Complete New Tales of Para Handy (4 page)

Armadale was a ghost town on Sunday, a dead, deserted community on which the combined effects of over-indulgence and mal-de-mer wreaked dreadful havoc. The crew of the
Vital Spark
passed most of the day in the fo'c'sle, snapping at each other, reading old newspapers, or indulging in desultory games of cribbage or whist.

“I'm tellin' you it's me'll be glad to see the back of this place the morn,” said the skipper. “Islands! I've had enough of them to last a lifetime. It's the Clyde for me from now on.”

Following an early night — there was nothing else to do — the crew were up sharp on Monday and waited with anxiety to hear from the owner.

The telegram arrived just after nine and Para Handy eagerly tore open the flimsy envelope. His mouth dropped open in horror.

“Have we no' got a cargo, then?” asked Dougie anxiously.

“Oh, he's got us a cargo all right,” said the captain. “A cargo of sand. From
Canna
!”

F
ACTNOTE

Armadale remains the terminal for the southernmost ferry crossing to Skye, from Mallaig at the terminus of the famed West Highland Railway Line. Run by CalMac, the route offers a vehicle ferry in summer, with a smaller vessel providing a passenger-only service over the winter months.

Of the four inhabited islands which lie between Skye and the Ardnamurchan peninsula, Canna is the most westerly. Rum, with its Victorian ‘castle' of Kinloch, huge and mountainous and now run as nature reserve, is the best known. Smaller Eigg and tiny Muck lie south of Rum. Properly known collectively as ‘The Small Isles' they are often (for obvious reasons!) irreverently referred to as ‘The Cocktail Isles.'

Poetic licence has been taken in order to allow the wedding to be located on Canna. The island has the finest harbour of any of the Small Isles, and is a green and fertile spot, but even in Para Handy's day the population was too small to sustain the sort of spree which the story suggests. Things would have been different just 50 years previously, when the island peaked at a population of almost 400. However within two generations that figure had plummeted to less than 100.

Whether there were many illicit stills on Canna in years gone by, I do not know. But there were stills a-plenty throughout many parts of the Highlands well into the twentieth century and there may be a few in business yet! My first paid employment, in my student days in the late 1950s, was as a waiter in a (then) very well-reputed hotel in Wester Ross. The allocation of the weekly days-off for individual members of the dining-room staff hinged on the needs of the one permanent, year-round waiter — a local — to attend to the still which he ‘ran' (if that's the word!) in the hills above the village. By custom and usage, he always had first choice for his day off, so that the still was properly cared for as and when the need arose.

Occasionally, too, puffers really did have the chance to carry large numbers of deck-passengers — though this was never in accordance with the rules or with the approval of the relevant authorities! At the time of the ‘strike' against the resort of Millport on the island of Cumbrae by the Clyde steamer fleets in early July 1906, the puffers
Craigielea
and
Elizabeth
each carried about 100 residents and holiday-makers across to the island from Largs. The reasons for the boycott (reaction to demands for heftily-increased pier charges at Millport) are too complex to go into here, but the whole story is well chronicled in Alan Paterson's seminal
Golden Years of the Clyde Steamers
(David & Charles, 1979).

3

The Race for the Pier

I
was strolling along Princes Pier at Greenock, waiting for the arrival of the Dunoon steamer, when I noticed a familiar figure seated on a bollard, attempting to light a clay pipe with an expression of great concentration.

“
Home is the sailor, home from sea
, eh, Captain? But where is the
Vital Spark
berthed today?” I asked, for there was indeed no sign of the puffer anywhere on the long frontage of the pier.

“Well, she's no chust exactly berthed,” said Para Handy. “She's on Ross & Marshall's slupway gettin' her shaft replaced. We kind of blew the main bearin' off Bute last week and had to get a tow home.”

“Not by any chance from the
King Edward
?” I asked.

The captain's face reddened. “Aye, chust that,” he said, and resumed his efforts to get his pipe to light.

“I should have guessed when I heard about it that it was likely to be the
Vital Spark
that was involved,” I said. “You'd better tell me exactly what happened, Captain. There's some very strange stories going about Glasgow, and this could be your chance to put the record straight.”

Para Handy sighed. “Aye, I heard it wass aal the talk o' the steamie, as ye might say. But none o' it wass by any streetch of the imagination the fault of the shup. If Dougie wass here he would tell ye himself.

“This wass the way o' it,” he said, returning the stubborn pipe to the pocket of his pea-jacket. “I'll no' devagate wan single iota from the facts and maybe ye'll can pit it in the papers and clear the good name o' the
Vital Spark
. I'm vexed that such a namely boat should be reduced to nothin' but a laughin' stock for the longshoremen. It wass no laughin' matter for us at the time, I can tell ye.

“We had been to Skipness wi' a cargo of whunstone, and wass headed back to Bowling in ballast when chust off Garroch Head, at the sooth corner o' Bute, there wass this most monstrous crunchin' sound in the enchine-room and then chust silence, and we started to druft.

“Macphail came burstin' out o' his cubby like a thing possessed and it iss chust typical o' the man that he tried to blame me for the breakdoon.

“ ‘Ah've telt ye for years,' he shouted, ‘Years! And ye've never paid a blind bit o' heed tae me, naw, nor spent a penny on the engines and noo ye see the result! Ah've worked ma fingers tae the bone tae keep yon antiquated tangle o' scrap-iron turnin' ower, wi' nae thanks for it. But this time yer chickens is come hame tae roost for she's feenished, feenished. Yon's the shaft gone and since it cam' oot o' Noey's Erk in the first place ye'll no' find a machine shop tae fix it. It's the breakers' yerd for the shup, and the scrap heap for us!'

“ ‘My Chove, Macphail,' says I, quite dignified, ‘that's quite a speech for you: but maybe you'll stert thinkin' about what we can do to stop her goin' ashore, and leave the highsterix till we've more time for them.'

“And sure enough, what wi' the southerly wind and the floodin' tide we wass setting quite fast onto the Head, her bein' light, and things wass lookin' pretty bleak.

“Macphail retired below to nurse his feelin's — there wassn't a lot he could do to nurse the enchines — and Dougie and Jum got the lashin's off the punt so that we would be ready for the worst if it came to it. I wass near greetin' mysel', I'll admit it. This looked like a terrible end for the smertest boat on the Firth, and her wi' a brand new gold bead on her paid for out o' my own pocket chust last week.

“Suddenly there was a roarin' noise astern like aal the steam whustles on the Clyde goin' off at the wan time, and when we aal recovered oor composure and turned to look, what wass it but the
King Edward
, inward-bound from Campbeltown, and closin' doon on us like a bat out o' hell.

“ ‘Puffer ahoy!' came a megaphone from a young officer on the brudge, a real toff by the sound o' him, ‘are you in some sort o' trouble?'

“The upshot o' it all wass that in chust a matter of three or fower meenits the
Edward
had thrown us a line and sterted to pull us safely awa' from the Head.

“ ‘We'll give you a tow into Kilchattan Bay,' called the toff on the brudge, ‘We're putting in there to pick up an excursion party but we can't take you any further up the Firth because we'll have to slow right down to tow you safely, and we can't afford that sort of delay in arriving at Gourock.'

“And off we went at a very douce eight knots or so which to the folk on the steamer must have seemed ass if they wass standing still.

“Well, it's me wass the mighty relieved man I can tell you, for though the owner wouldna be right pleased at havin' to pay for a tug to come doon and fetch us up the river, at least it wass better than the shup broken to bits on Garroch Head: and he'd have to do somethin' aboot the enchines at last.

“So I wass even beginnin' to think the break-doon might be a blessing in disguise, when we heard another great blatterin' o' whustle blasts astern. Comin' up on us very fast indeed wass the
King Edward
's great rival, the
Duchess of Fife
, on her way hame from Brodick, the beat o' her paddles like chungle drums and the crowds linin' her rails to cheer as she swept past the turbine steamer ass if she had been lyin' at anchor.

“The paddler's Captain wass out on the wing o' the brudge and he doffed his kep and bowed very courteous-like to Captain Wulliamson in the wheelhouse of the
Edward
as he went by, but when he put it back on he waved very mockin', and blasted oot a sarcastic toot-toot-toot on the steam whustle.

“Even from the deck o' the
Vital Spark
two chains astern, you could hear the murmur of anger goin' up from the truppers on the
King Edward
, and I saw Captain Wulliamson come runnin' oot to the enchine-room telegraph on the starboard wing: it wass plain he wassna in good trum at aal. Next thing I could hear the shrill bell of it clanging furiously ass he rang loud and long down to the boys in the enchine-room.

“Ass you know the
Edward
hass three propellers aal druven by this new-fangled turbine enchine, and she hass aal the go of a greyhound. Wulliamson had called for emergency full speed ahead and she near enough lifted her bows out of the watter as she took off after the paddler.

“The trouble wass, of course, that she near pulled the bows of the puffer
under
the watter ass soon ass the tow rope tightened — which it did so fast I feared it wud snap: and I could wish it had, for I thocht every last wan o' the next fufteen minutes wud be my next. If Dougie wass here he would tell you himself.”

I nodded: “The laws of physics, Captain,” I said. “If I remember aright, any smaller vessel towed at speed by a significantly larger one is liable to be dragged under by the downward distortion of its normal centre of static gravity caused by the stress momentum associated with any uncompensated horizontal acceleration …”

I am glad to say that the Captain looked unimpressed by this explanation.

“Whateffer you say yourself,” he said at length. “But we were near sinking and the bows wass gettin' lower and lower in the watter as the
King Edward
went even faster. Things wass lookin' black for the shup! Wulliamson had completely forgot we wass there at aal, and we had nothin' which we could cut the steel hawser he wass towin' us wi' and no' way o' sluppin' it.”

“So Captain Williamson just couldn't resist the challenge to the turbine's reputation?” I asked.

“It wassn't chust that,” said Para Handy. “He knew fine that the
Duchess of Fife
was making for Kilchattan Bay chust like himself, and if she got there first she'd lift Wulliamson's excursion perty, and leave the
Edward
sadly oot o' pocket. So they were both hell bent on gettin' the first berth at the pier, and each had a man on the brudge keepin' a close lookout on the pierhead semaphore boards to see which o' the two the piermaster wass givin' the right o' way to — the
Duchess of Fife
in the offshore poseetion, or
King Edward
inshore of her.

“Wan o' these days there'll be a colleeshun, the way they boats iss aye racing to the piers. But aal I wass worried about wass what wass likely to happen to the
Vital Spark
, and I had chust wan way of remindin' Williamson that we wass there, so I hauled doon on the steam-whustle and held it wide open. But we wass chust like the banshee howlin' in the wilderness, as it says in the Scruptures, for Wulliamson neffer heard a thing but kept the steamer flat out for the pier, an' by now the sea wass running green over our bows.

“It wass the piermaster at Kilchattan Bay who saved us, for ass the two steamers rounded the point and lined up for the pier he must have realised that there wass effery likelihood of a real smesh, and so he closed up both their semaphores and brought in the old
Texa
instead as she came limpin' in from Glasgow on her cargo run to Loch Fyne.

“Mercifully Wulliamson's eyes were better than hiss ears and he bided by the piermaster's instruction. It's us were the happy men when we saw the way come off her, and our own bow liftin' above the watter again ass the tow-line slacked off. But it wass a near thing.