Complete New Tales of Para Handy (27 page)

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

L
ow 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 small 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 pier-head, 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 wheel-house, “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.