Complete New Tales of Para Handy

by Stuart Donald

  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.

  Spreadeagled on his back on the hatchway of the hold, with his hands pressed hard against his ears, his feet drumming on the planking, and his mouth open in a soundless scream, they found the engineer — bellowing, once he was able to speak again, that a world war had begun.

  “Man, Macphail, ye’ re an ignorant gowk so ye are,” said Para Handy unsympathetically half-an-hour later, when they finally calmed him down enough to allow the administration of a stiff medicinal dram from the jealously-guarded bottle kept (with some exercise of willpower) solely for such emergencies.

  “Surely ye knew what wass up when ye saw the ither puffer crews leave their boats and get awa’ from the pier ass soon ass the darkness fell? Surely ye knew that the fireworks display iss aalways set up on the very Coal Pier itself?

  “No wonder ye got the fright o’ yer life an’ thought ye were in an explodin’ munitions factory. But let this be a lesson to you Dan! If you’d come ashore wi’ the rest o’ us ye might have had to pit your hand in your pocket — but at least ye wouldn’t have pit your hert in your mooth!”

  FACTNOTE

  Traditional Highland games are held in communities large and small throughout both the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland and the Cowal Highland Gathering, which celebrated its Centenary in 1994, is the largest and most spectacular of them all. To Scots the name of Cowal is probably the best known but English visitors are perhaps more likely to be aware of the Braemar Games thanks largely to the ‘Royal’ connection. Senior members of the Royal family attend every year, as the event coincides with their holiday in nearby Balmoral Castle.

  Similar games are held throughout the world, wherever there is a strong Scottish community or connection, and many overseas competitors take part in the games in Scotland — particularly at Cowal, which hosts the official world championship events in Highland dancing as well as prestigious solo piping and pipe band competitions. Other attractions at any self-respecting games will include the traditional heavy athletic events (the tossing of the caber in particular) without which no Highland event would be deemed complete — and most certainly not by any visitors from south of the border!

  Dunoon’s wooden steamer pier still stands, though it is today a somewhat depressing mockery of its past glories, reminiscent of a Hollywood film-set: all facade and no substance. Much of its splendidly colourful and overstated Victorian superstructure of tea-rooms, towers and turrets lies sadly unused and some — most regrettably part of its long viewing-gallery — has been demolished. It is the terminal for CalMac’s workhorse vehicle ferry service from Gourock and, in summer months, an occasional port of call for the Waverley, the only operational sea-going paddle steamer left in the world.

  Old photographs from the turn of the century show a different world — paddlers queuing up to come alongside, passengers streaming on and off in their hundreds (they still do, though now from the far-from-glamorous ro-ro ferries) and files of charabancs and horse-buggies awaiting them on the shore side of the pier gates. Even into the fifties Dunoon remained a steamer ‘crossroads’, with day-long activity to watch, and many holidaymakers passed hours on the pier (with interludes in its tea-room or its bar according to taste!) enjoying the varied pageant of shipping on the Firth.

  THE GENERATION GAP — The great tradition of Highland games continues unabated — the wardrobe of the participants might be unrecognisably different, but the programme of Highland dancing, pipes and drums and heavy athletics celebrated every August in Dunoon Stadium today is the same as it was in the days when the Vital Spark sailed the Firth. Para Handy would be as much at home at the Cowal Games in 1995 as he was in 1905, though the outfits worn by today’s dancers and pipers would seem as strange to his eyes as those in this photograph are to ours.

  A few hundred yards north east of the steamer pier is the still older stone jetty which was used by generations of puffers, and their predecessors. Though it is decades now since there was last a cargo boat of any description calling at Dunoon this is still known locally as the “Coal Pier” — and the displays of pyrotechnics which climax the last night of Cowal Gathering are indeed constructed on this convenient platform.

  12

  A Spirited Performance

  At once one of the most popular and the most frustrating tasks the puffer crews can be asked to perform is to carry cargos to or from the highly-reputed malt whisky distilleries dotted around Argyll and the Inner Hebrides.

  Popular, because a puffer with its hold full of barley for the malting loft, or of oak staves for the cooperage, is a welcome visitor with a badly-needed cargo: and skipper and crew are traditionally treated to a generous dram or two of clear spirit straight from the stills, and with a proof content which make the commercial blends seem like spring water by comparison.

  Frustrating, because sometimes puffers are contracted to carry a load of whisky in cask from the remote distilleries to the bottling and blending plants in the upper reaches of the Clyde or in Glasgow itself. The agony of sailing atop a cargo ample enough to guarantee a lifetime of high-jinks, but guarded by Customs Seals and (sometimes) by Customs Officers in person and thus as unattainable as if it had been on the far side of the moon, is a frustration adequate to torture Tantalus himself.

  The Vital Spark and her crew were in just that situation one fine summer’s evening as the vessel lay moored alongside the private jetty of one of Islay’s most respected distilleries.

  On her arrival that afternoon in ballast the resident Customs Officers had boarded the puffer and all but stripped her from stem to stern.

  “What on earth are they daein’?” spluttered an aggrieved Sunny Jim as he was summarily aroused from his comfortable cat-nap in the fo’c’sle and unceremoniously bundled on deck.

  “Chust checkin’ on us, Jum,” said the skipper, “to see if we’ve a place somewhere handy for hidin’ a barrel or two. I’m bleck affronted they should even think it of us. The Vital Spark hass something of a reputation in the coastal trade…”

  “You can say that again!” boomed a sonorous voice from the echoing depths of the engine-room. “And some reputation it is, tae.”

  “Pay no heed to Macphail, Jum,” said the skipper, raising his voice to ensure that that worthy would miss nothing of what he was about to say. “He’s chust embarrassed because wan o’ the Officers found his secret store of novelles under that loose deckboard in the fo’c’sle and called all his colleagues down to have a good laugh at them.”

  The engine-room did not respond to that sally.

  “And have any puffer crews ever managed to steal something from a cargo of whisky?” asked Sunny Jim.

  “I don’t care for your language, Jum
,” said the captain. “Not steal, for sure and it wass neffer for selling that any spurits wass taken, but chust for drinking. Liberate would be a better word for it.

  “Myself, I don’t think there iss the same imagination in the puffer crews nooadays ass there wass when I wass a young man your age. Not the same spurit of adventure, you micht say. The modern sailors iss timid, chust timid. They’re feared o’ bein’ caught, for a stert: and they’re feared o’ the Customs — not that I exactly blame them for that. Put a man intae a uniform nooadays and he behaves like an enemy sodger, all aggravation and aggression. Time wass when the Customs offeecials would use their mental agility tae ootfox the crews: today they chust come on board like this efternoon and kick the boat to pieces whether they’ve ony reason to or no’. There iss no subtlety left in what aye used to be a chenuine battle of wuts, when whicheffer side won, the ither respected them for it and swore to get even next time roond.

  “I mind servin’ ass an apprentice wi’ a skipper caaled Forbes who had his ain boat: a sailin’ gabbert it wass, and him and the mate and me wass the only crew on board her. Wan time we loaded wi’ whusky in casks at Campbeltown and the Customs men came on board and pit their seals all round the hatch covers.

  “You’ll understand that these were inspected when we docked at the blenders in Gleska, and if the seals wass tampered wi’ in any way, then it wass the high jump for aal the crew.

  “We were hardly oot the harbour when Forbes grabbed me by the lug and pulled me to the fore end of the cargo hatch. Wan o’ the planks in the hatch side-coaming wass a false plank — it had no tongue and groove to it, so it could chust slide oot leavin’ a wee square hole into the cargo hold.

  “ ‘In ye go, Peter,’ says Forbes. ‘This iss whit we employed ye for: ye’re the only wan o’ us small enough to get in through there. Tak’ this wi’ ye’ — and he handed me a piece of rubber tubing — ‘and when ye’ve prised the bung frae the top o’ wan o’ the whusky casks, siphon the spurits and pass us oot the end o this tube so we can start filling oor ain barrel up here.’

  “I telt him I couldn’t do that, it would be the jyle for me if I did, for sure.

  “ ‘It’ll be the jyle for you if ye don’t,’ says he. ‘For ye’re an apprentice disobeyin’ the command of a superior officer on a shup at sea an’ I’ll hae ye up tae the docks polis in Gleska so fast your feet’ll nae touch the ground.’

  “And would you believe, Jim, I wass that feared of him I went and did it, though for weeks efter I didna sleep properly for fear the polis were comin’ to get me.

  “There was another gabbart, the Amelia Ann, that wass namely among the longshoremen for the quantity of whusky her skipper could liberate on a trup from Islay to Gleska: the Customs men was fair demented for, no matter hoo mony ropes and wax seals they put on the hatchway, there were aye two or three barrels less in Gleska than the manifest showed: but the wax seals wass neffer broken and the ropes wass always whole. The skipper of the Amelia Ann swore blind that there wass a Customs Officer at the loading berth in Islay who simply couldn’t coont, and they’d no way of disproving it for the seals wass aye intact and they could neffer find ony trace of spurits on the boat.

  “What none o’ the authorities knew wass that the skipper had a brither that worked at the forge where the brass master seals for the Customs wass made, and the man chust cast wan extra set for his brither. And ass for the disappearing barrels, well, he simply hung them ower the side from what looked chust like an ordinary fender rope, and hauled them back in again when the inspectors had given up and gone home in disgust.

  “Of them aal, though, there wass nobody could touch my old friend Hurricane Jeck for sheer agility when it came to liberating a drop of good British spurits.

  “I mind fine wance when him and me wass crewin’ on a puffer caaled the Mingulay that belonged tae a Brodick man. Thanks to Jeck she had the duvvle’s own reputation at the distilleries and wi’ the Customs men, and they always swore they’d catch us sooner or later and really put us through the girrs when we came into a distillery pier.

  “Wan time we came into a jetty in Islay late one evening ready to load up a cargo of the very best malt spurits in cask the following mornin’.

  “Well, they thocht they had the better of Jeck this time. The distillery had already waggoned the casks down to the pier, and they’d put an eight foot high wire and metal-framed fence not chust at the landward end, but right roond the other three sides of it: and they’d two security guards inside it, sittin’ on top of the stacks of casks.

  “ ‘Let’s see ye get somethin’ oot o’ that, MacLachlan,’ said the heid Customs man wi’ a smug grin. Jeck said nothin’, but chust shook his head sadly.

  “At two o’clock in the mornin’, when the tide was fully out and the Mingulay was dwarfed by the jetty now rising high above her hull, Jeck shook me awake.

  “ ‘Come on Peter, let’s get oor share o’ the spurits!’

  “ ‘You’re no’ canny, Jeck,’ says I. ‘We’ll get nothin’ here. The spurits iss all fenced in and the guards iss still awake for I can hear them talking.’

  “ ‘So much the better,’ says he: ‘the more noise they make, the easier for us.’

  “And would you believe it, he produced an empty barrel and a big brace-and-bit. We climbed over the puffer’s bulwarks onto the horizontal trusses on the framework of the jetty and worked the barrel till it wass under wan o’ the gaps between the planks that made up the surface of the pier, right at the very middle of it. Then Jeck used the gap to drill a hole into the base o’ wan o’ the whusky casks from below, and ass the spurits poured oot he caught them in the barrel we’d brought with us.

  “It wass much harder to get the full barrel back on board the boat — but we managed it efter a bit o’ a struggle.

  “Next morning we loaded the cargo on board in netting slings, the Customs men roped and sealed the hatches tight, and it wass long efter we’d unloaded in Gleska before the empty cask wass discovered. By that time it wass too late to blame anyone, and the Customs people finally decided it must have been liberated by someone at the blenders. They never jaloused that it would have been possible for Jeck and me to do what we did.”

  “What I don’t understand,” said Sunny Jim, “is where you got the empty barrel from — and where you hid it on board?”

  Para Handy grinned. “Well, Jum, let’s say that we didn’t drink any tea on the way hame from Islay, long trup though it was. We had chust used the Mingulay’s own water-barrel for the chob!”

  “Happy days and high-jinks,” said Jim a little despondently. “I wish we could enjoy some o’ that sort of spree these days, but with these foxy Customs men that’s jist a daydream.”

  Para Handy stood up from where he’d been sitting, hunched on the corner of the cargo hatch.

  He looked round to ensure no unwanted ears were within eavesdropping range.

  “What were you planning for supper the night, Jum?” he asked.

  “Salt herring, I thocht,” said Sunny Jim.

  The captain grimaced.

  “No, Jum, for peety’s sake no. Naethin’ salty, whatever you do. Naethin’ to provoke a thirst. And, a word of advice — don’t be tempted to drink ony of oor ain watter.” He nodded towards the wooden waterbreaker lashed to the mast.

  Sunny Jim stared in disbelief. “You don’t mean…?”

  Para Handy laid a forefinger against the side of his nose. “But how on earth…?” Sunny Jim began.

  “Wheesht, Jum,” said the skipper anxiously. “Wheesht. That’s for me to know: and for them neffer to find oot!” And he turned and waved to the three Customs men standing in animated conversation on the quayside.

  FACTNOTE

  Many puffers called upon to transport whisky really did regard the operation as something of a challenge to their ingenuity and all of the subterfuges described in this tale were actually employed at one time or another by different crews!

  There are about 100 whisky di
stilleries in Scotland today, a far cry from earlier days before rationalisation, take-over and the economies of scale saw mergers and buy-outs which decimated the numbers of individual enterprises. In Para Handy’s time there were more than 20 distilleries in Campbeltown alone!

  The majority of whisky is used for blending, with whiskies from a variety of other distilleries, to create the best-known proprietary brands. The blender’s art is the most highly prized of skills, and the secret of the blending processes jealously guarded.

  Only a minority of distilleries produce a whisky which will be bottled and marketed as a ‘single’: that is, unblended with the product of other manufacturers. Almost without exception those whiskies which are branded and sold as singles are malt whiskies, distilled from malted barley in copper pot stills, rather than grain whiskies which are the chief ingredient of the blends, made from maize and unmalted barley in a continuous distillation process.

  THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY — Two puffers waiting at the Caol Ila Distillery pier, Islay, for the most frustrating cargo in the world — casks of malt whisky straight from the bond. Though this photograph dates from the 1940s, the agony of proximity to such temptation (and the ecstasy of the generous dram which was the crew’s expected bonus from the manager) were the same then as they had been 40 years previously.

  The character and quality of the familiar commercial blends is generally dictated partly by the quantity, but above all by the quality, of the malt whiskies which they contain.

  As a rule of thumb, grain whisky is bland but malt whiskies are full-flavoured: most important of all, each malt has its own unique character which the experiment of centuries has proved impossible to duplicate. On Speyside, the major centre of malt whisky production, adjacent distilleries drawing their water from the same river and buying their barley from the same grower will produce totally different whiskies. And nobody knows why.