Two red boats

Two merchant ships arrived on the river this morning, NORNEWS LEADER with her weekly cargo of paper from Norway, and AMSTELDIJK on the BG container service. Both ships, as will have been noted on ClydeSights, have red hulls. This picture, however, shows AMSTELDIJK on her way to Rotterdam from Greenock, passing astern of another red-hulled vessel, Western Ferries' SOUND OF SCALPAY. She is the oldest in the Western Ferries fleet, having been originally built in Holland in 1961 as a cross-canal ferry at Amsterdam. Purchased by Western Ferries in 1995, she was towed to the Clyde via the English Channel, converted from her original diesel-electric propulsion and fitted with two azimuthing propeller units by the Garvel Drydock. She joined the Western Ferries fleet as SOUND OF SCALPAY in July 1995.