“Chance wud be a fine thing,” said Jim. “Naebody wants the trump or the melodeon so long as Dan’s holdin’ court wi’ thon portable concert-hall.”
“Ah,” said Para Handy, “but that’s the whole point, Jum. I have a feelin’ that Dan’s reign is chust aboot drawin’ to a close and that we’ll no’ be hearin’ much more from his band-box the night.”
“Whit way?” asked the mystified Jim. “Is it broken?”
“No, nor broken,” said Para Handy. “But I think he is chust on the point of runnin’ oot o’ these …” And he thrust his opened right hand under Jim’s nose. On the palm rested the brightly coloured tin of gramophone needles.
“Look lively then, Jum. Fortune favours the bold!”
FACTNOTE
Edison registered his patent for a ‘sound-recording’ machine in August 1877, yet for the next 20 years the invention was regarded as little more than a curiosity and little effort was made to commercialise it.
During this period, the cylindrical record was superseded by the new disc record, carried on a turntable: the earliest of these were a mere seven inches in diameter. Not till 1904 was the first machine with an ‘internal’ loudspeaker manufactured. Till then, all instruments were of the type immortalised in HMV’s famous logo of a horn gramophone and a listening dog.
Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians affirms that in those early years ‘various well-known musicians played or sang into the instrument, but they did so more or less for the fun of the thing: there was no attempt to market or duplicate their efforts.’ Then when commercial production started in the early years of this century ‘it was found that powerful notes caused trouble with the primitive instruments of the day’ and that ‘the grooves in which such notes occurred were liable to rapid wear’. So Para Handy wasn’t altogether mistaken in his comments with regard to the possible foibles of Macphail’s machine!
Puffer crews often carried their own entertainment, in the form of musical instruments. Melodeons were a popular smaller version of accordions — both of which were relatively recent creations. The humbler ‘trump’ or ‘Jew’s Harp’, to give it its proper name, was by contrast an instrument of very considerable antiquity and surprising universality as well. There were many and various forms of this small, horseshoe-shaped gadget with its vibrating metallic tongue, held between the teeth and played by striking with the fingers and using the lips to create notes of a different pitch. Almost unheard-of in this country today, forms of the ‘trump’ have been known throughout Europe, Asia, and the Far East for centuries, and it can be seen depicted in Chinese illuminated manuscripts of 900 years ago. It briefly ranked as a serious orchestral instrument in Europe in the early l800s with acclaimed soloists performing recitals — and even a concerto — on the orchestral platform.
Harry Lauder, born in 1870, was enjoying a worldwide reputation by the early years of this century which, given the lack of any seriously-marketed gramophone records, was quite remarkable — a reputation built up, literally, by word of mouth. Originally a miner, he quickly established himself — both as singer and as raconteur — as the archetypal ‘pawky Scot’ and toured the world from the USA to Australia, with considerable and constant success. He died in Strathaven, Lanarkshire in 1950.
23
High Life at Hunter’s Quay
Low tide at Sandbank often produces a spectacle which is most unlikely to conjure thoughts of a glamorous maritime career in the imaginations of any passing landlubber.
The world-renowned boatyards of the Holy Loch village may be the cradle of some of the finest racing yachts ever constructed but the men working on the sleek speedsters taking shape on the slipways are treated almost daily to a timely reminder of the more mundane side of life at sea.
When the tide ebbs it exposes, at the head of the loch, a far from romantic stretch of sandflats (from which the village of course takes its name) to which the puffers are regular visitors. Slipping in at high tide, they are left high and dry as the water recedes, lying throughout the ebb period like stranded whales, their steam winches busy as the crews employ specially-designed grabs to load a cargo of sand before the tide creeps back in.
The value of such a cargo is slight — but the cost of acquiring it (apart from the aching backs and blistered hands of the crews) is nil, and there are always builders and contractors in need of large quantities of coarse sand for construction projects up and down the Firth.
The crew of the Vital Spark loathed coming into Holy Loch. The job of loading the cargo of sand was hard and dirty work and had to be carried out at speed if it was to be completed in time to the movement of the tide. Worse, the Sandbank Inn was tantalisingly close at hand but quite unreachable, for if you were to stroll across to it on the dried-out sand of the ebb, then by the time you were ready to return, you would need a dinghy to take you back to your boat across the flooding tide.
One June afternoon the puffer, after unloading 50 tons of coal at Ardnadam, came up to the head of the loch on the flood and, as the tide neared the foot of the ebb, got ready to take on board a cargo of sand for delivery to Bowling.
Macphail attended to the steam-winch, Dougie attached the steel sand-grab to the pulley of the crane, and Sunny Jim took the boards off the main hatch. Para Handy, as befitted the status of Captain, surveyed all these preparations from the relative comfort of the wheelhouse.
There were three other puffers beached close to hand and soon the clatter of steam-winches and clang of sand-grabs echoed off the hillsides. As the day drew on a change in the weather was plainly imminent: a breeze got up, the clouds closed in and there was a hint of rain in the air. By the time the job was done, it was gone seven o’clock: as the Vital Spark began to lift off the sea-bed on the incoming tide, Para Handy came to a decision he he had been contemplating for some time.
“Boys, “ he said, “we will chust stay in the cheneral area for the night. I dinna much care for the idea of pickin’ oor way up river wi’ no freeboard on her in dreich-lookin’ conditions like this. We’ll go back doon to Hunter’s Quay and tie up overnight after the last steamer hass been in, and mak’ a snappy start in the mornin’ to get hame by dinner time.”
A shouted consultation with the skippers of the other three boats ended with them all agreeing to do the same, and at eight o’clock the four puffers weighed anchor and headed in convoy towards the mouth of the loch.
The paddler Madge Wildfire had just made the final call of the day and was pulling away from Hunter’s Quay pier as the little flotilla of puffers came hiccupping round the point from Hafton House.
On the beach to the west of the pier were jetties serving the Royal Clyde Yachting Club, whose imposing clubhouse towered above the shore road and gave broad panoramas up river. Half a dozen racing yachts rode at their moorings in the bay and on any normal day would themselves have been a fine and imposing sight. But this evening they were dwarfed into insignificance by a vessel anchored just beyond them in the mouth of the loch.
“My Chove,” said Para Handy in admiration. “Issn’t that the beauty! She’s a whupper and no mistake!”
The vessel in question was indeed magnificent. Almost as big as the Madge Wildfire, she actually managed to look bigger, thanks to the optical illusion provided by her soaring masts. She was a white-hulled, three-masted, topsail schooner, with a bright yellow funnel proclaiming her auxiliary steam power.
Macphail stuck his head out of the engine-room. “That’s the Sunbeam,” he said. “Earl Brassey’s yat. I read in the paper she wis comin’ intae the Clyde. She’s on a roond-the-world cruise.”
“Chust so,” said the Captain. “Well then, we wull go and tak’ a roond-the-yat cruise, for I want a closer peek at her.” And he spun the wheel to port and headed for the anchored ship. The three other puffers, their crews apparently more interested in the attractions of the Hunter’s Quay Inn than those of the sailing ship, kept on course for the pier.
As the Vital Spark approached the yacht, a s
mall steam launch was being lowered from her davits and a party of what looked to be very important people indeed was descending the companionway slung over the starboard side. “That’ll be Earl Brassey himself,” Para Handy surmised, “and the chentry that’s sailin’ wi’ him.”
To his considerable surprise, as he circled the Sunbeam at a respectable distance, the yacht’s steam tender chuffed over to the puffer and began to circle round it. Para Handy was first bashful, then flattered, to realise the Vital Spark was under scrutiny through binoculars by the gentry seated in the launch.
“Man Dougie,” he said. “Haven’t I aalways say that the shup iss too good for the tred the owner hass her in? They think we’re the King Edward and they want to tak’ a look at turbine power in action!”
After a couple of circuits round the puffer, the launch pulled away and headed off at high speed for the shore, throwing out a gleaming bow wave and kicking up a great wake as she did so.
Para Handy gazed after the little boat with a somewhat wistful expression. “Or then again,” he said resignedly, “maybe they were chust amusin’ themselves at oor expense!”
The Vital Spark approached the main quay to find something of a confrontation in progress. The other puffers were bobbing in a semi-circle about a hundred yards off the pierhead, whence a uniformed figure, with a megaphone to his mouth, was bellowing something (Para Handy was just too far away to catch the words) to the skipper of the Cretan.
“Wha’s yon eejit?” Macphail queried, “and whit’s he bangin’ on aboot tae puir Ogilvie?”
“I canna chust mak’ it oot, Dan,” said the Captain. “The man’s the Chief Steward at the Yat Club, wan McCutcheon, I ken him by his face, but I doot he’s no’ givin’ us aal an eenvitation to the Clubhoose for oor dinners.”
A surmise which was confirmed seconds later, when the other puffers could be seen turning away from the pier and heading slowly towards the open Firth, their crews indicating their anger at the Club Steward in one or other of a variety of tried and trusted ways of so doing by means of explicit hand-signals traditional to the West of Scotland.
“You too, Para Handy” yelled the megaphone-bearer, swinging that implement towards the approaching Vital Spark. “This is a gentleman’s club and a gentleman’s pier and I’ll no’ have trash like you littering the quay and the foreshore. Clear aff!”
Catching sight, out of the corner of his eye, of the Sunbeam’s launch gently manoeuvring alongside the steps at the innermost wall of the stone quay, he rushed over to catch the line thrown ashore by a white-clad crewman: shouting, as he did “Get tae blazes oot o’ this, Para Handy” in the one direction, followed immediately by an obsequious “Allow me to be of service, Earl Brassey!” in the other.
“My Chove,” said Para Handy from the door of the wheelhouse, “there’s a man that dearly loves a Lord, and is sore in need of bein’ taken doon a peg or two. But to be honest, it hass been a long day and I am no’ in trum for an altercation wi’ McCutcheon right noo, hiss turn wull come! Dan! Let’s head for home!”
But, as he turned back and seized the wheel, he was astonished to hear a conciliatory, one could almost say a grovelling voice on the megaphone.
“Er, Captain Macfarlane,” enunciated McCutcheon in the strangulated voice with which he tried to impress people, and which he reserved for his dealings with the gentry: “would you be so kind as to lay your ship alongside the pier? Earl Brassey would like to have a word…”
Sure enough, while the main party from the yacht waited at the top of the stairs, the moustachiod peer strolled across to the head of the quay accompanied by a tall, angular man with a mane of white hair, and a smaller, sturdy man with a huge plate camera slung across his shoulder and a large wooden box full of its paraphernalia clutched in one hand.
An hour later the crew were sat round a table in the bar of the Hunter’s Quay Hotel. On it, as well as four dram glasses and four beer glasses (all appropriately filled), were two golden sovereigns, glinting in the light of the tilleylamps.
“My Chove,” said the Captain. “Now there wass a true chentleman and no mistake.
“But what for did he want all those photies? Yon man wass snap snap-snappin’ awa’ for the best part of an hoor aal over the shup. Wheelhoose, hold, enchine-room, the fo’c’sle — above aal, the fo’c’sle. You would think we wass savidges on a sooth sea island rather than chust some o’ Brutain’s hardy sons gaun’ aboot their daily business…
“And ass for the questions thon white haired mannie asked? Whit a cheek! And in any case, whit’s an anthro…anthripolijist when it’s at hame? Whit did the Earl mean when he said tae him that there wass mair to wonder at on yer ain front doorstep than there wass in the farthest outposts o’ cuvileesation? And why did Brassey keep sayin’ — the impertinunce o’ it — that the shup was chust junk in British watters and shud be preserved for posterity or folk wudna believe it?”
“Not ‘chust junk’, Peter, ‘chust like a junk’, whateffer he meant by that,” said Dougie.
“Onyway,” said Macphail. “They wis real toffs richt enough. Twa whole sov’rins for wir trouble!”
“Aye,” agreed Para Handy. “But best of aal wass the expression on McCutcheon’s face when Brassey shook hands with us aal — but ignored him!
“Some things are chust beyond price!”
FACTNOTE
Today there are few vessels in private ownership capable of worldwide deep-water cruising. Most large yachts are based in the Mediterranean, Caribbean or, rather more exotically, such fashionable Pacific islands as New Caledonia or Hawaii. But there they seem to stay, doing little more time at sea than some occasional island-hopping, as often as not used more as holiday homes and entertainment venues than as ships.
By contrast, the years at the turn of this century were the zenith of the great privately-owned ocean-going yachts, whose owners used them for ambitious voyages of many months duration to remote and inaccessible destinations as well as to the more expected or established ports-of-call worldwide. Very often places on them were available to zoologists and those of other scientific disciplines who must otherwise have had scant chance of visiting the distant islands which were their common goal.
Largest of them all was the Earl of Crawford’s towering 245ft Valhalla, the only ship-rigged yacht in the world. Brassey’s Sunbeam, though, was certainly the best known. For almost 40 years she spent much of her time at sea traversing the oceans of the world on an extraordinary series of voyages chronicled in her owner’s book Sunbeam RYS, first published in 1917. His wife, who accompanied him on most of his travels, wrote her own account of them in The Voyage of the Sunbeam. in most years the yacht did indeed spend some time in Scottish waters either at the beginning or end of a longer voyage, or as a destination in itself.
Sunbeam was launched at Seacombe in Cheshire in 1875. She was 170ft overall and with all sail set carried 16,000 square yards of canvas! Lairds of Liverpool installed a 70hp auxiliary steam engine for which her bunkers carried 80 tons of coal.
The human history of the remote destinations he visited and the way of life of the (then) virtually unknown peoples and tribes he met, were a constant fascination to Brassey and his book gives many valuable accounts of strange societies, unfamiliar communities and unexpected life-styles.
The imposing clubhouse for the Royal Clyde Yacht Club was built above the bay at Hunter’s Quay in 1888, a splendid psuedo-Tudor construction totally out of character for its location. With half-timbered gables and balconies, stone tower and parapet, it is about as ‘un-Scottish’ as it could be yet sits magnificently in its prominent location.
Today it enjoys new life as the popular Royal Marine Hotel and is thus a social as well as an architectural landmark in the Cowal community.
SUNBEAM, RYS — By an astonishing coincidence, the MacGrory collection contains this photo of Brassey’s Sunbeam in Campbeltown Bay. Initially filed as a Naval archive (for obvious reasons) this is beyond doubt that remarkable ocean-t
raveller, as a comparison with a plate in the Earl’s own book confirms. The crew of the launch are not in naval uniform but the yacht’s own issue, and were this a naval scene the launch would be flying an ensign. The Sunbeam was in Scottish waters 10 times between 1897 and 1909.
24
Flags of Convenience
It was one of the puffer’s periodic visits to Bridge Wharf in the centre of the city of Glasgow, and an urchin appeared at the quayside with a letter in his hand, the envelope carefully addressed to ‘The Captain, Steam Lighter Vital Spark, Glasgow’ on one of the new typing machines which were sweeping all before them in the city offices.
“My Chove,” said Para Handy, perusing the contents with an increasingly puzzled expression, “whit a fine kettle of fush!”
“What is it, Peter,” asked the Mate anxiously. “Is it from the owner? He surely hassna been and sold the boat over oor heads?”
“Sold the boat!” came a splutter from the engine-room, where Dan Macphail was busy with oil-can and wrench trying to make good a leaking joint in the shaft-casing. “Of course he’s no’ sold the boat: he couldnae gi’e it awa’ as a prize for a Good Templar’s raffle!”
“Pay no attention to him, Dougie: he’s been in a paddy ever since John Hay’s Spartan overtook us at Bowling this mornin’ chust after he’d been blawin’ aboot the difference he’d made to our speed since he’d cleaned oot the tubes o’ the biler.
“No, the letter iss not from the owner, though he iss the cause of it, it’s from the Board of Tred. They are holdin’ some sort of classes aboot — how do they cry it?” He opened the letter up again, “ ‘signalling procedures’. The owner hass volunteered me to go to them. The Board iss sayin’ that the coastal tred iss no keepin’ up wi’ new methods and there have been too many accidents caused by poor signals at sea, or by shups that dinna understand them at aal.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 17