Tarbet on Loch Lomond stands just over a mile east of the Loch Long village of Arrochar while in Harris in the Outer Hebrides Tarbert on the Minch coast of the island is less than a mile from the Atlantic shoreline to the west.
Best known of the Tarberts, though, is that on Loch Fyne where once again just about a mile separates the sheltered waters of that Clyde estuary loch from the Atlantic seaboard to the west which gives access to the islands of the Hebrides and the towns and villages of western Argyll.
In every instance, tradition speaks of Norse longships hauled by brute force across the narrow isthmus between one stretch of water and the next. At Tarbert in Argyll such manoeuvres made sense — not just in the semi-mythological reports of Viking incursions, but into recent historic times. Small fishing boats could readily be moved overland from coast to coast with less difficulty than they would face in undertaking the dangerous alternative of almost 150 sea miles round the notorious Mull of Kintyre in some of the stormiest waters in the country.
40
Here be Monsters
Para Handy was more than happy to see that the puffer would be sharing the first of the long flight of locks at Banavie, at the base of that triumph of engineering ingenuity known to all mariners on the Caledonian Canal by the sobriquet of Neptune’s Staircase, with two small yachts.
“It will mean more hands, and the more hands that we have, then the lighter the work for us all,” he commented to the Mate as they contemplated the daunting series of locks — eight in all — which rose in front of them, tier on tier for more than quarter of a mile, and which the Vital Spark must now negotiate to gain access to the tranquil waters of the canal and a lazy lock-free six mile passage to the entrance to Loch Lochy.
It was some years since Captain and crew had last negotiated the canal. Most of their work was in and around the waters of the Clyde and the west coast lochs, but just occasionally the owner managed to secure some business which took them out of those familiar surroundings.
They were bound for Drumnadrochit on Loch Ness, in ballast, to collect a cargo of railway sleepers which had been brought down to the lochside from the big Forestry Sawmill at Cannich twelve miles inland. It promised to be a contract quite fraught with difficulties, for there was no pier at Drumnadrochit and, in a tideless inland loch, no way in which the Vital Spark could be brought close inshore on the flood to ground on the ebb. When Para Handy pointed out these problems to the owner, he was assured that the forestry team from Corpach had been loading such cargos successfully for many years, and that they would be perfectly capable of doing so once more.
It took four hours for the little flotilla to climb the locks to the top of Neptune’s Staircase and, by the time that summit was reached, all hands were exhausted with the constant effort of manoeuvring the heavy wooden sluice-gates of each lock by muscle-power alone.
Para Handy consulted the pocket watch suspended from a nail in the wheelhouse.
“Six o’clock. I think we will chust moor here for the night and make oor way up to Drumnadrochit at furst light,” he announced firmly. “We have had a long day and I think that tomorrow wull be longer. And a smaall refreshment would be very welcome after aal oor exertions at the locks and I seem to recall that there is an Inns hereaboots.”
The crew’s frustrations on discovering that the Banavie Inn was at the foot of the lock system rather than at its summit may be imagined.
“Well, if I had known that then I am sure we could have made good use of it while we were negotiating the first lock,” said a disgruntled Captain: “aye, and carried a canister or two of refreshments to keep us cheery on the way up.”
“Knowin’ you lot,” put in Macphail, who was more nippy-tempered even than usual after the struggles of the past few hours, “If you’d been drinkin’ your way up the locks then Ah’m sure you’d have forgotten, halfway up, which way she wis meant to be goin’, and then for sure you’d have taken her right back doon to the bottom and had it do all over again.”
“Pay no heed, Dougie,” said Para Handy with dignity. “The man iss chust in a tantrum because he has had to do a day’s work for wance, instead of sittin’ in yon cubby of his with his nose in wan o’ they novelles. Are you comin’ with us, Dan, or are you chust goin’ to stay up here and worry aboot what iss likely to be happening to poor Lady Fitzgerald and her man in the next episode?”
With ill grace the Engineer went to the pump and washed himself and a few minutes thereafter the three senior members of the crew headed off towards the Inn, leaving the unfortunate Sunny Jim on unwonted and (for him at least) unwanted guard duty.
“I am truly sorry, Jum,” said the Captain as they left: “but this iss unfamiliar territory to us and I dare not risk leaving the shup unprotected. Who knows what the natives might steal on us if they had the chance.”
“Ah suppose you think this is Red Indian country,” remarked the Engineer sarcastically. “In any case, who in their right mind would want tae steal onything aff of this auld hooker? There isnae a decent piece of marine equipment on her, and the local pawn wuddna gi’e much for yon old watch of yours.”
The trio were in much better spirits and a more amicable frame of mind when they returned just before midnight, for they had had a good run at dominoes, playing the locals for drinks, and an ungrudging conviviality prevailed. Even the discovery that their night watchman was fast asleep in his bunk, and by the look of him had been so for some hours, and did not even so much as stir when the shore-party tumbled noisily into the fo’c’sle, did not ruffle the Captain’s equanimity.
“Och, you wass probably right, Dan,” he conceded. “There iss not a lot to steal from the Vital Spark and in any case I am sure that the locals iss aal true Highland chentlemen.”
Nobody was foolish enough to remind Para Handy of that cheerily expressed opinion when, at first light, Sunny Jim staggered up on deck to look at the weather, and found two individuals in the act of jumping onto the canal bank with the oars of the puffer’s dinghy over their shoulders.
The oars, recovered from the towpath where the thieves dropped them in their flight, were firmly lashed, upright, to the mast of the Vital Spark as the puffer proceeded to make passage up Loch Lochy and Loch Oich, and then came to the historic little town of Fort Augustus at the foot of Loch Ness.
“You know,” confessed Para Handy from the wheelhouse window as the vessel nosed out onto the dark waters of Scotland’s longest loch, “if it wassna for having to work aal those dam’ locks by hand there would be a lot to be said for a command on the canal for I am sure that you would neffer have to worry aboot the weather or the wund or the fog. An easy life!”
His crew, who had backbreakingly worked their way through every single one of the locks, at each of which their Captain’s only contribution to the process had been shouted (and all too often contradictory) instructions emanating from that same wheelhouse window, said nothing.
The puffer arrived at Drumnadrochit later that afternoon, too late for any work to be started that day, although the forestry men had got there ahead of the Vital Spark and a huge stack of sleepers lay piled up on the shore beside a tiny concrete slip.
Para Handy surveyed the scene with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
“How in bleezes do they propose to get aal of that out to the shup?” he asked querulously. “We cannot get closer in than 50 yards and I for one am no’ goin’ swimmin’ for anyone.”
He had his answer in the morning.
By eight o’clock the loading process was in full swing, with two foremen from the sawmills — one ashore and one on board the Vital Spark — supervising and co-ordinating the operations.
A raft some twelve feet square lay alongside the concrete slip, attached by two ropes to the collar of a towering but placid Clydesdale horse which, having been led down the slip by its handlers, now stood in the loch to the front of the raft up to its hocks in the water.
Once the raft was loaded, the two handlers — who wore only canvas t
rousers cut off at the knee, and heavy boots with substantial, studded soles — took one rein of the bridle apiece and led the horse across the sandy bottom of the loch till they were in up to their waists and the the loch bed began to deepen rapidly. At this point the cargo was within twenty yards of the puffer, lying in the deeper water, and the forestry foreman on board the Vital Spark threw a light rope, lead-line for a heavy hawser which was itself coiled round the drum of the puffer’s steam-winch. The handlers unloosed the patient horse, Macphail started up the winch at the foreman’s signal, and the raft was reeled in to the side of the ship as an angler might reel in a fish. The men in the water, who had retained one line attached to the stern of the cargo-carrier. pulled it back once it had been unloaded and returned with it and the horse, once more set within its traces, to the shore.
The process continued all morning till the hold of the Vital Spark was full and a substantial deck cargo had been built up on the main hatch.
Para Handy watched the proceedings with some admiration.
“Now that iss chust astonishing,” he said. “And that horse iss a wonder. Wass she no’ awful hard to train, for I’m sure and she canna like the watter at aal.”
“On the contrary,” the foreman laughed. “She just loves it, for most horses are great swimmers. We sometimes have a job keeping her in the shallows. She’d be swimming out with the raft given a half a chance!”
Para Handy looked appraisingly at the sleepers stacked on the main hatch.
“I think that will do us,” said he. “It iss not ass if we only have to take them doon the loch. We have to get back doon to Gleska and I will not overload the shup.”
“Fair enough,” said the foreman. “You know your own business best. But we would ask one wee favour of you, it will not be a problem I’m thinking, and that is to let me put just three new wooden mash-tubs for the distillery at Fort William on top of the lot. If you would just drop them off at the distillery pier, I know that the maltings manager will see that it is made worth your while.”
Para Handy nodded his agreement and the foreman then bellowed instructions to the shore party. Three very large barrels were rolled down the slip roped together in line, and the first of them attached to one of the Clydesdale’s towing ropes.
Just what happened was never too clear. Probably one of the handlers slipped on a rock and took his colleague with him, but next second the two men had let go of the horse’s bridle and disappeared, briefly, under water.
By the time they surfaced, spluttering, the horse was gone. Pulling this much lighter burden behind her with ease, she splashed out into the deeper water, kicked out, and began to swim out past the Vital Spark with the three barrels bobbing in her wake. As she past the puffer she turned to the south and proceeded to swim along parallel with the shore.
“ ’Dalmighty,” exclaimed the foreman. “She’s off! Please get your dinghy in the water, Captain, and I’ll row after her and catch her. Otherwise she’ll probably swim a couple of miles or more before she decides she’s had enough and heads for the shore”
Launching the dinghy was the work of a moment — but of course it was then realised that her oars were firmly lashed to the puffer’s mast. By the time these had been loosed, the horse was a hundred yards away and the prospects of catching her slim.
The foreman and the puffer’s crew watched the horse with its attendant barrels move into the distance, silhouetted darkly against the mirror-brightness of the still surface of the loch.
“I’ll tell you something,” chipped in Sunny Jim after a moment, laughing delightedly. “See wi’ jist the heid o’ the horse oot o’ the watter like that, and they three barrels like humps behind it, the whole shebang fair pits ye in mind o’ a dragon: or better yet a sea-serpent, eh?”
Para Handy chuckled.
“Aye Jum, that’ll be right. A monster in Loch Ness! Now that would be something to excite the towerists, eh?”
And, helping the foreman into the dinghy, he rowed him ashore to find a pony and trap with which to pursue his errant charge along the road which wound along the lochside.
“You and your monsters, Jum!” protested the Mate. “All I know iss that this wan has cost us the chance of a dram from the distillery, and that iss most certainly a monster inchustice, to be sure!”
FACTNOTE
Telford’s Caledonian Canal was a formidable undertaking for the technology of the age. It took 18 years to complete and was opened formally in 1822. Using the natural fault of the Great Glen and the string of lochs (Lochy, Oich and Ness) which gave immediately navigable waterways over two thirds of its length from Corpach at the head of Loch Linnhe to Inverness on the Moray Firth, it is 60 miles long and vessels traversing it have to negotiate 29 locks.
The government of the day was first moved to find the funds to build it by the exigencies of the Napoleonic Wars. A sheltered passage from Scotland’s East to West coasts, wide enough and deep enough to enable frigates and small merchant vessels to use it, would help the Navy to deploy ships to and from the various theatres of the maritime war more readily: and it would offer a safer passage for merchant and fishing vessels, one that would shelter them not just from the storms of the Pentland Firth but from the intrusions of the French privateers which skulked off the Scottish coasts on the lookout for unwary and defenceless prey.
The flight of eight locks at Banavie was an engineering marvel, an achievement without parallel at that early stage of canal development and still today an impressive prospect.
What can one say about the Loch Ness monster that either hasn’t been said before or is palpable nonsense?
It would be very satisfying to believe in its existence and I suppose that it must be real enough in one sense, for it has spawned an immense tourist industry, and lured individuals and organisations from the patently dotty to the seriously scientific, and from all quarters of the globe, to expend years of effort and enormous sums of money in an attempt to track it down for the discomfiture of non-believers.
All this despite the fact that the first and most famous of all the Loch Ness photographs — the ‘Surgeon’s Picture’ of 1933, the basis really for all the subsequent monster mania of the last sixty years, has now been acknowledged — by no less an authoritative voice than that of its perpetrators — as a quite deliberate hoax.
At one time there were two distilleries at Fort William though they were under the same ownership and the second one operated only for a few years at the turn of the century. Both stood on the river Nevis, and were served by a private jetty on Loch Linnhe. The water for both was drawn from a single well, high up on the slopes of Ben Nevis.
41
The Tight White Collar
From the window of the Inns at Crarae, Para Handy watched with interest the comings and goings in and around the pier of the little Lochfyneside village — a popular destination in summer for daytrippers, and a much-loved oasis of peace for those who were fortunate enough to manage to secure rooms in one of its handful of boarding-houses for the Fair Fortnight.
The steamer from Glasgow had just berthed, and was disgorging the usual motley selection of human kind. The Vital Spark, with Sunny Jim just visible — perched on her stern-quarter with a fishing-line — was sharing the inner wing of the wooden pier with two local fishing boats.
At that moment, the three man crew of one of these vessels came in sight, having just left the Inns by the front door and now striding across the lochside road to the pierhead. As they did so they were confronted by a group of Ministers, unmistakable in the dark frock-coats and contrasting white collars which were their badge of office, making their way up to the village from the excursion steamer. Suddenly aware of the presence of the approaching gentlemen of the cloth the fishermen hesitated momentarily and then side-stepped to the right, thus giving the clergy as wide a berth as the narrow pierhead allowed, before proceeding onwards and down towards their skiff.
Para Handy turned to his Engineer and Mate and remarked: “Well
now, there iss a sign of the times and no mustake! It iss not aal that many years ago that a fisherman meetin’ a Meenister on his way to his vessel would chust have turned for home again and neffer sailed that day. It wass thought to be duvvelish bad luck, and a sure sign of disaster or poor, poor fushin’s at the very least, to meet with the clergy like that. Yet here is Col MacIlvain and his laads cairryin’ on aboot their business quite jocco, and them efter meeting not chust the wan Meenister but a good half-a-dozen o’ the species! Changed days indeed!”
Macphail nodded.
“Right enough,” he said: “Ah’ve seen jist one English munister on his holidays turn back the hauf o’ the Tarbert herring fleet at the very height o’ the fushin’s in the good days, by takin’ a daunder alang the quay at the wrang time o’ day!”
Dougie snorted.
“Chust nonsense,” he protested, “superstitious nonsense. There iss no more ill-luck aboot a Meenister than there iss aboot ony o’ God’s creatures. The man that tells you different doesna ken ony better and that’s the truth of it! It would tak’ mair nor a Meenister to keep me from my shup any hour of the day, I can assure you of that.”
“Mind you,” Para Handy observed, “I think it must be admutted that there have been many times when it hass been the fushermen or the sailormen — Brutain’s hardy sons! — that have made life difficult for the Meenisters.
“Hurricane Jeck hisself wass aalways gettin’ into trouble wi’ the Church for wan reason or the ither…”
“Ah’m no’ surprised in the very least aboot that,” interrupted Macphail caustically: “that man has the happy knack o’ gettin’ into trouble wi’ onything that lives or breathes. Dear God, he wud pick a fight wi’ a dry-stane dyke if ye were tae gi’e him the opportunity!”
The Captain paid no attention.
“There wass one time,” he continued. “that Jeck was asked by wan o’ his kizzins, whose wife had chust had a new bairn, if he’d be the Godfather to it” — there was an explosive spluttering as the Engineer nearly choked himself on a mouthful of beer — “and of course Jeck said yes, he’d be delighted. You know yourselves that he iss the kind of a man that would neffer willingly refuse onything to onybody, for he has aalways been the perfect chentleman.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 30