MV Scotscraig in 1953.
The MV Scotscraig was built for the Dundee Harbour Trust for the Dundee to Newport ferry crossing. The contract price for building the ferry was reported to be £152,450.
The Scotscraig was the fourth Caledon built ferry for the River Tay crossing, the others being the Newport II in 1910, William High (later the Sir William High) in 1924 and then the B L Nairn in 1929. The ferry was launched on 23 May 1951 by Mrs F J D Buist who was the wife of the Convenor of the Tay Ferries.
They were in daily use, leaving Dundee and Newport at the hour and half past the hour throughout the day. The last ferry from Dundee was 10pm whilst the last ferry from Newport was 10.30 pm - 2 vessels overnighting in Dundee.
The crossing itself took approximately 20 minutes, with 10 minutes allowed for embarking/disembarking. You could set your watches by the movements of those ferries
The last two Tay ferries the Abercraig (1939 ) and Scotscraig (1951 ) were twin screw diesels but also had an innovative feature that of Voith - Schneider propellers which though highly successful elsewhere did seem to cause spare part and reliability problems on the Tay with the result that after the withdrawal of Sir William High in 1951 the remaining steam paddler B L Nairn nominally spare boat seemed in fact to take quite a substantial share in the crossings right up to the opening of the Tay road bridge in 1966.
After the road was opened the Scotsgraig was sold off to Malta where little is known about what she did but what is sure after the filming of the movie Popeye 1980's, she was on tow to new location and took on water in bad weather broker her tow lines and sank, Now sitting in 21 meters of water upright and fully intact even the toilets and urinals are still in place, you can still get into the lower decks and full of marine life! The day we went we had dolphins!
The ship is remarkably intact due to its on the back side of the island and hard to get too... but well worth the boat ride! moray and congers in every pipe, octopus under every stone being shallow you can stay good 40-50 min just on the ship....
