SGV C GSR Sea-going Vessels Coaster MV 'Glen Shira'
Even though the puffer companies were snapping up decommissioned MoD steam-driven VICs for their fleets
in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they were also preparing for a motor powered future. Hays led the way in 1952
with MV Glen Shira, and would eventually either convert their steam VICs (Celt amongst them),or sell them on as they were
(Sir James), and replace them with further, larger, motor vessels.
Just like the bigger VICs, Mv Glen Shira was 80ft long, permitting an increased payload whilst still conforming to
the maximum permitted length for the locks on the Crinan Canal, which cuts off the Kintyre peninsula, thus allowing
smaller vessels to avoid the dangerous complex currents at its southern tip (the Mull, of Paul McCartney and Wings fame)
where the often heavy meeting of the North Atlantic and the Irish Sea at the narrowest gap between Scotland and Ireland is further
troubled by the outflow of the Firth of Clyde.
Crew accommodation was influenced by the intermediate smaller-patterned VICs, and there was a larger wheelhouse, otherwise
these first motor replacements were pretty much direct motor equivalents of the traditional steamers, to the point of their
often still being referred to by the generic name of 'puffer', even though they had no steam to vent and made nothing like
the same sound.
Тип: scenery