Michael Cassar: Connecting the Harbour Towns O.F. Gollcher & Sons. 1897–1959
Michael Cassar, Malta, 2019. 

In recent years, the ferry services across the harbours have regained great popularity, as can be witnessed daily by the crowds awaiting them at their landing places. Still, the sleek and capacious modern ferries just lack the poetry of the old service that folded up in 1959. Anyone old enough to remember them still treasures the former experience – the smell of tarred rope and the smoke emerging from the chimneys and the hiss of the steam engines as well as the crystal-clear water round the piles teeming with darting small fish, crabs and sea urchins.

Michael Cassar is, of course, well-known to the readers of this newspaper for the regular presentation of articles dealing with the modern maritime history of Malta, about which he is a veritable encyclopaedia. Indeed even though chunks of this book have been featured in the newspaper, this elegant publication makes it possible for readers to own a permanent copy for their bookshelves. This is the very first book to deal with the subject.

Connecting the Harbour Towns has been sponsored by O.F. Gollcher & Sons to mark the 165th anniversary of the company which became one of the most important contributors to the ferry services that plied the local harbours. The book is dedicated to the memory of Comm. James  Gollcher who, before his death in 2014, had diligently collected the documentation from the company’s archives.

The ferry service across Marsamxett Harbour was introduced in 1882 but, 15 years later, O.F. Gollcher & Sons, who had introduced the steam ferry service to Gozo with the mythical Gleneagles in 1885, decided to launch its own service with better boats. One of the direct results of these more frequent links was the growth of Sliema across the water, from a smallish resort to a much-desired residence away from, but within easy reach of, the bustle of the capital city.

All readers are bound to appreciate Cassar’s keen eye for the telling anecdote: unfortunate passengers falling into the sea, landing stages devastated by storms

The first harbour ferry service to serve the growing Sliema population had been set up in 1881 by the beautifully named Julius Goldseller using two locally built boats. The move was met by strong opposition on the part of the dgħajsamen who saw it as a threat to their livelihood.

The cab stand at the newly enlarged mole at the Sliema ferry landing place.

There were even odder threats to the service. The admiralty had set up a torpedo-research facility on Manoel Island which fired torpedoes towards the harbour mouth. On August 26 1889, one misguided torpedo struck the ferry Valletta while she was at its landing stage! Fortunately there were no injuries but the boat sunk and was declared a total loss.

Gustaf Gollcher, the son of the Swede Olof Fredrik who had settled in Malta and opened a ship-chandling business, entered the service in 1886, proposing the use of better boats promising, in the 1d. fare, free access from the Marsamxett landing stage to street level by means of a hydraulic lift, a commodity still sorely missed in the present day.

In spite of difficulties, the service grew and prospered, helping in no mean way the growth of Sliema which soon started attracting well-off and professional people from the capital.

The National Steam Ferry Boat Company, as Gollcher’s came to be known after 1897, provided a regular service with four boats named after mythological deities. In 1906, the Grand Harbour Steam Ferry Company became the second marine transport venture by Gollcher and his partners, ostensibly set up to connect Valletta and the Three Cities. The Grand Harbour had far more maritime traffic since it was the base of the Royal Navy and the barklori, not the most gentle and polite of men, were a more powerful conservative force in spite of the fact that they did not enjoy widespread public sympathy. For a time, the stand-off developed into a political controversy, as things are wont to do in Malta.

In 1909 the barklori’s protest even turned violent when the Marine Police Station at Jetties Wharf was attacked and a moored launch was boarded A gelignite bomb was exploded which set the deck on fire.

The ferry services faced a decline with the introduction of land transport in the early 1920s when some former ambulances were converted into small buses. Especially on the Sliema run, these provided a more convenient service that took people closer to their homes and were not subject to the vagaries of weather.

The ferries also received damage during the war; two were sunk and two others received extensive damage. Gollcher’s head office in Valletta was completely destroyed.

The colour card: The ferries were depicted on several commercial postcards

All readers are bound to appreciate Cassar’s keen eye for the telling anecdote: unfortunate passengers falling into the sea, landing stages devastated by storms, the inclusion of the service in primary school readers.

The ferry services in both harbours were wound down in 1959 when poetry gave way to progress. But by then, the service had even entered into Maltese folklore and it survives in the popular        Lanċa ġejja w’oħra sejra ditty with the Maltese words allegedly written by Armando Urso to a popular Italian tune. According to Mro Paul Arnaud, the popular singer Frankie Vaughan, who was in Malta during the war, kept the song among his repertoire and continued to sing it in Maltese.

The people of the Three Cities also had another popular rhyme: Ġejja lanċa ħa’ tgħabbina/ Fuq il-gverta u ġol-gabina/ BiI-lanċa ta’ Mattei/ Min hu sejjer, u min hu ġej.

The more research-minded will appreciate the lists of the three fleets that plied the harbours, namely the National Steam Ferry Boat Company, the Grand Harbour Steam Ferry Company and the Marsamuscetto Steam Ferry service Company.

A fascinating aspect of the book is the great number of photographs that show the area changing over the period under discussion. For some, they are a discovery and a joy to scan, for many they give rise to pangs of pain seeing how Malta looked before the invasion of the barbarians.