The Famous Tay Whale Dundee city centre. Paul Godfrey described McGonagall on the strength of the "Tay Whale" and other verse as "the worst poet in the English language". Hugh MacDiarmid wrote of the "Tay Whale" that "what this [the verses about John Wood and the Tay Whale] amounts to, of course, is simply what quite uneducated and stupid people—the two adjectives by no means necessarily go together, for many uneducated people have great vitality and a raciness of utterance altogether lacking here—would produce if asked to recount something they had read in a newspaper." MacDiarmid continued that "in their retailings of, or comments
HMS Tay (K232) HMS Tay (K232) HMS "Tay" (K232) was a of the Royal Navy. "Tay" was built to the RN's specifications as a Group I River-class frigate. She was adopted by the civil community of Bridge of Allan in Stirlingshire, as part of the Warship Week war savings campaign in 1942. On commissioning "Tay" was allocated for service as a convoy escort in the Western Approaches and the Atlantic. In June 1943 she was allocated for service in the Eastern Fleet, operating in the Indian Ocean. At the end of the war she remained based at Singapore, until returning to the UK