Clyde River Patrol

At 16 years I was a merchant marine radio student in the Watt Memorial school in William Street Greenock.The school was a nautical one and ran courses for engineer and deck officers besides radio. There were doldrum periods where technical theory was limited and we only had prewar papers to work with so nearly all of our time was split between practical operating and morse which at times seemed endless. Our instructor one day got a call from Capt.Davidson downstair in the deck dept. for a couple of us to see if we would volunteer as radio operators in the Clyde River Patrol and gave us a wee test by lamp morse. This was first I'd heard of such a force so we joined.No uniform or insignia.
Basically it was an upmarket dad's army at a time where all adults were obliged to take part in ARP,Home Guard,Civil Defense,etc.The Port Glasgow lot patrolled the lower reaches to Bowling and from Bowling upwards the Glasgow crowd took over. The crew seemed mostly professional types,construction owners,hotel managers,lawyers, that kind of person and our job was indeed to river patrol, spotting for mines after a raid, chasing away anglers among the low tide sandbanks as often we'd see a cigarette being lit, bearing in mind the clyde in wartime darkness, a light could be spotted miles away, our main concern was when tied up to a buoy a troopship could suddenly tower over us on it's journey to a convoy assembly,usually Loch Long.It was once a month thing and my bunch started training me for boat handling so's they could settle down to a dram or two and a card game.Being the age I was I was thrilled to be able to handle the boat and take it upriver or down to the lochs with very little radio work,only the odd snap test to see if we were with it or not,Bowling communicated by voice, occasionally by morse but my deep regret was not paying heed to the radio type,the frequencies used , the aerials etc.,it was powered by a small rotary converter and often I would hear excited voices shouting in foreign language,so whether it was tank or aircraft I never knew, I was too interested in being control of the boat!
At the end of the trip the lads would have a wee whip round and I'd get couple of notes "to cover expenses" and often a white loaf and maybe some meat if we had a baker or butcher on board, these of course were real luxuries. Captain Davidson was better known locally as a BBC football commentator on the old steam radio.Finally the harbour we sailed from, filled up with small infantry landing craft expertly handled by wrens, not much older than me, and is now filled in and called Coronation Park.

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