The formidable Miss Cranston was one of the early patrons of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and her (and his) Willow Tea Room, in which every detail of interior design bears his stamp and seal, is a major attraction still in Sauchiehall Street.
For Richer, for Poorer — No two photographs from the MacGrory Archive better illustrate the yawning gap between Edwardian rich and Edwardian poor than these dramatically contrasting depictions of the crofter or smallholder in his donkey-cart and landowner with shiny top-hat in his pony and trap. The Trabant and Ferrari of 90 years ago!
49
The Sound of Silence
Para Handy studied the telegram which had just arrived from the owner of the Vital Spark with details of her next assignment. “Lighthooses!” he exclaimed petulantly. “More of him and his dam’ lighthooses: I dinna care if I never see wan again ass long ass I live.”
The puffer was lying at Rothesay where I was changing steamers for a long-promised visit to old friends in Lamlash, and the Captain had seen me on the quayside when I disembarked from the Lord of the Isles and invited me on board for a mug of tea. Our exchange of the gossip of the river as we sat side-by-side in friendly and relaxed familiarity on the vessel’s mainhatch had been passing the time very pleasantly until we were interrupted by the arrival of a Telegraph Boy complete with scarlet bicycle and low, black, chin-strapped pillbox hat.
“So what’s the call of duty this time, Captain?” I enquired, as that mariner angrily tore the flimsy telegram into shreds and consigned the fragments to the winds.
“Well,” he said: “at least it’s no’ coals this time, for that is the worst cairgo of them aal, ass I have told you before now. But this wull run it close for we’re to tak’ in the oil in barrels for the generators at the lights on the Ailsa Craig and roond the Mull o’ Kintyre, and I sometimes think, from the way the crew behave and the sheer tumidity of them aal, that we iss an explosion waiting for somewhere convenient to happen when that is oor cairgo.
“We daurna smoke on deck by Dan’s way of it — and him wi’ a fire going in the stokehold that wouldna have disgraced Emperor Nero: and Dougie iss that nervous that he iss not at aal happy if Jum hass the galley stove goin’ in the fo’c’sle to boil a kettle for oor teas or potatos for oor denner so we feenish up livin’ on mulk and rabbit-food.
“I neffer, effer eat ass much in the way o’ lettuces and raw carrots and that sort of rubbish in a whole twelvemonth ass I do on a single week’s fuellin’ run to the lighthooses — and aal chust because my crew are feart o’ havin’ an open flame on the shup. They are chust feart for their lifes! If Dougie wass here he would tell you himself.
“I aalways tell them that a load of whusky, though it might be a much more welcome cairgo for aal sorts of reasons, iss chust ass likely to blow them to Kingdom Come ass a load of kerosene or paraffin — but wull they lusten? Wull they bleezes. You are talking to a brick wall wi’ them.”
It was therefore with some anxiety that I first came across the accounts, a week later, of an accident which had befallen a steam-lighter in the course of her duties in servicing the lighthouse which guides mariners safely past Davaar Island at the mouth of Campbeltown Loch and into the welcoming shelter of that capacious harbour.
It appeared that the vessel involved — unnamed in those first reports of the mishap carried in the earliest editions of the Glasgow Herald — was carrying kerosene to the light-station. She was struck by an errant starting-flare fired from the trim motor-launch acting as floating clubhouse and starter’s office for the Campbeltown Yacht Club’s annual regatta, which was in process of setting the yawl class off on a triangular course from the island to Peninver on the Kintyre peninsula, across to Blackwaterfoot on Arran, and back to the finishing-line at Davaar.
The rocket had landed on, and set fire to, a small heap of waste rags on the puffer’s foredeck. Onlookers reported that within seconds a middle-aged man, thought to be the Mate of the vessel concerned, had dived overboard followed immediately by a young deckhand and, just a fraction later, by an older man who had been seen scrambling out of the engine-room hatchway at the stern of the boat.
This left on board just one man, presumed to be the skipper of the vessel, who had been alone in the wheelhouse when the flare struck.
By the time this man — described by at least one paper as the ‘hero of the day’ had run to the foredeck to extinguish the flames with a bucket of water hauled from the sea, dashed below to the engine-room to set the machinery to the off position, and returned on deck and made for the wheelhouse, it was too late. The puffer ran firmly aground on the sandy tidal-flats below the lighthouse, and stayed there till the next high-tide floated her off that same evening.
“I wass bleck burning ashamed for them aal,” said Para Handy bitterly the next time I met him, and questioned him about the incident — for of course, as later editions of the paper had confirmed, the steam-lighter involved in the incident was indeed, as I had suspected from the first, the unfortunate Vital Spark.
“Not wan scrap of courage or initiative between the three of them,” he continued, “but they did weel enough for themselves right enough! Aal three of them was picked up by the Yat Club’s safety-launch and taken into Campbeltoon and treated like royalty, ass if they had been real shupwrecked sailors and no’ chust three faint-hearts that had shamelessly neglected their duties to save their necks! And there wass I marooned on the shup, nothing could get alongside her till the tide turned, and there wassna so mich as a drop of wholesome Brutish spurits aboard, nor the makin’s of a hot meal neither.
“Meanwhile that crew of mine wass safe ashore bein’ wrapped up in warm blankets at the Mussion to Seaman’s Hostel, and coaxed to tak’ chust the wan more wee hot whusky drink, and spoon-fed wi’ soup and chicken, and generally made heroes of.”
I agreed with the Captain that it must really have been an infuriating experience.
“Aye, and outfuriating ass weel,” he protested, “for when they wass interviewed by the chentlemen of the press when we got back to Gleska two days later (and no disrespect intended to yourself, Mr Munro, you’ll understand) here and did the reporters no’ sort of agree wi’ them that the only reason I had stayed on board wass that I couldna sweem and that the three o’ them had had to dive off to get a boat to rescue me, because our own skiff had a hole in her from where I had hit her onto a rock skerry aff the mooth of the Sliddery Water when I wass oot poaching in Arran the previous night.
“Dam’ leears — we wass aal oot poaching in Arran the previous night!
“Onyway, I have made it clear to the owner: I am not cairrying kerosene effer again wi’ that lot and I am gled to say that in aal the circumstances, he has agreed to that.”
“Well, that should reduce the visits you have to make to the lighthouses, Captain,” I said: “and given that you don’t like them, that should suit you fine.”
“Aye,” said Para Handy, scratching his ear. “They chust do not agree wi’ the Macfarlanes and I am not surprised. Look at my brither Keep Dark, noo — he wass six months in wan o’ they rock lights aff the Pacific coast of America. Keep Dark went foreign for mony years, and wan time in the nineties he hit rock-bottom in San Francisco, poor duvvle, he wass ashore from wan o’ they nitrate cluppers, they wass on passage from Valparaiso wi’ a load of guano. That iss the most desperate cairgo you could effer imagine! Loadin’ it iss unspeakable and the smell of it is in effery cranny o’ the shup, you cannot escape it at aal.
“And that very first night Keep Dark got kind of separated from his shupmates and found himself alone and up a back-alley in the derk which is no’ the kind of thing you’d wush on your worst enemy in San Francisco. He got shanghaied poor duvvle, by a gang that wass crewin’ up wan o’ the Yankee Cape Horners — naebody would shup on wan o’ them of his own free wull — and though he managed to sneak ashore three nights later afore she wass ready to put to sea, by that time his own shup had sailed without him and he wass stuck in America with only the
clothes he stood up in.
“His luck changed, he met up wi’ a man that wass in cherge of the lighthooses on the coast roond aboot, and him orichinally a Macfarlane from some wee vullage sooth of Oban. He offered Keep Dark a posting to wan o’ the rock lights, ten dollars a month aal found, and of course my brither chumped at it.
“The lighthoose wass on tap of a rock chust off a long kind of a headland, and man but it wass a desolate place. There wassna a hoose within miles, and the landing on the rock in a wee bit skiff from the lighthooses relief shup wass a nightmare.
“The worst of it though wass the fog. Keep Dark said it wass fog even on from wan day to the next, it chust neffer lifted at aal week in and week oot, and effery 45 seconds your ears was splut wi’ the blatter o’ the huge foghorn on the cliff edge not 20 feet from the keepers’ living room at the foot o’ the tower.
“There wass only two of them on the rock and they worked six hours on, six hours off round the clock: it wass a funny kind of a shuft, said Keep Derk, but you got used to it. You even got used to climbing up to the tap o’ the tower wance effery half hour to trum the light, and mak’ sure aal was hunkey-dorey up there — no’ that it would really have mattered whether the light wass on or off, because wi’ the constant fog the light wass aboot as much use as a teetotaller at a Tiree funeral.
“What you chust couldna get used to, though, said Keep Dark, wass the foghorn. It near deeved him to utter distraction, five seconds of sheer hell every 45 seconds night and day. It wass bad enough when you wass on waatch, but it wass when you wass trying to get some sleep that you felt like goin’ up to the tap of the tower and throwin’ yourself aff it.
“The other keeper wass an American caalled Purdie, a smert enough man, and he’d been on the station for years. ‘Ye’ll soon get used tae the foghorn,’ he says to Keep Dark wheneffer he’d be complainin’ aboot the din, ‘and then you’ll be like me — I neffer, effer hear it nooadays. It chust forms a pert o’ the naitural background ass far ass I am concerned and I am totally unaware of it goin’ aff at aal. Wait you and you wull see.’
“Keep Dark didna believe him, he wass at his wut’s end wi’ the din and he wass even thinkin’ aboot tamperin’ wi’ the foghorn’s automatic mechanism to shut the dam’ thing up, even if it wass only for a half-an-hour.
“In the end, he didna need to. It did it for him! Wan night he wass on duty and Purdie, who slept like a log from the moment his heid touched the pillow, despite the fact that that dam’ foghorn wass shakin’ the very foondations o’ the tower wi’ the racket it wass making, wass snoring chently in his bunk ass peaceful ass if he wass in a boat drufting on some silent and deserted loch.
“Keep Dark wass sitting at the table reading an old newspaper and trying to pretend he couldna hear a thing when — withoot him knowing onything aboot it at first — there must have been some kind of a mechanical failure on the clockwork motor that ran the foghorn and set it aff automatically (it wass aal worked wi’ some kind of a fantoosh self-winding hydraulic enchine) and it broke doon.
“So there wass Keep Dark, coonting in his head till the time the next blast was due — you got that you did that withoot even noticin’ it, he said, it wass some kind of a defence system the body put up — and when he got to ‘41,42,43,44,45’ and braced himsel’ for the roar o’ the horn, nothin’ happened.
“Total, blissful silence for the furst time in the three weeks he’d been on the tower.
“What did happen, though, wass that Purdie wakened in a flash and leaped oot o’ his bunk in a panic shouting ‘Whit in the name of Cot wass that?’
“Lighthooses!” said Para Handy firmly. “Dinna talk to me aboot lighthooses. They are nothin’ but a trial and tribulation. If Keep Dark wass here, he would tell you himself.”
FACTNOTE
Para Handy’s family are only hinted at in Neil Munro’s original stories, but at least we know that he was one of ten sons, ‘all men except one, and he was a valet’. We are told the by-name of four of the others. They were (and it would be a fascinating if unproductive exercise to speculate how they got such unlikely nicknames) the Beekan, Kail, the Nipper — and Keep Dark.
Did Keep Dark get his sobriquet by virtue of the fact that he had worked on a lighthouse? Probably not, but that is my excuse for featuring him in this tale!
Davaar Island lies like a cork in the neck of a bottle at the entrance to Campbeltown Loch, its cliffs pierced with caves in one of which a local artist, Alexander Mackinnon, secretly painted — in 1887 — a representation of the Crucifixion which still forms a place of pilgrimage today. A shingle spit almost one mile in length connects Davaar to the mainland and although it appears to offer a safe and dry crossing, many walkers have been caught out by the flooding tides and it needs to be approached with caution.
The island gave its name to the Campbeltown Shipping Company’s eponymous screw-steamer, launched in 1885. She was a beautiful little ship with a clipper bow, figurehead — and twin funnels set close together aft of the bridge. In 1903 she underwent a series of alterations which included replacing the twin funnels with a single smokestack. She gave four decades more of service before going to the breakers in 1943.
The first British maritime incursions to the Pacific were the 18th century naval or privateering expeditions in search of the fabled treasure galleons of the Spanish colonies in Peru and the Philippines.
Over the next century the clipper trade to and from the Pacific coast of South America was founded on three cargos — copper ore from the mines of Central Peru, nitrates from the arid deserts of Chile, and guano from the bird-islands offshore. Poor Keep Dark was sailing before-the-mast at the peak of these detested contracts.
All were loathed by the crews as foul cargos to be avoided when possible — nitrate was particularly susceptible to fire, for example — but the guano cargos were unquestionably the worst.
Guano was formed, quite simply, by the droppings of a thousand generations of seabirds as it accumulated on their isolated, uninhabited and uninhabitable breeding rocks and islands lying offshore. On some islets the guano deposits of millenia were more than 200ft deep.
LEAD KINDLY LIGHT — This is Davaar Lighthouse, on the eastern tip of Davaar Island at the entrance to Campbeltown Loch, and plainly there is some sort of regatta in progress. The twofunnelled steamer heading towards Campbeltown is the Davaar of 1885 and we can date the photograph as prior to 1903 for in that year she was reboilered and as a consequence of that alteration, her twin funnels were replaced by a single, broader smokestack. Her passenger lounges were enlarged and extended at the same time.
50
Twixt Heaven and Hell
The Vital Spark came lolloping into Loch Broom, and Dougie heaved a sigh of relief as they were drawn into its sheltering arms and the white-capped waves of the open sea dwindled into the distance astern. In ballast (she had come to the northerly port of Ullapool to load a consignment of cured herring in barrels for Glasgow) the puffer had been accorded a lively reception by the notorious waters of the Minch from the moment she had passed out of the protection of the Sound of Sleat.
“Man, but your tumid, Dougie, tumid!” said Para Handy from the wheel, “neffer happier than when you’re safe inside the Garroch Heid. But the shup wass built to tak’ this and more.”
“Maybe the shup wass,” replied the Mate, “but I am sure and I wass not. It iss at times like this that I think it would be no bad idea to look for a shore chob. At least the grund stays in the wan place and you are not aalways lookin’ for something to hold on to, to stop you bein’ thrown across the room!”
“Ah’m no’ so sure aboot that,” said Macphail, poking his head from the engine-room hatch. “Depends whaur ye are. Take Sooth America for unstance, when Ah wis there wance wi’ the Donaldson Line there wis that many earthquakes goin’ on, the streets wis heavin’ like wan o’ the penny-rides at Henglers’s, and if ye went ashore for a refreshment, ye daurna pit yer gless on the table for fear it wis cowped
.”
Para Handy snorted. He had a very low threshold of disbelief in the matter of the Engineer’s tales of his world travels and on more than one occasion had poured total scorn not just on the particular experience being recounted, but on the whole notion of Macphail having ever been further from the tenements of his native Plantation than the Irish Sea.
“Well, there’s nothin’ earth-shattering aboot Ullapool,” said the Captain. “For they are aal aawful Hielan’ up here, the only excitement o’ the day iss when the mail comes in from Inverness and it iss usually a week late even so. If it wassna for the herring-boats in season to help keep the place cheery, it might ass weel close doon for aal that ever happens.”
Indeed the town itself, a couple of streets of neatly presented white buildings on a promontory which terminated in the harbour itself, seemed asleep. The few remaining East Coast boats which came to the port for the brief herring season were at sea, and the only signs of commercial activity were the darkly-smoking chimneys of the two curing stations, all that were left of the once huge numbers of processing factories which had crowded Ullapool before the virtual collapse of the fishings thirty years previously.
“My brither Alec, the wan that wass in service and we didna talk aboot, Napkin Heid we cried him, he wass a year butling at wan o’ the big Estates a few miles north o’ the toon,” Para Handy continued. “He didna have a high opeenion o’ the place at aal, and the man he wass working for wass the worst of it. The Laird had a quite dreadful reputation: he wass a most terrible man for the drink: he wass a gambler at the cairds and a maist unsuccessful wan at that: and the parlour-maids — not chust in his ain hoose but in aal of the big hooses, and even the Manse too — learned soon enough to run for their lives if the Laird wass aboot and wi’ a dram on board.
Complete New Tales of Para Handy Page 37