Complete New Tales of Para Handy (34 page)

Two hours later the
Vital Spark
, on passage to Glasgow in ballast with her cargo of cement safely ashore at Glenstriven and the builder's gang sheltering down in the fo'c'sle from the rain (which had returned with a vengeance), met a smart steam yacht rounding Toward Point and heading westwards past Ardyne.

“That'll be the chentry,” said Para Handy. “Och, they'll neffer know we wass there.”

Sunny Jim's idea had been ingenuity personified. The sacks of cement had been hurried ashore by every manner of means while the rain held off: most slung onto the waiting cart but others taken by wheelbarrow and a few, the last few, even manhandled, up to the waterless swimming-pool.

Mr Patullo had supervised their careful stacking in the empty pool. To clean it out and prepare it for the summer was one of the jobs for which he had been contracted — a job which would have to wait until the work on the new terrace had been completed, hopefully next week when he and his men returned on Monday after the young gentlemen and their friends had gone back to Glasgow.

Meantime the sacks were safe under cover: Para Handy had been happy to lend one of the puffer's heavy hatchway tarpaulins and this was now stretched across the pool, weighted down on four sides by heavy flagstones.

“I'll can get that back from you next week sometime Mr Patullo, for we'll be passing through the Kyles on our way to Furnace sometime afore next Thursday.”

It was, however, a stoney-faced estate factor who met the
Vital Spark
when she arrived at Berry's Pier early the following Wednesday afternoon to recover her property.

“Is Mr Patullo no' weel, then?” asked the Captain from the wheelhouse window, as the crew lashed the heavy tarpaulin to the eye-bolts at the fore end of the main hatch-way.

“Not ill, Captain. Just — shall we say — in disgrace. I don't think you'll be seeing him in Glenstriven again.

“It probably was not entirely his fault, but the master can be very unforgiving at times. You see, the weather turned better on Saturday and the young gentlemen decided they would have a swim. So they opened the stop-cock to fill the pool — without looking under the tarpaulin first.

“I'm afraid we now need a new pool, as well as a new terrace.”

And he inclined his head solemnly, pivoted on his heels and walked away.

Para Handy turned towards the deck below him with an agonised expression: “Jum!” he shouted: “Jum!!! I need to talk to ye!”

The deck was deserted, but the fo'c'sle hatchway had just crashed shut with an echoing thud.

F
ACTNOTE

Duncan Cameron Kennedy of Glenstriven ordered the building of the ‘big house' on the estate in 1868. It enjoys a magnificent setting high above the loch, looking due south across the sheltered waters. I must confess that it has never had a swimming pool — though there were plenty of them in the resorts such as Rothesay, whose first ‘salt water swimming baths' were opened in the 1870s.

In 1872 Walter Berry, a Leith merchant, acquired Glenstriven estate and it was he who commissioned the construction of the pier which bore his name. There were more than 80 piers on the Firth at the height of the steamer and puffer traffic. Most of those on the Renfrewshire and Ayrshire side of the Firth were built by the Railway or Shipping Companies: most of those on the Argyll coastline either by the local community or for it by a wealthy landowner — such as, for instance, the wooden pier erected at Lamlash by the Duke of Hamilton in 1888.

There were some wholly privately built and owned piers of which Berry's was one: it was one of the very few, however, which were large enough to accommodate steamers. Most of the private facilities constructed for the big houses, or for the isolated farms and estates, were merely jetties or slips designed to allow goods, livestock or passengers to be ferried to or from the shore on a flit-boat.

Of the original Berry's pier nothing now remains except a few stumps of the old uprights. It was never used for scheduled services, but as a destination for occasional special excursion or charter parties and there is a splendid photograph of one such group, coming alongside aboard the paddler
Diana Vernon
, in the book
Clyde Piers
published by Inverclyde District Libraries. Though it is difficult to be categorically certain (the photograph is a little indistinct as to detail) it seems as if all passengers aboard the steamer are men, and most look to be wearing some sort of uniform. There is a small welcoming party at the head of the pier, including a number of ladies.

The pier at Otter Ferry on the east side of Loch Fyne was also originally built as a private facility for the large house which stands at the shore end. There was an established local ferry service across to Lochgair from a stone jetty at the tiny hamlet of Otter Ferry a few hundred yards to the south — a service which had been running for many years before the pier was built in 1900. In contrast to the pier at Loch Striven however, that at Otter Ferry was for some years a port-of-call for steamers on scheduled services. Even today the structure seems to remain remarkably intact, though the last cargo was unloaded there just after the Second World War and the last passenger steamer called in 1914!

29

The Pride of the Clyde

D
aybreak always has a hushed, cathedral-like quality about it but this particular dawn had broken in a spectacular silence accentuated by the visual crescendo of light streaming in from the east: first a delicate bluey rose, then a brightening but still pale off-white, and finally a dramatic, blinding golden sunburst which chased the last vestiges of the retreating night across the western horizon and into oblivion.

Seen from the uninterrupted vastness of the ocean that palette of colour would have been quite overwhelming. Even from the upper reaches of the Clyde, where it was set against the gaunt silhouettes of the stone tenements of Govan and Plantation, it was unforgettable.

The Captain and crew of the steam-lighter coasting quietly down river with the current after an early start from Windmillcroft Quay were not unappreciative of this natural wonder unfolding before their eyes.

“Man, Dougie,” said Para Handy reflectively: “if only it wass possible to tak' a picture of that and pit it in the paper, to let folk ken what they wass missin', the world and his wife wud be oot their beds betimes, and you wudna be able to move on the river for the crowds come to see it!”

It was June, and the
Vital Spark
was headed for the Kyles with a mixed cargo consisting of assorted building materials for Colintraive, hotel furnishings for Tighnabruaich, and fencing wire for Kaimes.

A mile or so past Renfrew Ferry an immaculately-groomed launch of the river pilot service, speeding upstream, closed in on the puffer.

“Steam-lighter ahoy! Where on earth do you think you're off to?” shouted a uniformed figure, leaning from her wheelhouse window and gesticulating frantically. “The river's closed at Clydebank: you can't go any further downstream now till the afternoon! D'you puffer captains never even bother to read the navigation bulletins posted on the quays, or published in the
Glasgow Herald
?”

“No,” replied Para Handy, with commendable but (in the present circumstances) ill-advised candour. “Never. Why?”

The master of the cutter turned an interesting purple colour.

“Because if you did, you'd have known that this is the morning the
Lusitania's
being launched from John Brown's yard. The river's closed to all traffic between the Cart and Dalmuir from eight o'clock till two o'clock! Now get in to the bank and stay there! Or do you want me to arrest the boat?”

“I wudna put you to the bother,” replied Para Handy in a rather more placatory tone, and he put the wheel over and headed the puffer for the Renfrewshire shore.

The towering cranes of the world-famous Clydebank yard were now in sight, poised above the monstrous hull which had been growing beneath them for the past 15 months. Here had taken shape, and today was now ready for launching, the largest and most luxurious ship ever yet conceived by the designers, or created by the craftsmen, who between them had made the name of the Clyde and the reputation of its workers synonymous with shipbuilding perfection.

The river bank on the Renfrewshire side opposite the yard was black with crowds come to see the spectacle. From their modest vantage point actually on the water, however, the crew of the puffer had a grandstand view of the whole proceedings, and once the
Vital Spark
had been made fast to a convenient marker post they settled on the hatch-coaming with hastily-brewed mugs of tea and an early dinner of bread and cheese.

Stands “for the chentry”, as Para Handy put it, had been placed facing the bow of the ship, immediately behind the platform for the launch-party. The men who had built her were crowded along the slipway the whole length of her hull, with a favoured few perched on the foredeck and as yet unfinished superstructure of the new liner.

The slip on which her foundation keel had been laid down and on which she had then been painstakingly raised over the preceding months — vertical rib-upon-rib, riveted plate-upon-plate — was placed at an acute angle to the river channel.

The Clyde itself was an artificial creation, a once sluggish stream dredged and broadened to its status as a birthplace for ships, a mecca for trade. At this point on its journey towards the sea it ran, despite the work of generations who had made it fit for an international commerce on which it depended, through a channel which was narrower, bank-to-bank, than the length of the hull which was about to slide into it.

Only the subterfuge of that angled slipway made the very launch possible and even with that heavy drag chains would have to be deployed to bring the enormous hull quickly to a stop, in order to prevent her running ashore on the opposite bank.

A small flotilla of tugs stood by to capture the vessel and then to manoeuvre her into the adjacent fitting-out basin where she would be transformed from an impressive but inanimate hulk into a living being, a ship (like all ships) with a personality and indeed a soul.

“Brutain's hardy sons,” said Para Handy with some emotion when at 12.30 precisely Lady Inverclyde christened the ship in the traditional manner. To the roaring approval of tens of thousands of spectators, drawn from all walks of life but united by a pride in what had been achieved, the majestic hull took spectacularly to the water. In the process
Lusitania
, just as every ship before and since has always done, curtseyed sweetly and gracefully to the lady who had named her, and sent her forth to fulfil her destiny.

Fourteen months later the
Vital Spark
was lying against the easternmost extremity of Greenock's Princes Pier, ready to load a flitting for Furnace once the scheduled steamers had left.

In their more favoured berths ahead of her the
King Edward
and the
Lord of the Isles
impatiently awaited the arrival of the train from Glasgow St Enoch station and their cargo of on-going passengers for Campbeltown and Inveraray respectively.

Anchored in the middle reaches of the Firth at the Tail o' the Bank, however, was a vessel which commanded the attention and the respect of everyone within eyesight, to the total exclusion of everything else that lay or moved upon the firth.

Lusitania
had, just the previous day, come down river from the fitting-out berth at John Brown's Clydebank yard: and was next morning to embark upon her speed trial over the measured mile at Skelmorlie, and her general proving, before being officially and formally handed over to Cunard.

The crowds massed on Greenock promenade and further along the western shores of the Firth towards Gourock almost matched those which had witnessed her launch the previous summer.

In due course the train, an inconsequential minute and a half late, came in from St Enoch: the Campbeltown and Inveraray steamers loaded, and departed.