of Britain's trade was soon down to only 25% of its operating capacity. Slightly less vulnerable ports on the west coast (Liverpool, Glasgow) managed to relieve some of the pressure but we'd be horribly vulnerable if they came under the same sort of attack as London. 

At the height of the Blitz in September 1940, an operation described as the partial removal of the Port of London to the Clyde was mounted: the so called 'Clyde Anchorages Emergency Port' involved 500 dockers and their families being sent north along with cranes, trucks and 300 barges (which due to the risks of moving them by sea had to be sent by road!) to unload cargo ships anchored off Gourock. But as useful as this was (read more about it here), what was also urgently required was more wharfage for ships to get alongside; new ports, in other words.

Ships Lying in the Clyde Anchorage Emergency Port by A J W Burgess - picture credit Art.Salon

An added problem was increased shipment of military material for which commercial ports were not ideally suited. The solution devised, therefore, was the construction of two new military ports to allow the existing ports to concentrate on commercial traffic. A committee was appointed to look for suitable sites on the west coast of Scotland ticking the following boxes: separate sites from existing ports (due to the difficulties of integrating military and civilian labour, apparently, rather than spreading eggs amongst different baskets); deep water for the largest of ocean going ships and offshore anchorage for ditto awaiting berths; railway access was a given but 'special regard' was also to be had to road access - an interesting reflection of how, in the 1940s, road transport was on the point of overtaking rail in importance. There also needed to be space for extensive railway sidings and marshalling yards; and finally, a place where all that could be achieved in the shortest possible time. Two sites were eventually chosen: Cairnryan near Stranraer on Loch Ryan and Faslane Bay on the Gareloch. 

Ordnance Survey 6 inch map, 1860

Being now so completely overwhelmed by the naval base, it's hard to imagine what Faslane Bay must have looked like in its 'virgin' state before the War. Here's an account of it in the 1890s from a book called Annals of Garelochside by W. C. Maughan (here). In the course of a walk down the east side of the loch from Garelochhead:-

Faslane Bay is soon reached, and here the sides of the loch are well wooded, with grassy slopes leading up to the heather hills above, and handsome villas are seen gleaming amidst their surrounding plantations. Faslane House is a little way back from the middle of the bay, the former residence of the MacAulays [of Ardencaple] … . A good way down from the house, near the shore, there stands the old oak tree, under whose boughs, according to tradition, the crowing of a cock presaged the death of a MacAulay. The name of the spot Cnoch-na-Cullah, or "Knoll of the Cock" seems appropriate to the legend. An irregular pile Faslane [House] is, the front having been built 1863, the portion behind about 1745, and a still older small structure in the rear. There is a rolling stream, with many a dark eddying pool, and foaming cascade, which runs past the house into the peaceful bay. In former years the Colquhouns of Luss lived at Faslane, for a short time in summer, as a sort of marine residence, occupying the older part of the mansion. … Crossing the burn at the back of Faslane House, the old burying place, round the picturesque ruins of the ancient chapel, is seen on the slope of the field, a sequestered and beautiful spot, with oak and ash trees throwing their shade over the mouldering walls, all mantled with wallflower and creepers, and the upper end of the enclosure is rank with long grass. An ash tree of some size has long grown within the crumbling walls, and spread its great boughs over the ruins, while the roofless structure offers free entrance to wintry gales and summer zephyrs alike, with rushing wailing sound.

Returning to Faslane Bay, the house known as Belmore appears in the midst of a flourishing plantation, near the road. ... [It] was acquired in 1856 by Mr, M'Donald, who remodelled the mansion, giving it the handsome appearance which it now has. In those days the loch side presented a wild scene of nature — whins, sloes, wild roses, and the indigenous copse woods and shrubs of the district, abounded on the hillside, with a few older trees and belts of plantations on the farms.

Looking north towards Faslane Bay. This spot is covered by the south end of the naval base today

Further north almost at the head of the bay. This is all now covered by the naval base. Photo by kind permission of Graeme Lappin

North end of Faslane Bay in 1894 at the north end of what's now the naval base. These houses are all gone. Image courtesy of University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums

Faslane Farmhouse just visible through the trees in 1894. At first sight, it appears to be roofless but I don't think it is. Image courtesy of University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums Another picture of the house here

Into this rural idyll, the Second World War and its demand for military ports interrupted very rudely indeed. None of the sites the committee had surveyed ticked all the boxes and compromises had had to be made. Faslane was lacking in flat ground for the railway sidings and marshalling yards so when work began in December 1940 this had to be created by levelling the hillside behind the bay and dumping the excavated material in the sea to reclaim land - thus was Faslane Farmhouse swept away.

You can read detailed accounts of the technical engineering aspects of the construction of the military ports here and here (scroll to page 14) but here are some of the highlights of Faslane or 'Military Port No. 1' as it became known. 

It was built by a squad of about 2,000 soldiers of the Royal Engineers working 24/7 and housed at the nearby Shandon Hydro Hotel, not just in the hotel itself but also in Nissen Huts in its grounds: when the port first started to be used in May 1942 (although it wasn't yet complete at that time), the onsite labour force grew to 4,000 necessitating additional camps.

1852 Admiralty Chart - National Libraries of Scotland

Although the Gare Loch is deep, it's relatively shallow at its entrance between Rhu Point and Rosneath so it was dredged to 30 feet deep over a width of 400 feet: the dredged material was also used for the land reclamation to create the railway sidings. On that subject, the West Highland Railway to Fort William passed Faslane Bay but at about 200 feet above sea level so a branch line was built from a point about 2.75 miles south to descend gently to the port. 

In connection with laying the branch line, a gnarled old tree near the shore had to be removed. The Commanding Officer of the works was approached by an elderly farmer who warned him that local tradition had it that felling the tree would presage three deaths - I wonder if this was a variant on the legend narrated in Annals of Garelochside quoted above that a cock crowing under a certain old oak tree by the shore of Faslane Bay presaged the death of a MacAulay? Anyhow, the tree was felled and the CO recorded that an officer on the work mysteriously died shortly thereafter. So did his replacement. The next replacement was spared by being sent to the work at Cairnryan, however - and none of these people was called MacAulay!

Incidentally, the first officer who died allegedly due to felling that tree was Sir Keith Nuttall of the engineering firm which still exists today called BAM Nuttall. And while we're on household names involved in the military port at Faslane, it was designed by Sir William Halcrow of the firm of consulting engineers latterly known as Halcrow Group.

In the course of driving piles for the wharves, one pile encountered an obstruction under the seabed. Investigation revealed this to be the wreck of a sailing ship called the Falcon carrying coal from Glasgow which had gone on fire at this spot in 1876. The wreck had to be dug out but the coal salvaged was able to be used to power the shunting locomotives at the port.

When it was completed in December 1942, two years after work started, Military Port No. 1, boasted a wharf with six berths with 30 feet depth at low tide for ocean going ships of up to 500 feet long. North of that was a shallower (9 feet) wharf for lighters loading ships at anchor in the bay. Both wharves were equipped with cranes, mostly brought (by road dismantled) from other ports put out of action by the enemy. Some came from the Port of London and Southampton Docks, the latter of which had been closed and was being decommissioned to deny it to the Germans in the event of the anticipated invasion: its cranes were on the point of being destroyed when it was realised they could be used at the military ports. 

There were also two 'M.T. Ferry Berths'. M.T. in this context stands for Mechanical Transport and seems to have been the military term for anything with an internal combustion engine: I think the expression was coined when this was a relative novelty compared with the hitherto normal modes of transport, namely, steam and horse. All we're told about these berths is that 'M.T.' could be taken from them on pontoons to the side of a ship for loading. Taking lorries to Allied invasions overseas was very much something envisaged for the military ports so maybe these 'M.T. Ferry Berths' were to allow them to be loaded without getting in the way of the railway wagons etc. on the wharves themselves. Finally, there was a berth for a 150 ton floating crane which had, despite the risks, been towed round from Southampton. And although the gnarled oak tree and Faslane House didn't survive the construction of the military port, the house called Belmore mentioned in the quote from Annals of Garelochside did -  it was the CO's HQ during construction and then became the port offices once it was in commission.

Looking south along the deep water wharf: photo credit Media Storehouse

You can see the 'before and after' of Military Port No. 1 at Faslane using the National Libraries of Scotland's Geo-referenced Map Viewer. Use the "Change transparency of overlay" slider at bottom left (highlighted in red on the image below) to reveal the Ordnance Survey 6 inch map of the bay before the military port was built. Then go to the 'Background map' dialogue box at the top (ditto), select 'ESRI/OSM/LIDAR' in the top dropdown menu and select 'ESRI World Imagery' (or Google Satellite) in the lower one and you can reveal what it looks like today with the naval base there now.

In use, the military ports - which were operated as well as constructed by the military - proved invaluable in the dispatch of material for the invasion of North Africa in October 1942 (even though they hadn't been fully completed by then) and then the D-Day Landings in June 1944. The ports also assisted the latter indirectly in that skills acquired in their construction were transferred to the conception of the portable Mulberry Harbours (the CO at the construction of Faslane, Brigadier Sir Bruce White, was instrumental in their design) and the recovery of French ports destroyed by the retreating Germans. 

Britain itself not being a theatre of war during WW2 after the threat of invasion in 1940 had receded, it was really for the export of military materials in connection with operations such as the invasions of Africa and Europe, rather than imports, that the military ports were conceived. This was reflected in elements of the design: for example the branch line down to Faslane was at a slightly steeper gradient than was normal, it being assumed that trains climbing it would normally be hauling empty wagons. 

It's important to understand as well that the military ports weren't naval bases as Faslane is today. That said, they were occasionally visited by Royal Ships, for example the battleship HMS Malaya took advantage of the 150 ton floating crane to have her 90 ton guns changed.

And it's a signal fact that neither of the military ports was ever attacked by the Luftwaffe. Obviously, the secret of their construction never got out and back to Berlin!

The lighterage wharf looking north: photo credit Media Storehouse