The Orcadian Features - Arnold Calder

Regional boss is only P&O man left in the county
(From The Orcadian dated October 3, 2002)

P&O Scottish Ferries' Orkney regional manager Arnold Calder, pictured at the bow of the livestock carrier Caroline at Kirkwall pier on Tuesday.

As P&O Scottish Ferries staff involved in transferring to NorthLink did so on Tuesday, they left behind one man – Mr Arnold Calder – as the firm’s sole representative on the islands. Brian Flett talked to him on Tuesday morning.

The Orkney regional manager for P&O Scottish Ferries, Mr Arnold Calder, is the only employee of the company to be kept on in Orkney after the official handover of the lifeline passenger contract to NorthLink.

He is due to stop work at the end of this month, when the contingency plan for shipping livestock finishes.

Arnold joined the North of Scotland Shipping Company’s Kirkwall office straight from school in 1955.

He recalled that there could be as many as 70 employees at times working on Kirkwall Pier, loading and unloading goods.

The main ships which operated in and out of Kirkwall in those days were the St Ninian and the St Magnus. The St Rognvald also used Kirkwall and called past St Margaret’s Hope on her way round to Stromness, once a week.

Arnold said that that pattern continued until the early 1970s when the St Ninian was sold.

He remarked that the introduction of ro-ro at Stromness didn’t really affect Kirkwall until 1978, when the new cargo vessel St Magnus was brought in.

She used Stromness. Goods were taken off there and driven through to the P&O store in Kirkwall, until 1989, when the company acquired premises on the Garson Industrial Estate and distribution was done from there.

The biggest difference he has noticed over the years is in the freight itself. To begin with, everything was carried loose in the hold. Then, goods were put into containers, and more recently, vehicles carried the goods off ro-ro ships.

The kind of goods being shipped from Orkney in the 1960s were 50-60 tons of eggs and barrels of whisky in various sizes.

One of the biggest events to affect P&O’s service to the islands was the seamen’s strike of 1966. Arnold Calder remembered that it began in the middle of May and continued for six weeks until the beginning of July.

“We had next to nothing to do, except to arrange emergency shipments of goods from Aberdeen, once a week. When the strike ended, all hell broke loose because it was the start of the holiday period and we had folk off, so it was a hectic time.”

Looking back on almost 50 years of service, he felt the volume of paperwork was far greater in the old days, when cargo manifests had to be written out by hand in duplicate and sometimes copied over into another book. Latterly, records have all been computerised and little paperwork changes hands.

Commenting on the disappearance of P&O Scottish Ferries from Orkney and Shetland, he said: “Clearly, I was disappointed when they lost the passenger contract, but I wish NorthLink all the best. I’ve certainly enjoyed my time with the company and what I’ll miss most is the people I’ve worked with over the years. But, I’ll be glad to retire to enjoy more free time. My main hobby is Kirkwall City Pipe Band, so I hope to be able to devote more time to that now.”