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Former church moderator visits father’s ship

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A former church moderator enjoyed a visit aboard the ship that was once his playground as a child.

Happy memories came flooding back for the Very Rev Dr Angus Morrison, as he marvelled at the familiar yet strikingly different surroundings of the MV Fingal – once the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) vessel and now in the Port of Leith.

When he was a young man, Dr Morrison was a regular visitor aboard Fingal, a former NLB tender, when it was based in Oban – which has undergone a £5million conversion to transform it into a 23-cabin luxury hotel.

Dr Morrison’s late father, Captain Norman Morrison, served on the 239-foot long ship in the 1970s when its primary role was to ferry lighthouse keepers, essential supplies and maintenance staff to lighthouses along the west and north coasts of Scotland.

Built in Glasgow in 1964, Fingal was based in Oban, where the Morrison family lived, until 1994 when it moved to Stromness in Orkney before being sold to a private company in 2000.

The ship was renamed MV Windsor Castle and taken to the River Fal in Cornwall until it was bought by the Royal Yacht Britannia Trust in 2014, which changed the name back to Fingal, believed to be in homage to a third century king.

It is now permanently docked in Alexandra Dock, Port of Leith in Edinburgh.

Dr Morrison, who was Moderator in 2015-16, said his father would be delighted to know that the red, white and blue ship has been transformed into something of “real beauty” and did not end its life in a breakers’ yard.

Dr Morrison, whose family hails from Harris in the Outer Hebrides, said he was often aboard Fingal when it was in port at Oban.