Complete New Tales of Para Handy (40 page)

As the sun sank slowly towards the mountain ridges of Mull the crew sprawled across the main hatch in the cooler, evening glow and sighed with satisfaction. They had been fed and watered in such luxury as could, all too easily, have become a habit — but for the fact that the opportunity of raising the cash to fund such an epicurean existence came their way but once in a blue moon.

Para Handy lit his pipe (a fresh supply of finest tobacco had also been a part of their shopping-list) and surveyed the world about him with the greatest contentment. He had no quarrels to make with anyone. Not even Macphail.

Aboard the
Shannon
, the wardroom was hazy with cigar-smoke as her officers relaxed with coffee and brandy after a sumptuous dinner which for them was more or less a matter of routine.

Her captain, however, had one lingering doubt as he leaned back in his chair at the head of the long, highly-polished table and studied his fingernails with a puzzled frown.

“All involved in today's operation deserve our congratulations and thanks,” he said at length: “and I will ensure that the men enjoy some well-earned shore leave tomorrow.

“There is, though, just one thing that puzzles me greatly and I wonder if any of you can shed any light on it.

“Why is it, I ask myself, that the head-counts taken by the officers on the pinnaces show — beyond all doubt — that while we landed exactly 317 visitors onto the
ship
, we then managed to return no fewer than 453 to the
shore
?

“Has anyone any idea how this could happen?”

F
ACTNOTE

Ships of the Royal Navy were indeed frequent visitors to Oban and to the waters of the west coast in the early years of this century and of course the numerical strength of that Edwardian Navy was measured in the hundreds. Nowadays in all probability the entire British fleet could be very comfortably accommodated within the area of the Firth of Lorne — and with room to spare.

Para Handy and his crew were going about their business in and around the Clyde at the time of what was probably the greatest period of change in naval history. The turbine engine, first tested in a Clyde steamer, was but a part of that revolution.

Underwater the submarine was coming into its own as a practical and very lethal piece of military machinery. Indeed there were arguments about the very ethics of deploying such an invisible aggressor possessed of such a deadly strike-rate, and against which current defensive and offensive strategy by surface ships was virtually impotent.

Surface strategy itself had been revolutionised by Britain's development of the Dreadnought class of battle-ship. These ships were not necessarily any larger in their dimensions than their predecessors had been: but their armaments and construction heralded and belonged to a new generation of naval technology.

First of them all was the eponymous
Dreadnought
, which came into service in February 1906. She was swiftly followed by more vessels of the new specifications so that at the outbreak of the First World War the British Navy had more than twenty ships of this category in service. The
Bellerophon
was one of these, launched from the Admiralty's Portsmouth yard in 1907 but engined and boilered from the Clyde by Fairfield and Babcock respectively.

R
ULING THE
W
AVES
— Here is one of the nine 15,000 ton, 400ft battleships of the Majestic class (it is not possible to identify precisely which one) at anchor in Campbeltown Loch. They were completed between December 1894 and November 1896 which says something both about the naval finances and the shipyard capacity of the age: but by the time this picture was taken they had been outgunned and outperformed by the new Dreadnought class.

The four-funnelled cruiser
Shannon
, which came into service in March 1908, was of almost identical
size
to the dreadnoughts of the
Bellerophon
class, but of a much lighter construction and with a much less potent ordnance. With a top speed of 23 knots she was one of three sisters which were designed to post a significant improvement over their immediate predecessors — the four vessels of the
Warrior
class commissioned in 1905.

Sadly, despite their enhanced design speed they never delivered what they promised and were therefore generally regarded as something of a disappointment on most counts in comparison to the
Warrior
and her kin.

This class was among the last to be built for the British Navy with a distinctive and steeply-angled ramming prow.

34

The Centenarian

O
n this occasion there was no doubt. The mishap could not in any way have been perpetrated or contributed to by the
Vital Spark
, her Captain or her crew. The puffer, as she had every right to be, lay moored alongside the Albert Harbour basin in Greenock. Para Handy and his crew were sound asleep in their bunks, having had an early night and retired to rest before midnight. First thing next morning they were due to begin loading the cargo of bricks (consigned to a Rothesay builder) which awaited them on the quayside.

The night was cloudy, but calm: and the clock on Greenock Town Hall had not long struck two when a small coaster began to pick her way with hesitant manoeuvres through the narrow entrance to the Harbour. The
Glen Affric
was heavily-laden with slates from the Eisdale Island quarries, and she was very late in arriving at her destination. From the moment she left the Crinan Canal she had suffered intermittent engine-failure and her passage down Loch Fyne, through the Kyles, and up-river to Greenock had been erratic, spasmodic and painfully slow. Her long-suffering crew were irritable, irritated — and very tired.

That, probably, was what caused the accident. But for whatever reason the coaster, as she swung into the basin with plenty of space for her length to be comfortably accommodated immediately for'ard of the
Vital Spark
, failed to nudge her way into that waiting berth but, instead, cannoned fiercely against the hull of the puffer with a crunching noise and a reverberating shock which echoed through its stubby hull and awakened instantly all the sleepers in the fo'c'sle.

Para Handy was the first to scramble into trousers and guernsey and stumble bleary-eyed onto the deck to see what had happened.

The bulk of the coaster loomed large across the puffer's bow and her navigation lights cast a faint illumination upon the scene. From her bridge at the stern came sounds of angry altercation, abuse and accusation, and finally a gruff voice which commanded that ‘Wullie' should get ready to leap for the quay with the bow rope readied to moor her, while ‘Callum' was ordered ashore to see if there was any immediately apparent damage done to the coaster, or to whichever vessel it was that she had struck.

Ten minutes later the crews of both vessels had made as full an inspection as circumstances — and the darkness — would allow and at that point had found nothing obviously amiss. It was then agreed by the two skippers that no further progress could be made that night, and that a detailed and more searching examination would be made at first light.

All concerned then retired to their bunks, and peace fell again across the Albert Harbour.

Next morning Para Handy and the Mate opened the main-hatch to inspect the puffer's empty hold, and found more than a foot of water in it.

“Bless me!” said the Captain. “I certainly thought that that was one terrible dunt we took last night, and sure enough, here and we have gone and sprung a plate, by the look of her, chust see the watter that she's takin' in! A plate gone, I am sure”

This was also the diagnosis of the diver employed by the owner of the
Vital Spark
(as soon as he was advised by telegraph of the events of the previous night) to carry out a thorough underwater examination of her hull.

By lunchtime the owner himself was at the quayside and — while the lawyer he had brought with him from Glasgow went off with a bulging briefcase and a grim expression to open the preliminary parley with the skipper of the
Glen Affric
— he took Para Handy up to the nearest chop-house.

“You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Peter” he said firmly, to the Captain's considerable relief, “and the pump is coping with the leak. But she will have to go into dry-dock for repair before you can think of sailing. Now, I cannot get her a berth anywhere in Greenock: the nearest available space is at Ferguson's Graving-Dock in Port Glasgow, but you'll be able to sail her there with no problems, just keep the pump running and don't be tempted to look for too much speed from her and you will be all right. What I must ask you to do is stay aboard to keep an eye on operations but the crew can take some leave if they want it: this job is going to take a week at the least.”

And, pushing away his plate of lamb cutlets, reduced now to but a collection of well-picked bones, he signalled to one of the pot-men to replenish their tankards of beer.

Para Handy and Macphail brought the
Vital Spark
upriver to the Port Glasgow Yard of the Ferguson Brothers later that same afternoon, having seen Dougie and Sunny Jim safely aboard a Glasgow train and off on an unexpected (and, it must be said, unpaid) week of leave.

“There surely iss no point in keeping the boys, Dan,” he had suggested to the Engineer with some apprehension, lest that worthy had thrown a tirravee at the very idea of being delayed in harness while others holidayed. “I need an enchineer, but it only takes the one man on deck to run her to Port Gleska.”

Dwarfed by the mighty ocean vessels under construction in the Greenock and Port Glasgow Yards as she hugged the shore on her way upstream, the puffer finally reached Ferguson's, the last yard on that stretch of the Renfrewshire coast of the river between Port Glasgow and the Cart at Paisley.

The graving-dock had been excavated on the open foreshore beyond the high brick walls of the yard, to the eastwards of and parallel to the builder's construction slips, and it was entered by way of a lock gate very similar to those with which Para Handy was familiar on the canals. Guided by one of the yard's foremen, and with three of his men operating the gates, the puffer was directed into the dry-dock and, as the water was drained off, settled onto the massive blocks on its floor.

Macphail, once he had damped down the fire, came up on the deck wiping his hands on a piece of rag and stared about him in some awe. The dry-dock had been designed to accommodate the largest cargo-vessels using the Clyde and the
Vital Spark
lay within it as insignificant as a child's toy boat. From the dock floor the surrounding walls soared above them, cranes to either hand soaring even higher. A flight of concrete steps was let into the walls to right and left and down one of these came a gang of men, two carrying a long wooden ladder which they propped up against the hull of the puffer so that the Captain and Engineer could disembark.

As the docks squad swarmed round the
Vital Spark
and began to construct a scaffolding frame around her hull, Para Handy and Macphail climbed the stairway and headed for the town centre.