Fireboat    St.Mungo

 

During the Second World War, Glasgow, with its shipyards and cargo handling capabilities, became a prime target for enemy aircraft. With the shipyards out of action and the port destroyed this could have seriously affected the war effort.

This placed an even greater burden on Glasgow Fire Brigade. To help counter this threat, an agreement was reached between the Scottish Home Department  and the  Clyde Navigation Trust,  to form a Marine Division of the Fire Brigade, which was to be based at Yorkhill Quay. Two fireboats specially designed for use on both river and estuary , were commissioned. Each boat had twin screws and  were equipped with four heavy Leyland pumps.

In the 1950’s The River Clyde was one of the busiest shipbuilding centres in the world. Shipping companies were replacing war loses with new tonnage and many of the contracts were placed with the Clydeside yards. John Browns,  Fairfields , Barclay Curle, Stephen’s of Linthouse and many others benefited from the shipbuilding boom.

There was now only one fireboat in operation, the other having been withdrawn in 1951 and subsequently scrapped. A replacement was now planned and the order to build the new fireboat was placed with the Renfrew shipbuilding firm of Hugh McLean & Sons.

The  vessel to be named St.Mungo was launched on 21^st May 1959 by Mrs Galpern wife of the Lord Provost. The new Fireboat slid down the ways to the tune of ‘The Skye Boat Song’ played by two members of the Glasgow Fire Service pipe band.

The St. Mungo was powered by two eight cylinder Glenifer diesel engines rated at 160BHP at 900rpm giving the vessel a service speed of 9 knots. A further 2 knots could be achieved by engaging all four engines and turning the deck monitors backwards .

The fire fighting and salvage equipment consisted of two independent 4 stage turbine pumps, each driven by a Paxman 12 cylinder diesel engine developing 400BHP at 1,000rpm, each pump had having a capacity of 2,800 gallons per minute on fire fighting duties and 3,000 gpm  for salvage duties. The pumps served the six monitors, two of which were located on the foredeck and the other four on a platform aft of the wheelhouse. Four five way deliveries were fitted on the deck (two on either side fore and aft) which meant that up to 20 feeds could be taken to supply water to shore based appliances. In order to avoid confusion, a  system of tallies was used to identify which individual delivery was providing water to which appliance.

This system however failed on one occasion  during a multi pump fire, when a redundant delivery with no marking was connected into the inlet of the Canteen Unit. It was only after some of the personnel began to feel unwell that it was discovered that the water feeding the Canteen Unit had come directly from the St Mungo.

Auxiliary power was provided by a 27hp diesel engine driving a 4kw generator; this was also coupled to a 350gpm fire pump, which provided water for foam generators. A six-inch suction coupling enabled the St.Mungo to be used for marine salvage work. The main suction inlets for the fire pumps were located on the bottom of the vessel on both the port and starboard sides. The inlets could be flushed from inside the strum boxes using high-pressure water jets. The aim of this operation was to prevent the inlets from becoming choked. On many occasions small eels or elvers were found to be in residence in the strum boxes.

The engines were controlled by means of telegraph from the wheelhouse, this was replaced in November 1972 to enable full control from the wheelhouse.

Many of the personnel of the Marine as it was known, had been at sea  before joining the Fire Brigade and most of those sea faring firemen had their roots in the highlands and islands of Scotland. I remember on several occasions being detached to the Fireboat only to find they spoke a language totally foreign to me.

By the mid seventies, shipbuilding on the Clyde was in decline. Many yards had closed, perhaps as a result of cheaper building costs in the Far East and a failure to invest in new shipbuilding techniques and practises. The Port of Glasgow had also seen a reduction in tonnage being unloaded. Queens Dock, Princes Dock, Terminus Quay Plantation Quay and others had all closed.