to , with the usual anchorage to the east of a line set by two red lights on a pillar and post at the Esplanade end of Madiera Street, Greenock. The line points to The Hole, an area up to deep to the east of the Rosneath Patch and south of Rosneath Point, a 1925 description says that large ships anchor to the west of the line. History In his 1828 description of Greenock, the cartographer John Wood noted: "There is a Sand-bank, which extends from Dumbarton to a short distance to the westward of the Harbour, which narrows the Road for vessels opposite the Town; but at the tail of this bank there is deep water and anchorage for the largest vessels." The Tail of the Bank was a significant point of embarkation for many travellers, especially emigrants, to Canada and the United States of America. Steamships of the Cunard Line en route from Liverpool to New York City regularly called at Tail of the Bank to pick up additional passengers. In the past this area was at times crowded with ships, particularly during the Second World War when the Home Fleet warships of the Royal Navy temporarily left Scapa Flow after the sinking of HMS Royal Oak and were based at the Tail of the Bank. The Clyde Anchorages Emergency Port (CAEP) was improvised there in September 1940 by stevedoring companies evacuated from the Royal Docks of London (closed by the first bombing raids on London). Hundreds of merchant ships of the Atlantic convoys gathered there, as well as ships of the Free French Navy. The upper Firth was protected by an anti-submarine boom at that time, stretching from Cloch point across the Firth to Dunoon on the Cowal Peninsula. A monument in the form of a Cross of Lorraine combined with an anchor was erected on Lyle Hill overlooking the Tail of the Bank, to commemorate the Free French Naval Forces. It is also associated locally with the Vauquelin class destroyer Maillé Brézé which blew up off Greenock with heavy loss of life on 30 April 1940, before the Free French Naval Forces were established. By 1944 the CAEP became one of the principal destinations for US troops sent to Britain. In 1974 the "sugar boat" Captayannis was at anchor at the Tail of the Bank when it was driven northwards by a storm and turned on