Arriving At Mostyn

The fact that the ship didn’t cut loose completely and end up beached somewhere on the North Wales Coast is a testament to both the skill of the professional seaman involved but also, more surprisingly, the make shift crew.

However, as normal the project was about to suffer yet another setback. As The Duke came within site of Mostyn, the insurers got cold feet. Even though the weather had eased making an approach to the dock feasible, they notified me that the insurance had been cancelled, effective immediately.

The ship was only two miles away from Llanerch-y-Mor in the River Dee Estuary and the previous night the insurers were insisting that The Duke be returned to Barrow immediately.

How on earth could the insurance company make such a decision? What compounded the issue further was the insurance company had been paid in full before the ship had left Barrow-In-Furness.

The view of Captain Metcalfe was totally different, the dangers of taking The Duke back to Barrow, in his opinion, outstripped the risks of completing the voyage as planned.

After careful deliberation between the myself and my partners, it was decided that it was better to risk the final stages of the journey that day than to give up on the instructions of a staid, suited and booted insurance man.

Captain Nightingale’s assistant was Terry Furnival, who had a sea angling boat which we could use to relay the message back and forth to Captain Metcalfe on The Duke.

The Ship did make it into Llanerch-y-Mor that day, but not without further issues and anxiety.

The ship was brought The Mostyn Deep, one of the main channels on the approach to The Port of Mostyn, once there it was to wait until the top of the tide was reached and then the dash for the dock was on.

Both Captain Nightingale and his assistant Terry were available to us that day. Captain Nightingale was on the shore, handling the eventual berthing of The Ship and ensuring that everything was set for her arrival.

Terry took a much more challenging role, using his fishing boat as the line boat and he frequently came to the aid of the tugs whilst they were on the final leg of the journey.

As The Duke was approaching the dock, the line to the lead tug snapped, obviously fatigued from the stresses of the journey the previous day. It seemed to me that everything that could possibly go wrong on that voyage did.

The standby tug ran another line to the ship but valuable time lost. The top of the tide only lasts for one hour before the tide starts to go back out, every second literally did count.  It is also worth noting that The River Dee has one off the fastest running tides in the UK, once the tide starts going out, boy does it go out.

By the time The Duke reached the dock the tide had just turned and as such the dock was losing water. A rope was run from the forward winches to the dock and The Duke slowly pulled herself into position, but the Captain could see that progress was painfully slow, and in his opinion too slow. He gave the order for the lead tug to give The Duke a push from the aft.

The tug very gently butted up to The Duke close to the car deck doors and pushed. Mercifully it was just enough to get her into place.  The Duke was quickly tied to the many mooring points installed on the dock and it seemed that as the final ropes were secured, all the water from the dock drained away with the tide.

The Duke was finally in its new final resting place and with good reason we threw a party on board The Duke for the Captain and the makeshift crew.

Just before midnight the tide started to rise again and soon was at its fullest. It was at that time the enormity of we had achieved that day struck me. Suddenly the reality dawned on me that we had a very large and cumbersome ship, in a very small, makeshift and tight tidal dock, fully exposed to the elements and tides.

It was a real wake up call.  The ropes would need constant checking and adjustment to account for the twice daily tides and the winds.