“Even if your spae-wife wass the chenuine Gipsy Rose, Dan, and even if effery single thing she told you wass true, you have nothing at aal to worry aboot! It hass aal happened already!
“The Lochawe wass wance a puffer herself, that’s what she wass built ass! They turned her into a passenger shup years ago but orichinally she wass a puffer chust like the Vital Spark, which is why the enchines wass so like what you were used wi’. What happened today iss what your spae-wife told you aal about — but she neffer said it wud happen to you on your shup, chust that it wud happen to a puffer and that you’d be there when it did. And it has happened — but tae the Lochawe and her enchineer!
“That means it’s not going to happen to you — nor to the Vital Spark!
“So cheer up, Dan, and let’s have no more of your nonsense. And don’t you effer, effer again let me cetch you goin’ onywhere near a spae-wife while you’re the enchineer on my shup!”
FACTNOTE
The railway bridge at Connel was completed in 1903. For more than half-a-century it doubled as a toll-paying crossing for motor traffic for which exorbitant tariffs could be (and were) charged in view of the near-monopoly situation which its owners enjoyed. The only alternative route for vehicles from Oban to Benderloch or Appin or Lochaber (or vice versa) was a tortuous road journey of nearly 100 miles. Eventually, in 1966 — after the closure of the railway line to Ballachulish — it became a normal, toll-free part of the road network.
The tide-race at this point, known as the ‘Falls of Lora’, is most noticeable at the spring tides, when it presents a quite daunting spectacle for any small boats contemplating the passage into Loch Etive.
The first major industrial venture attempted at the Etive village of Taynuilt, in the 18th century, was an iron foundry but this had a relatively short lease of life.
For decades thereafter, however, a large granite quarry on the shores of Loch Etive opposite Bonawe was the source for many of the cobblestones or ‘setts’ which paved the streets of Glasgow for many generations. A few now by-passed city backstreets and cul-de-sacs survive with these original surfaces: hardwearing, impervious to almost any abuse but quite notorious hazards for two-wheeled traffic (pedalled or powered) in the wet, when they turn swiftly into treacherous, ridged skid-pans.
The Pass of Brander runs westwards from the northern shores of Loch Awe just beyond the remarkable Cruachan Hydro-Electric Power Station, built inside the mountain and completed in 1965.
The small passenger steamer Lochawe served on the loch for half a century, finally going to the breaker’s yard in 1925. Mystery surrounds her origins. She is registered as having been built in 1876, but there is evidence that she was in fact converted in that year for passenger duties, having been originally designed and constructed some years earlier as a steam lighter of 100ft overall.
Her lines and general appearance were certainly suggestive of a cargo rather than a passenger carrying ancestry. She had a very substantial freeboard, and a cavernous saloon and dining room which gave every indication of having been created in the original hold. Like every puffer ever built — and unlike almost every purpose-designed passenger vessel of the time — she had her engines aft. The Pointhouse yard of A & J Inglis was responsible for her conversion (or construction) in 1876, and she was then dismantled and transported in sections to Loch Awe for assembly on a lochside slip.
9
The Kist o’ Whustles
It was several weeks since the paths of my own peregrinations had crossed with the passages of the Vital Spark, and I was out of touch with the latest news of the doings of her Captain and crew when I came across them loading a cargo at the factory pier of the fireclay works on the river Cart.
“It’s drainage pipes for Cowal,” acknowledged Para Handy with a deprecatory shrug, meeting me as I strolled up the quayside just outside Paisley, “and given the amount of rain they’ve been havin’ on the peninsula this last week or two, it iss mebbe not before time.”
Using a contraption consisting of a complex rectangle of netting made from webbing-straps the puffer was loading a cargo of ochre-coloured pipes of quite startlingly large diameter.
“They are going to Kilmun,” continued the Captain, “for that Mr Younger, the chentleman that mak’s his money from the beer: he iss puttin’ mair gairdens into hiss Benmore Estate and with the amount of rain watter that comes pourin’ off the hill, he needs aal the drains he can get, poor man.
“Macphail wass suggestin’ that mebbe he iss goin’ to divert the watter to the brewery but then Dan iss of the opeenion that aal beer hass been wattered, exceptin’ perhaps when it’s his favourite stout.”
“They look an awkward cargo to handle,” I suggested, watching as another dangling, precariously-secured bundle came swinging inboard, and ducking instinctively as it passed just a few feet above my head.
“There iss worse,” said the Captain agreeably, “though at the moment I wud find it very dufficult to say chust what. But at least they are clean.
“And in any case, it’s aal chust in the day’s work for the shup. Drain-pipes for Kilmun: or whusky from wan or ither o’ the distilleries,” he added emphatically and hopefully, — but I did not even offer to take the hint: “we can cope wi’ it aal. If Dougie wass here…”
The Holy Loch cuts into the Cowal Hills just two miles north of Dunoon, the saltwater arm of a geological fault-line linking the estuary to Strachur on the upper reaches of Loch Fyne to the west. Between the Holy Loch and Strachur lies narrow Loch Eck, mirroring the steep and wooded hills which rise around it.
That freshwater loch, renowned as among the most beautifully situated of any in the country, also mirrors (in miniature) the attributes of its larger saltwater neighbours, for it boasts a modest passenger steamer service, provided for excursionists and round-trippers, by the Fairy Queen, a screw steamer little larger — though with much finer lines — than an ordinary Clyde puffer.
I was reminded of this on the occasion, some months after my encounter with Para Handy at the Paisley docks, when I came across the Vital Spark and the captain and his crew at Kilmun pier, where I had arrived aboard the steamer Redgauntlet on a Saturday morning, invited to spend the weekend on the coast with old friends who had taken a house for the summer.
Laid against the north side of the pier, the puffer was busily unloading a series of plywood boxes, little more than two feet square but as much as 12 or 15 feet in length. Dougie the Mate was operating the steam-winch with very considerable care, not to say delicacy, of movement. Sunny Jim, standing on a flat-bodied dray on the pier, guided the boxes as the jib swung them towards him, lowering and stacking them on the cart with as much concentration as if they had contained the very finest of bone china.
More surprisingly still, there was a goodly crowd on the pier to watch this process including, huddled together in a group, a number of distinguished-looking gentlemen — one even sporting gaiters — dressed in clerical clothing.
“My goodness, what sort of cargo is it you have today, then, Captain?” I enquired as Para Handy came over to pass the time of day, “for I’m sure the ship is as much at the centre of attention as if it was the Crown Jewels themselves, and the crew are taking as much care of it as if it was eggs!”
“Well,” he said, “conseederin’ what the last cargo you saw us wi’ wass, and that it wass consigned for Kilmun too, you could surely guess that it would be pipes. Chust pipes,” he said, and then added mysteriously, “but mebbe a raither special sort of a pipes.”
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen pipes boxed up like that,” I said. “so it’s not drain-pipes for sure. Lead pipes for a plumbing contractor, is it? They must be very particular about where they buy their raw materials.”
“Goodness me,” said Para Handy, “it iss not plain water pipes we have in the boxes, Mister Munro. For wance the owner hass managed to get the contract for a dacent cairgo worthy o’ the shup. Wan that iss mair in keepin’ wi’ her style and her chen
eral abilities.
“These here iss organ pipes — sent doon from Gleska, for the new unstriment they’re puttin’ in at the Kilmun Kirk along the road there.
“We brought down the wud and the metal and aal the rest o’ the materials for the insides of it last week, alang wi’ two men that are buildin’ it, and then last night we came back wi’ aal these fancy bits!”
It was a pleasure to see how the Captain glowed with pride at the distinctive cargo which had been in his care: and to reflect that, given the enthusiasm of all on board the puffer for what the engineer would have called a “good tune”, and the modest but nonetheless accomplished musical talents of Dougie and Sunny Jim, they were perhaps the most appropriate crew on the river to be entrusted with it.
“Ass weel ass these pipes for the front, and fancy carved wud screen-frame to hold them,” continued the Captain, “there iss two keyboards, I’m tellin’ you no lee, two o’ them nae less. It seems chust a waste o’ time to me for I have neffer yet seen an organist wi’ fower airms. But that iss not aal! For then there iss what the men that’s buildin’ it tell me are pedals for the man that plays it to use his feet on to get a choon!
“If they were to pit it in a sideshow in wan o’ the fairs you would surely get the publicat-lerge to pay their saxpences chust to watch it in operation: for the man that plays it must have aal the agility and cheneral sagiocity o’ the India Rubber Man at Hengler’s Circus and Carnival!
“Obviously none o’ yer common-or-gairden harmoniums iss good enough for the folk at Kilmun. This is a proper fantoosh organ, the like o’ them that you wud find mebbe in St Mungo’s where the Gleska chentry go, or in Paisley Abbey where the Coatses come from, or in a Kirk that’s beholden to Mister Carnegie for the occasional contribution.”
“Well, Captain,” I said. “You must remember that Kilmun Church has been under some patronage from the Dukes of Argyll for many years, and so maybe it is His Grace that is paying for it as a present for the congregation!”
And, reflecting that it was perhaps just as well that the crew of the Vital Spark were not of the persuasion of the Free Church of the Western Highlands, (for then the care bestowed on the instrument in their charge might have been somewhat less painstaking) I shook the Captain’s hand and headed off towards my friends’ lochside retreat.
I had the pleasure of attending the recital given a couple of months later in Kilmun Church on the occasion of the official inauguration of the new organ.
The historic little kirk was packed and the instrument, safely installed in the choir gallery above the main door of the building, was resplendent with its banks of gleaming pipes, its rich wood carvings and fretwork.
What I think nobody was prepared for — or could have even begun to be prepared for — was the splendid sound quality and sheer magnificence of the organ itself.
The audience sat in rapt silence as the church filled with the most sublime harmonies and melodies, the sheer power and depth of the bass pipes almost outshone by the daring virtuosity of the contrasting melodic stops, brilliant in their cascading ripples, their soaring scales and shimmering arpeggios.
After two hours in which the listeners were transported, as it were, to another world, the concert concluded — fittingly and properly — with the singing of that most inspiring of all the master-works of the Scottish Psalter, ‘Ye gates, lift up your heads on high’ to the tune St George’s, Edinburgh.
As the hushed crowd left the church and passed into the cool darkness, a sense of the infinite hung about the churchyard and the last soaring, triumphant notes of the great organ crescendo which had closed the evening seemed to hang on, still, in the silent night.
As I picked my way along the shore side of the churchyard wall, a dark silhouette — a familiar dark silhouette — detached itself from the trunk of a venerable tree which overhung the path, three other figures just discernible beyond it.
“I am gled they feenished with St Chorge’s,” said Para Handy quietly. “Anything else would chust have been a let-doon.”
“I had not expected to see you here, Captain,” I said. “Why did you not come into the kirk?”
“I do not think that wud have been right, Mister Munro, for we are chust Brutain’s hardy sons, straight from a day’s work perambulatin’ aboot the river, and in no’ fit state to be seen in among the Kilmun congregation alang wi’ aal the chentry.
“But we were prood to have brought the new kist o’ whustles doon here, and happy to have had the chance to hear it played. There iss some chobs we value more than ithers…”
“…and there are some men to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for the care and devotion with which they carry out those jobs,” said a voice from behind us, and the Kilmun minister clapped Para Handy on the shoulder.
“We would all be very pleased, Captain, if you and your crew would come up to the Hall right now, and join us all for supper so that we can thank you properly.”
FACTNOTE
The Loch Eck steamer was for decades an integral and essential link in one the most popular of all the ‘round trips’ on the Firth. Passengers sailed from Bridge Wharf down river and through the Kyles, then on to Strachur on Loch Fyne whence they transferred by coach or (later) charabanc to the head of Loch Eck, and thence back to the Holy Loch or Ardentinny piers for their return passage to Glasgow.
PADDLE POWER — This splendid picture captures the drama of a crowded paddler at full stretch. The steamer is one of the North British Steam Packet Company’s Craigendoran fleet — Redgauntlet — referred to in the story about the Kilmun organ. She was built at Barclay Curle’s Scotstoun yard and launched in 1895. She is listing to port as the crowds line that rail to watch the steamer from which this photo was taken vanish astern. Note too the huge diameter of the steering-wheel on her open bridge, requiring two helmsmen to handle it.
The Fairy Queen, an 80ft vessel with generous saloon facilities for her patrons, was built in the upper reaches of the Clyde at Seath’s Rutherglen Yard in 1878 and gave almost half-a-century of service before she went to the breakers in 1926.
Such excursions are a distant memory but the gardens at Benmore between the Holy Loch and Loch Eck remain one of Argyllshire’s greatest treasures. The millionaire Edinburgh brewing family, the Youngers, gifted the estate to the nation in 1925. As well as being a spectacular attraction and an asset for visitors and locals alike, Benmore — managed nowadays as an adjunct to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh — has an outstanding flora and is also a major research station, especially renowned for a rhododendron collection of 250 different species.
The church at Kilmun stands on the site of the oldest Christian foundation in this part of the country, established in the early seventh century by St Munn, an Irish monk who had previously served in the Columban community on Iona.
The present building, completed in 1841, is the third to have been erected on the site looking out across the Holy Loch. It is unusual in many respects, particularly for the way it has been constructed to encompass and shelter, on its north-eastern corner, the mausoleum built in 1795 as the resting-place of the Campbell Dukes of Argyll, whose ancestors used Kilmun as their burial-ground, and most of whose descendants are interred here.
The church is of great beauty and considerable interest: many thousands of visitors come to see it each summer. The stained glass and the woodwork are particularly fine. So is its organ, installed in 1909 and unique in being powered by a hydraulic pump — operated by the local mains water supply — the last such in the country. It is, quite simply, a splendid instrument, the unexpected jewel of a tiny kirk, and one which would not be out of place in any of the larger churches in the land. It was a gift to the congregation from the Youngers of Benmore.
How the organ and all its works was first brought to Kilmun I do not know: but it is perfectly possible that transportation was indeed provided by a puffer, for it could certainly not have arrived in any way other than by sea.
10
; Hurricane at the Helm
I had arrived in Oban by train late one September afternoon on my way to Lochboisdale in South Uist. The MacBrayne steamer Mountaineer sets out on the 10 hour crossing three days a week — at 6.00 in the morning. I had reserved a sleeping-berth so that I could pass a comfortable night on board and avoid an unconscionably early rise in the morning, waking instead in time for breakfast as we approached Tobermory.
As I climbed up the gangway from the South Pier I happened to glance across the bay and, to my considerable surprise, saw a familiar but totally unexpected maritime silhouette. So it was that, a short while later, with my baggage safely stowed aboard the paddler, I made my way along an esplanade thronged with a great crowd of visitors enjoying an early evening stroll before dinner, and out onto the town’s North Pier.
Para Handy was seated on the hatchcover of the Vital Spark with his pipe in one hand and a mug of tea in the other, studying the toes of his boots with apparent interest.
“Good evening, Captain,” I said. “You are about the last person I expected to find in Oban.”
“Well, well,” he said, looking up with a start. “It’s yourself then. This writing business must be doing well, eh, if you can afford a nice wee holiday at this time of year? Not that it’s any of my business…
“Ah well then,” he continued after a few moments, once he realised that I had no intention of unburdening myself of any confidences about my present financial condition, “yes, we are chust here perambulating aboot the Sound of Mull for a week or thereby. The owner has got a contract to tak’ in the winter coals to some lighthooses and so here we are.
“I wish I could offer you something but would you credit there iss nothing on the shup…”
It was not too difficult to persuade the Captain to join me in making the short journey to the bar of the Argyll Hotel.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 7