The Gallant Pioneers: Rangers 1872 (12 page)

  Colquhoun sat down to a burst of applause and following further discussion Watt was told to make any proposal to play the match again to another committee meeting which, unsurprisingly given the time that would have then elapsed, he never did. However, Rangers clearly had the goodwill of the majority of the Glasgow public on their side if the letters to the News in the weeks that followed were anything to go by. There was anger that the SFA had ratified the decision of the referee and umpires to award the trophy to Vale of Leven when Rangers refused to show on point of principle. One particularly irate reader, named only as J.C., thundered: ‘With respect to this match there is only one conclusion to which anyone present at the association meeting can come – namely, that, come what may, the committee were determined that the Rangers should not get the Cup.’5
  A writer named ‘Olive Branch’ called on Vale of Leven the same day to offer to play the game again in a gesture of true sporting spirit. He said: ‘As a witness of the contest on Hampden Park, I have followed the progress of the dispute along its devious course to the present point, and deplore the depth to which the game of football has sunk in the estimation of those who are its exponents…It is difficult to see how the Vale of Leven club can enjoy possession of the Cup even under the plea that it has been awarded them by the association, and I think it would be a magnanimous act on their part, and help to raise them in the good opinion of all who like fair play, were they to say to one another, “Well, we don’t want to lie under the stigma of holding a Cup we have not won and, although the association have vindicated our legal title to it, we are ready to play the Rangers afresh and abide by the result.”’
  No more than 24 hours later, reader ‘Mackenzie’ went straight to what many considered the nub of the issue when he asked: ‘Why did the Vale kick from goal instead of from offside? And the decision of committee not to consider the protest, while they had considered similar ones? It was apparent to disinterested spectators of the match that the umpires and referee had “lost their heads,” and I am afraid this opinion will gain ground in regard to the association also.’6
  Immediately ‘An Old Half Back,’ surely with leanings towards Vale of Leven, took J.C. and Olive Branch to task for their points of view. He hit out: ‘J.C.’s remarks in today’s Glasgow News seem to me to be the outcome of disappointed spleen. The Rangers, by their high-handed and unjustifiable proceedings in regard to the decision of the committee, have debarred themselves from any and all chances they had to secure the Cup and the committee, in handing it over to the Vale of Leven, adopted the only course open to them. The childlike statements of Olive Branch are also, to say the least, very nonsensical. To expect the Vale of Leven club to offer to play the Rangers for possession of the Cup is absurd.’7
  That argument cut no ice with the wonderfully named ‘Hard Nut’, who cracked in a fiery letter to the News on the Saturday morning and demanded his favourites resign from the SFA all together. He wrote: ‘Before An Old Half Back assumes such a bold tone against the Rangers let him answer the following pertinent questions: Can the disputed goal be proved a “no goal” when the umpires and referee could not tell which player was offside? Assuming it was “no goal”, is it fact that in resuming play the Vale men did not kick from the offside, but kicked from goal, thereby infringing the rule? Is it the case that one of the umpires at the match, Mr. R.B. Colquhoun, occupied and retained the chair when the Rangers protest was decided in committee, and, if so, when a man sits in judgement upon his own action what is the usual result? Let Old Half Back crack these nuts and then supporters of the game can decide as to the justice or injustice of the committee’s decision. If this cannot be done satisfactorily (which I fear it cannot) then the Rangers have certainly not had justice afforded them, and they would do right, as suggested, in withdrawing from an association that sanctions such questionable proceedings.’8
  Things were bubbling up nicely for the Charity Cup Final on 20 May, which Rangers had reached following a 4–1 defeat over Third Lanark two weeks earlier. Preparations were underway throughout Scotland on the day of the Final to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria 24 hours later, with many shops and businesses preparing to close for the day. In Kilmarnock, for example, excursions were being arranged to places such as Carlisle, Greenock and Arran, although the Evening Citizen reported that ‘as usual, the Provost issued a caution to those likely to be outrageous in their methods of celebrating the holiday.’9
  In the pavilion at Hampden the atmosphere was more sober as the two captains turned to face one another, aware that the issue of which side would secure bragging rights for the season was finally about to be resolved. Vale of Leven’s John McDougall looked Tom Vallance in the eye and said, ‘Well Tom, this is the conqueror.’ Tom replied, ‘It is.’ In total, 10,000 fans crammed into Hampden to watch teams so evenly balanced they had each also claimed a win at home against the other earlier in the season, 2–0 at Vale of Leven and 3–0 to Rangers at Kinning Park. Vale stunned Rangers after only two minutes of the Final when McDougall, playing the skipper’s role to perfection, nodded his side in front. However, the game was level on 15 minutes when Struthers, repeating his scoring feat of the Final, headed home an equaliser that could not be disputed. Rangers pressed after the interval for the winner and the ball was finally scrambled over the line for a clincher so ugly the scorer has never been recorded. Still, it was a thing of beauty to Rangers as they celebrated lifting silverware at last.
  With so much tension hanging in the air for several weeks it is hardly surprising that the game ended in a bad-tempered fashion. Players traded punches and even the Rangers fans jostled their rivals as they left the pitch. Bob Parlane, the Vale of Leven ’keeper, was accused by the North British Daily Mail of deliberately kicking an unnamed Rangers player as he lay on the ground, sparking the furious reaction from the crowd. Parlane, however, vehemently denied any wrongdoing and wrote to the paper claiming he travelled home on the bus with the player he was alleged to have assaulted. It seemed all the best battles took place off the field that season, rather than on it.

Peter Campbell

The town of Marennes on the Atlantic coast of France is fêted by gastronomes as the oyster capital of the world. Up to 60,000 tons of the delicacy are pulled from the Bay of Biscay every year as its waves lap the shore just south of Nantes. However, on 2 March 1883 its waters offered up an altogether more ghoulish cargo, which finally doused for good the last lingering hopes of 34 families in Britain and beyond that their loved ones could still be alive. The message to the Registrar General of Shipping and Seamen in Cardiff, dated at 5.22pm, was blunt and to the point: ‘Reliable information received here direct from Marennes stated some wreckage from steamer St Columba washed ashore near Marennes, Bay of Biscay. She left Penarth Dock, January 28, for Bombay.’1 Tears were shed up and down the country for loved ones lost, particularly at Glasgow and Garelochhead as relatives and friends of Peter Campbell, one of the founding fathers of Rangers, came to terms with his death. He was only 25 years old.
  Peter McGregor Campbell was born at Craigellan, a villa in Garelochhead, on 6 March 1857, the son of John McLeod Campbell, a steamboat master, and Mary Campbell, who came from Kirkconnell near Dumfries. Of all the gallant pioneers, Campbell’s early life was easily the most privileged. He was raised in a substantial sandstone property his father had built on land feued from the Clan Campbell chief, the Duke of Argyll, in 1850. It still stands today on the shores of the Gare Loch, next to an almost identical home constructed at the same time by Peter’s uncle, Alexander. The houses were built after the Duke began to allocate lucrative parcels of his extensive land holdings to allow the construction of sizeable properties, many of them weekend and summer retreats for the Glasgow mercantile classes. John McLeod Campbell became a man of means and influence throughout a life spent mostly on the Clyde, where he thrived as a successful steamboat captain and shipping entrepreneur.

Left: Captain John Campbell, father of Peter Campbell, Firth of Clyde pioneer and steamship entrepreneur. Right: Garelochhead West, c.1912. The house on the extreme right is Ellangowan, originally the home of Captain Alex Campbell, uncle of Peter. Next door is the house where Peter was born, Craigellan, built by his father, Captain John McLeod Campbell on land feued from the Duke of Argyll. Both handsome sandstone properties still stand today.

He married into a family of substance when he wed Mary Jenkins at Rhu in 1846 – her brother, Sir James Jenkins, was honorary surgeon to the Queen and a graduate of medicine from Glasgow University who had entered the Royal Navy in 1841. He went on to become a staff surgeon, then Inspector General of Hospitals, in a fulfilling career littered with honours before his retirement in 1878. The Jenkins family, as the name suggests, hailed originally from Wales, but settled in Upper Nithsdale in the latter half of the 18th century, where they were widely respected for the benevolence shown to the poor at the family farm, Nivinston, at Kirkconnel. A local history, The Folklore and Genealogies of Uppermost Nithsdale, almost beatifies the family for their charitable disposition, which included turning over one of the farm buildings to vagrants and itinerants. Their country hospitality even extended to setting up a makeshift infirmary for the homeless wanderers who fell ill ‘so that among the outcast the name of Jenkins became the synonym of all that was good.’2
  Peter Campbell had two sisters, Jessie, five years his senior, and Mary, five years his junior. In the 1871 census, taken when he was 14, the family also included older brothers Alex, 23, and William, 22, both engineers, and John, 15, James, 12, and Allan, 11. Sadly, the lives of the three oldest sons would prove tragically short, as was the life of another daughter, Margaret, who died within a year of her birth in 1852. Two years before Peter’s death, William drowned in an accident in the harbour of the German port of Geestemunde. Alex also died young, aged just 28 when he passed away in October 1876 of tuberculosis. The story of the Campbells is the story of the Clyde itself, as the family’s history and fortunes flowed with the tides of time, lapping the banks of the river at Govan long before the legacy left by Peter and his friends on Edmiston Drive came to compete with the cranes of the shipyards for dominance on the skyline of the city’s south side.

Garelochhead. The birthplace of Peter Campbell, whose family home lay around the sweep of the bay to the left.

John McLeod Campbell, born in 1815, and his brother Alexander came from a line of ferrymen and fishermen who made their living on the waters of Argyll, from the west side of the Gare Loch through to Loch Goil, Loch Long and the Holy Loch. It was inevitable that their careers would intertwine with the new steamship industry, which began to flourish from 1812 when the paddle steamer Comet was commissioned and built at Port Glasgow and became the first successful commercial vessel of its type, running daily services between Greenock and Glasgow. Astonishingly, before then, the shallow nature of the Clyde allowed journeys along the river only at the top of each tide and, depending on the vagaries of the wind, it took up to 12 hours to complete a trip – miss the high water and an overnight stay at Bowling became a hastily scripted part of any traveller’s itinerary.
  John became a ship captain as early as 1835 when he took charge of a vessel named the James Dennistoun, followed by the St Mungo the following year. Soon he was a regular on the Glasgow-Gareloch route in command of ships such as the Sovereign, the Monarch and the Fire Queen. He served his apprenticeship working for ship owners such as Henderson and McKellar and James and John Napier but, time-served, by the mid-1850s he and Alexander began to set out on their own lucrative journey. The expansion of Glasgow as an industrial centre gathered pace throughout the 1850s and the Gareloch was to feel its benefits in many different ways. For a start, the wealthy urban elite began to look for weekend retreats away from the grey backdrop of the Industrial Revolution and suddenly picturesque corners of the Argyll countryside became accessible by steamship and affordable through the rapid economic advancement of the lucky few merchants and industrialists.
  However, the working classes also derived benefits from the advance of the steamship trade. The Glasgow tradition of going ‘Doon the Watter’ began in the 1850s and the Campbells were at the forefront of transporting the poorer citizens back and forth from often wretched living environments to resorts where the lungs could be cleared of the gritty reality of industrial living, even if only for a few short hours. The regular commuters may have looked down their noses at the passengers they disparagingly referred to as ‘excursionists’, but they were to play a vital part in the economic success story of the Campbells. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, passenger motives for a trip on the steam ships were not always so well intentioned. The Forbes McKenzie Act of 1853 had forbidden pubs from opening on a Sunday, but pleasure craft were conveniently excluded from the legislation and so began the trend for booze cruises, leading to the popular west of Scotland slang term for overindulgence as ‘steaming’.