Complete New Tales of Para Handy (13 page)

“He's neffer had a good word to say for enchineers till this day: I think that's why he's often so nippy wi' Macphail. But he still has the hert of a child, and the chenerosity of Mr Carnegie!”

At which hint, I felt it incumbent on me to arrange for the Captain's glass to be replenished.

F
ACTNOTE

Fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction — or maybe simply mirror it. Whatever the truth of the matter, the two incidents which provided me with the idea for this story were reputed to have happened to real-life MacBrayne ships and were told to me some years ago by a former MacBrayne seaman as historical fact.

The collision with Tobermory pier was said to have taken place in the early 1930s, exactly as described. The vessel involved was the regular Sound of Mull steamer
Lochinvar
, which had been built in 1908: and was fully refurbished in 1934.

She was a strange-looking ship, and a strangely-powered one as well. Only 145ft overall, she was originally constructed with three six-cylinder paraffin engines driving three screws: in 1926 these were replaced by four-cylinder diesel engines. The engine-room was placed at the stern, with her cargo hold immediately forward of it: and the passenger accommodation and bridge forward of that again. Cargo was loaded and unloaded by a jib-crane and her only mast was a simple pole mast on the foredeck. As built, she had one very thin, very tall smokestack later replaced by the complete opposite — one very short, very squat funnel. In either guise she looked something of an ugly duckling, though her actual hull was finely proportioned.

The incident at Arinagour is reputed to have occurred in the 1960s and there must be witnesses who could confirm if it did really take place. The vessel was the
Claymore
, mainstay of the thrice-weekly link from Oban to Lochboisdale, the second ship to carry that name. Her predecessor gave nearly 50 years service to MacBrayne, mostly on the Glasgow to Stornoway run.

The second
Claymore
was commissioned in 1955, a handsome ship with comfortable accommodation in two classes — the last of her kind in that respect. However, she was notoriously tender in heavy weather. She had the fatal combination of substantial top-hamper (thanks to the generous public space offered in her lounges, dining-saloons and bars): linked to a shallow draft (necessary for access to island piers at all states of the tide, and to places like Coll which in those days had no pier but relied on flit-boats to attend ships — which came as close in shore as they could).

I can vouch for her lack of sea-going qualities! Blessed with the happy fortune to have been born a good sailor, I sympathise strongly with those who are not so lucky. I remember with wry amusement the throwaway line from the skipper of the
Claymore
to a passenger enquiring as we left Oban what the weather ahead was likely to be. “Well I hope you like rock-and-roll,” he said, “for you're certainly going to get it today!” And indeed we did — not just on that occasion but on many others too.

M
ACBRAYNE'S
G
LADSTONE
B
AG
— Such, thanks to her carrying capacity, was the nickname bestowed on the little Handa, seen here at an unidentified pier somewhere on the West Coast. Though they lacked the glamour of the big paddlers such vessels were the workhorses of the Highlands and provided the crucial link to the outside world. The engine-room telegraph on the port wing of the bridge, and the ladder behind it, can be clearly seen!

11

The Vital Spark at the Games

I
t was a fine August morning and the
Vital Spark
, having made an early start from Colintraive where she had spent the last two days unloading a cargo of roadstone, was punching round Toward Point into a light northerly breeze.

There was something of a holiday atmosphere aboard, what with the sun glinting on the spray of her (modest) bow wave: but more particularly because the crew had succeeded in selling a few sacks of the owner's coal to the Colintraive merchant, and were planning a clandestine spree once they were docked at the Broomielaw and before heading for their weekends at home.

“Rothesay's gey quiet the day, Peter,” said the mate, gesturing towards the curving esplanade and phalanx of boarding houses of Rothesay Bay in the middle distance. “No' mony steamers there at aal this mornin'.”

Indeed, the usually bustling pier of the capital of Bute was all but deserted. Only the diminutive
Texa
lay alongside, her derrick swinging the crates of a mixed cargo to the quay, while MacBrayne's majestic
Columba
was edging out on her daily mail run to Ardrishaig.

“Well, Dougie,” replied the Captain, “ whit else wud ye expect on the last Setturday of August? Aal the boats'll be runnin' in and out o' Dunoon right noo, and since you've reminded me o' that, I've a good mind that we should maybe chust go to join them. What d'ye think yourself?”

“Mercy, I'd clean forgot what day it wass,” said Dougie. “But aye — why not, why not indeed!

“Then that's what we'll do,” said Para Handy: and after making a great show of whistling through the speaking tube to an engine room and an engineer he could have bent down and touched, he called down it: “Richt, Macphail, if for wance you can get that neb o' yours oot o' they novelles for a meenit, ye could maybe get up some steam and see if we can get to Dunoon sometime this month!”

“What's the great attraction aboot Dunoon?” asked Sunny Jim curiously, looking up from the forehatch, where he sat peeling an enormous potful of potatos which, with salt herring to encourage the thirst, had been planned for dinner prior to berthing in Glasgow.

“We're goin' to see Cowal Gaithering,” replied the skipper.

“Cowal?” queried Jim with a puzzled expression. “Wha's Cowal? And whit's he gaitherin'?”

“Man, Jum,” said the skipper. “There iss times when I think you are nothin' but an ignorant lowland neep to be sure: but of course I blame your time on the Cluthas. Your world ends at the Yoker Ferry. You havna the advantage nor the concept o' the great traditions of the west. Cowal's no' a person — it's yon whole lump o' land” — he pointed towards the hills on the port side — “and a Gaitherin's a Games. D'ye tell me ye never heard of the Cowal Hieland Gaitherin? It's namely aal over the world ass the snappiest Games of them aal, bar nane. Iss that not so, Dougie?”

“Whateffer you say, Peter,” observed the mate agreeably. “For they're certainly the snappiest for a dram. Every time you find your gless iss empty there's aye somewhere fine and handy to get it refilled. If you've the coin.”

“And that we have,” rejoined the skipper, “for ye'll mind o' the wee deal we struck wi' Mackintosh in Colintraive, eh? But not a cheep tae the owner!” And he laid an index finger along the side of his nose with a conspiratorial grin.

“But whit happens at a Games,” queried Sunny Jim, ignoring the snort of disgust which came echoing up from the engine-room. “Is it like the fitba'?”

“Jum, Jum, I despair o' ye. A Games iss what has made us Brutain's hardy sons. It's the very bedrock o' the nation, the true tradition o' the Hielan's. Bonnie lasses in tartan skirts louping aboot like things possessed: laddies skirling the pipes: big fellas, that well built they wud mak' Hurricane Jeck look like a skelf, tossin' tree-trunks aboot chust the same ass if they were matchsticks: pipe baun's merchin' up and doon the streets: an' grown men that should ken better sneakin' off from their wives and weans to hae a few drams mair nor's guid for them.”

“What he means,” cried Macphail from the sooty depths of the boiler-room, “is that it's jist a lot of weel-oiled tumshies a' dressed up like kahouchy balls cavortin' through the toon, and frichtening the lieges: an' a bunch of wee nyaffs jumpin through girrs an' that.”

“Ye're a leear, Macphail,” cried the affronted skipper, “chust the nearest thing tae a Sassenach, ye should be right ashamed tae call yerself a Scot!”

“But I thocht a' these Games things wiz jist somethin' invented for the towerists,” said Jim, “naethin' but chaps in hired kilts wi' the wrang legs for them and their behinds stickin' oot, and accents ye could saw wud wi'?”

“Naw Jum,” said the Captain. “In Braemar maybe, or even Inverness forbye, for they're a' saft in the heid up there and the countryside's fair stuffed wi' toffs and sich. But no' at Cowal. Cowal's aal chust for the people. Brutain's hardy sons! Chust wait till ye see!”

And — the puffer by then being off Bullwood with the Gantocks rocks dead ahead — Para Handy concentrated on navigating safely through the twin hazards of the reef and the constant stream of paddle-steamers depositing their quota of revellers on the main Dunoon pier, till he coaxed the
Vital Spark
into the very last remaining space at the puffers' traditional berth, the little Coal Pier in the East Bay.

The misanthropic engineer was more than pleased to nominate himself as the unanimous choice for shore watchman. Wild horses would not have dragged him to the festivities as he settled back into his bunk — for all that it was but mid-day — with the latest penny dreadful, an unread novelette, and a quarter of candy-striped balls.

The remainder of the crew, with Sunny Jim under the skipper's patient tutelage, fought their way through the colourful crowds on Argyll Street and on up to the Dunoon stadium: paid their admission moneys (with some reluctance) and spent the next few hours enthralled by a harlequinade of sight and sound as the very finest of Scottish music, dance and athletic prowess was put through its paces.

Frequent forays to the beer tent while funds lasted, and then a desperate but unsuccessful search for the ‘Committee' when they ran out, kept them in the best of spirits in more ways than one.

When the Gathering climaxed with the traditional assembly and march past of more than 2000 pipes and drums even the normally taciturn Mate was observed to wipe a surreptitious sleeve across his eyes, Sunny Jim stood gawping at a spectacle so splendid, so sonorous and so stirring, and Para Handy himself was with some difficulty dissuaded from climbing onto a nearby cart and delivering ‘Hielan' Laddie' in an enthusiastic but tuneless baritone.

It was dark by the time the throngs from the stadium made their way back to the esplanade. Across the water the lights of Gourock beckoned and at the pier the paddlers were banked three deep for the evacuation to come.

But one final ritual remained.

As the clock on the Parish Kirk on Castle Hill struck 10, the night exploded into a blinding light that would have challenged the mid-day sun, and a noise that would have shamed the opening barrage at Waterloo.

The last tradition of the Cowal Highland Gathering, the Grand Fireworks display, ran its tumultuous course for 20 minutes. Then the crew of the
Vital Spark
picked their way through the crowds, and across the smouldering detritus of the display, back to the ship.