THE story of a storm that tore through Inverclyde killing five people and leaving over 100 families homeless is to be told tonight in a BBC documentary.

The Storm that Saved a City will chart the course of the savage weather front which arrived on January 14 1968, leaving in its wake a trail of destruction likened to the damage caused by the German bombing blitz of the Second World War.

People in Greenock, Port Glasgow and Gourock went to bed on a quiet Sunday night 50 years ago unaware that a storm expected to slip quietly past was instead about to become the most deadly in living memory.

Forecasters had predicted that hurricane Low Q would head towards the far north of the country, but as the depression deepened, it began to turn south and bare its teeth.

The west coast of Scotland was battered – and Inverclyde was among the first places to feel the storm’s force.

One Greenock yard’s shipbuilding crane weighing 60 tonnes, and another two each weighing 15-tonnes, were blown over like matchsticks as the gusts reached 100mph.

David Bowen was one of five local men who struggled to stop the winds from tearing a dredger and its barge from their mooring at Princes Pier, now Ocean Terminal.

He tells the BBC Scotland documentary that the four-inch thick ropes used to tie up the vessels “snapped like shoelaces” in the hurricane and the dredger was left drifting in the Firth of Clyde.

The men on the vessels managed to weather the storm during the night, but as dawn broke disaster struck.
Mr Bowen, who was below decks on the barge, said: “We heard a horrible rumbling noise and ran up on deck and we could not find the dredger. We suddenly realised it had turned over.”

The vessel had been holed under the water line during the storm and had been taking in water for much of the night.

It overturned just before 8am and sank before anyone could escape. Three men lost their lives.

In Cardross Road, Greenock, a heavy stone chimney collapsed on to the roof of a tenement property, killing a man inside, while in Margaret Street, a woman was in bed at a friend’s home when stonework crashed through the ceiling and killed her.

Roofs were torn off in Ness Road and Mallard Crescent, while a large part of a tenement in Gourock’s Albert Road collapsed on to the road.

Ashton Church was badly damaged and many sheds and wash-houses had their roofs ripped off.

In Port Glasgow, the Unity Club in Southfield Avenue, which was due to open in two weeks, was left with just two walls standing after bearing the full brunt of the hurricane.

The glass roof of Gourock rail station was shattered, leaving the station covered in debris, although luckily nobody was reported to have been injured.

Transport was brought to a standstill across the area, with most roads blocked by fallen trees and rail lines shut because of downed lines at Cardonald and Langbank. Shipping on the Clyde was also halted as winds tore down electricity pylons in Erskine, blocking the river.

A collection was held at the following weekend’s match at Cappielow between Morton and Dundee United, and a relief fund was set up to help families in the area.

The damage caused in that single night would cost £50 million in today’s money to repair.

The Tele reported on the morning after how, in typical fashion, Inverclyde had rallied together in a time of crisis.

Our coverage said: “The towns themselves are shattered and licking their wounds. No records exist of a storm more violent than the one which ripped through our district.

“Chaos arrived, but in the midst of it all, there are those who have risen magnificently to the emergency.

“It takes a situation such as this to bring out the best in folk. And the best we are having today in the fullest measure.”

The Storm that Saved a City airs on BBC1 Scotland at 9pm.