ASK NOT for whom Steve Reid’s bell tolls—it tolls for the tolls.

The North Queensferry man was one of the last skippers on the ferries which ran between North and South Queensferry before the Forth Road Bridge was built.

And now Mr Reid has called time on the bridge’s tolls— appropriately with the bell taken from his ferry which last ran on the day the bridge was opened by the Queen in 1964.

Mr Reid worked for the railways before doing national service and when he finished his time with the army he decided he wanted a change of career.

“These were the days when you finished a job on the Friday and started a new one on the Monday,” he said.

“I went and spoke to one of the fellows on the boat and said I was looking for a job and he said ‘When can you start, Steve?’ and I said Monday.

“I wondered how he knew my name, but being on the ferries is something that runs in families—it was only later when I was working with him that I realised he called everybody Steve,” he said.

Mr Reid has great memories of working on the ferries, which were a vital link between Fife and the south before the road bridge was built.

As the ferries were berthed in the deeper waters of North Queensferry, the majority of the workers came from the village or surrounding areas.

He started out as a deck hand, one of a crew of six including the captain, mate, engineer, two deck hands and a clerkess who collected the fares.

He sat examinations to move into a mate’s job and later sat more examinations which allowed him to become a skipper on the Robert the Bruce, one of four ferries which latterly made the crossing.

At first, two ferries ran the route—the Queen Margaret and the Robert the Bruce—and they were joined in 1956 by the Mary Queen of Scots and in 1960 by the Sir William Wallace.

In the early days, before he started his 14-year career, the original two boats ran a half-hourly service—shortened to a 20-minute service when the third boat joined the fleet then a 15-minute service when the complement was made up to four —running from the first southbound crossing at 6.45am to the last northbound in the winter months at 11.30pm.

“In the early days it was quieter and sometimes we went across empty,” he said. “But latterly, in the late 50s, it was bedlam, there were so many cars coming down.”

With each vessel carrying around 34 cars, the crew had a tricky job to make the best use of the space on board and balance up the assortment of lorries and buses; even more so during the miners’ holidays when the crew would often arrive at the pier to find half a dozen buses ready to take the miners and their families southwards.

Also an issue was aligning the doors for a smooth exit for the passengers’ cars—something hampered by the big spring tides in the Forth.

“People used to say don’t you get bored on the ferry but I never did because every trip was different, every load was different and each passenger was different,” he said.

So it was with mixed emotions that he watched, from a fine vantage point, the construction of the bridge that would one day ferry away his much-loved job.

“But we knew the ferries could not cope because we were running with full loads from first thing in the morning until the last thing at night,” he said.

And so the seven pence (in old money) return journey for passengers and three and four pence for cars gave way to tolls, something Mr Reid did not agree with.

“They borrowed money to build the bridge and when it was paid for they should have been stopped,” he said.

But even once the Queen had officially cut the ribbon to open the bridge that foggy day in 1964, there was still a need for the ferries, as Mr Reid revealed.

The Queen was to officially open the bridge on the south and drive across then take the last ferry back, so officially ending the service, he said. However, such was the last-minute chaos of getting the bridge ready in time for the opening that there was a lot of debris still to be cleared off the bridge.

“So, after the Queen opened it, it wasn’t immediately open to cars and we had to keep running, after the Queen had travelled on the Queen Margaret, for the rest of that day,” he said.