Complete New Tales of Para Handy (29 page)

For the sake of peace and harmony it was probably just as well that that was the point at which Para Handy had to leave the boat to attend the afternoon session at Stobcross.

It was nearly seven o'clock before he returned, trudging along the wharf with his head down in dejection and his hands in his pockets. “Don't ask me a dam' thing till I've had my tea,” he said as he stepped aboard. “I'm chust at the end my tether!”

“If I thought this mornin' was bad, boys, you should have seen this afternoon!” he commented quarter of an hour later after having disposed of a plate of fried herrings and two mugs of tea sweetened with condensed milk.

“I chust hope that the owner hass more sense than he hass money and iss not thinkin' of puttin' wan of these godless wireless contraptions on the shup, for that iss what yon young fella wass tellin' us aal about this afternoon. I do not like the sound of it aal, boys, it mean the end of the independence we aal enchoy in the coasting tred!”

“What is it, then?” asked Sunny Jim, who had heard the word bandied around in the past two or three years without having any real idea of what was involved.

“It iss almost impossible to believe,” said the Captain, “but it iss chust like the telegraph, except there iss no wires to it, and your shup could be in the muddle of the Minch and the office could send you orders ass nate as anything.”

“But how…” began the Mate.

“Dougie, I do not know, that's the plain truth of it. But it iss two boxes filled wi' electrucity, wan for pittin' messages oot and wan for bringin' them in. It iss chust ass if you have a collie dug that big its tail iss in the office and its heid iss on the shup. So if you stand on the tail in Gleska, the heid will howl on the vessel: and if you pat its heid on board the
Vital Spark
, its tail wags in Gleska.

“I'm tellin' you, I will have nothin' to do wi' it. If he tries to put wan of them things on the
Vital Spark
then I am takin' a chob ashore.”

Fortunately, things did not come to this pass. The following morning, half an hour before the puffer left Glasgow bound for Skipness in Kintyre, a horse-drawn van clattered onto the quay and delivered a large black tin box addressed simply to ‘Steam Lighter
Vital Spark
'.

On examination this was found to contain a complete set of 26 individual flags, one standing for each letter of the alphabet, complete with halyards and cleats for the mast together with a hard-bound copy of the printed set of codes from which Para Handy had quoted the previous day.

“No wireless, thank Cott!” exclaimed the skipper with some relief, “though these dam' things iss bad enough. Jum!! Put up the new halyards seein' they're here, and take all the rest of this rubbish to the fo'c'sle. We'll maybe peruse it at our leisure some ither time,” he concluded dismissively, and the crew thought that they had probably seen and heard the last of the hated signal flags.

Not quite.

Two days later, as they were returning to Bowling having delivered their cargo of roadstone to Skipness, the
Vital Spark
came through the narrows at Colintraive and Para Handy spotted the
Spartan
in the middle distance, headed towards them, and very low in the water with a full cargo of unknown identity.

“Jum!” shouted the Captain. “Away you down to the fo'c'sle and bring oot the flags for S and P, and K and Z: and run them up the signal halyard ass fast as you can!”

“What's that aal aboot, Peter?” asked the Mate, puzzled, as the mysterious signal fluttered in the breeze.

“Och, chust a chance to get back at that man Bain and his fancy ways at the cless the ither day.

“It'll gi'e him somethin' to pause and consider aboot if no more than that — but maybe he'll be late goin' to wherever he's goin' — and serve him right! You see, I ken fine that he hassna the wireless, for he said Hay's wass not puttin' them in aal the shups because of the cost. But he doesna ken whether we have the wireless or not.

“S and P means
Have received orders for you not to proceed without further instructions
: and K and Z means
Anchor instantly
.

“If we're lucky, he may well do chust that — and I'd like to be in John Hay's office if Bain goes ashore at Colintraive and telegraphs to get those instructions.”

Noticing with impish delight, as the two boats converged, that the unfortunate
Spartan
was indeed preparing to let go her anchor, Para Handy doffed his cap and waved cheerily to Bain, ignoring the other man's efforts to shout questions with a polite tap on his ear and an apologetic shrug.

The
Vital Spark
passed her at Macphail's best seven knots, and swung westwards round the tip of Bute and out of sight.

F
ACTNOTE

I picked up a copy of the 1904 edition of
Signalling for Board of Trade Examinations
for a few pence in a second-hand bookshop a few years ago. The little handbook, produced by the nautical publishers James Brown & Son of Glasgow, dates from the time of the watershed between the old and new ways of communication at sea.

There is a whole range of coded flag messages and those given in the story are all genuine. However, in 1899 Marconi had presented his paper on
Wireless Telegraphy
to the Institution of Electrical Engineers. It too is reprinted in the handbook and as it was published, the very first wirelesses were being installed in ships — though needless to say not in the humble puffers!

There were six shore telegraph stations set up by the Marconi Company to handle wireless communication to and from ships in the Atlantic, and 10 shipping companies including the ‘big names' such as Cunard, Norddeutscher Lloyd, American Line and the French CTG, had specified wireless facilities on at least some of their passenger liners. Nevertheless, the total number of ships in the world's merchant and naval fleets so equipped (according to Marconi's own list in 1904) was still less than 50 though, of course, it would soon be being added to daily as first the convenience and then the necessity of the new technology became understood.

The James Brown handbook also details methods of ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore signalling using lamps, semaphores and quite complex (but widely understood) combinations of other masthead paraphernalia — cones, balls, cubes, coloured lights etc. The messages conveyed in signal code ranged from the banal to the dramatic and all points in between.

Thus inconsequential communications such as
Pay attention!
or
Has the mail arrived?
or
My chronometer has run down
appear in Brown's handbook alongside rather more pressing messages which include
War has been declared
,
I must abandon the vessel, Beware of torpedos
and
We are dying for want of water
— all conveyed by a pre-arranged combination of flags.

Puffers, even at the end of their long career on the Clyde, were rarely fitted with wireless transmitters. Skippers in West Highland ports had to telephone their Glasgow head offices for further instructions about their next ports of call. Inevitably this could lead to some hilarious interchanges when a city clerk, looking out of his office window at a calm, clear and cloudless sky, refused to believe the circumstances reported by some beleaguered skipper trapped perhaps in Stornoway by severe gales, or else marooned in Campbeltown in a thick fog.

25

Hogmanay on the Vital Spark

I
t was mid-day on Hogmanay, and in the front bar of the inn at Lochgoilhead the crew of the finest vessel in the coastal trade were being ‘treated' by the local merchant whose consignment of best Ayrshire coal they had just finished unloading.

Para Handy put his empty glass down on the bar counter with unnecessary ostentation, peering into it as if incredulous that it could have held such a small and quickly-taken dram.

“My Chove, I wass needin' that,” he said with some conviction. “Coupin' a cargo of coalss iss no' the best of chobs in weather like this.” Indeed a snell north-easterly wind was sending a thin flurry of snow drifting across the windows that looked out onto the loch, and the aspect was of unrelieved shades of grey.

“Best respects to you Mr Carmichael, and the compliments of the season,” the skipper continued, “but if there's nae mair business to be attended to” — fiddling with his empty glass as he spoke, more in hope than anything else — “I think the lads and me should be getting on our way, for it'll be a long cold trup, bitter cold, before we're in Glasgow tonight!”

“All right Peter,” smiled Carmichael, signalling to the barman. “I can take a hint. Set them up again, Wullie!”

Surprisingly, given the day it was, the party had the bar to themselves, with one exception.

If the small man at the table in the far corner, nursing what looked suspiciously like a glass of ginger beer, was aware that he was the object of the crew's curiosity, he gave no sign of it but could not have been surprised. Strangers in Lochgoilhead at this time of year were as unexpected as a snowflake in June.

“He's no' a traiveller, for sure,” offered Dougie when Para Handy, in a very audible stage whisper, invited ideas about the identity of the mysterious stranger. “For he's got no cases and you never yet saw a traiveller withoot his samples.”

“And he's no' a towerist,” affirmed Sunny Jim, “for they all go away tae hibernate efter the September weekend.”

The barman leaned across the counter. “I was going to speak to you about him, Peter, to see if you could do me a sort of a favour wi' yon man. He's no' exactly a towerist, chust a sort of an Englishman that's been biding here for the past week and he's desperate keen to get back to Glasgow noo — but wi' the ice and that, Mackinnon's trap couldnae get up the hill to connect him wi' the charibang at the top of the Rest this mornin', and there's no a steamer till efter the New Year. So he's kind of stuck.”

“What d'ye mean ‘no exactly a towerist'?” asked the captain.

“Nothin' really, Peter,” said the barman: “chust that at this time o' year ye dinna expect ony o' them.” And reaching to the shelves behind him for the bottle, he poured another generous dram into the skipper's glass. “It would be a great kindness if ye could tak' him wi' ye on the
Vital Spark
.”

“My Chove, Wullie,” said Para Handy, eyeing his refilled glass suspiciously. “You're surely awfu' anxious tae get rid o' him. Whit's wrang wi' him?”

“Not a thing, Peter, not a thing: chust tryin' to do him a kindness, it bein' the time o' year it is.”

“That's right,” chipped in Carmichael. “He'll pay his passage – and I'll donate a bottle to keep you warm on the way up river.”

Para Handy studied the little man surreptitiously. He looked harmless enough, but this was Hogmanay, not Christmas, and the generosity of both barman and merchant were uncharacteristic to say the least.

“What d'ye think, Dougie?”

“Whatever you think yoursel', Peter,” said the mate agreeably.

“Just dinna let Mr MacBrayne find out you're in opposition for he'd be sair vexed wi' you,” snorted Macphail — but the bargain was struck, and the little man was beckoned to join the group.

“Mr Clement, this is Captain Macfarlane,” said Carmichael, “and he's agreed to take you to Glasgow. On the conditions that you and I discussed earlier,” he added with some emphasis. “So remember to keep to them.”