Complete New Tales of Para Handy (72 page)

“Then he foond oot which wass the biggest of the toon's bakers and which the biggest butcher, and he went and spoke to them and offered them the chance to run the dining saloons on the shup the next day, wi' chust a smaal percentage for himself as a pert of the bargain. They chumped at the chance, and long into the derkness there was a coming and going of handcarts to the shup ass the provisions wass loaded aboard her.

“Meantime Jeck had got a hold of the Stranraer Cooncil's Toon Crier and togged him up in his gear and sent him aal roond the toon wi' his handbell, bellowing the news aboot the next day's trup to the lieges.

“He even foond a wee brass band that wass playin' to the chentry in wan o' the biggest hotels in the toon, and offered them free meals and passage, and aal they could tak' when they passed the hat roond, if they would come on the trup and provide some musical entertainment for the passengers next day.

“Then he went and had a confabulation wi' the landlord o' the Harbour Inn, and efter some discussion and a frank exchange of views, they cam' to an agreement by which the man would run the refreshment rooms on the shup wi' the help of some of the ither Stranraer publicans that he knew well enough to trust, and for the pruvilege they would pay Jeck so much for effery bottle of spurits or barrel of beer they sold.

“Last thing, he and MacFadyen the Engineer went into the public bar at the Harbour Inn and recruited the men they needed for the enchine-room and for the deck.

“Jeck and MacFadyen slept on board the steamer that night, but Jeck made me stay on board the puffer.

“ ‘And I'm sorry, Peter, but I am not going to allow you on the trup tomorrow neither,' he said. ‘Pertly this iss for your own good, chust in case onything goes wrang, for you are a skipper and it would a real blot on your sheet if you wass to be taken to court for piracy on the high seas, or whateffer the sheriff and his gang might cry it.

“ ‘And pertly,' he continued, ‘it iss for my own protection ass weel. What I want you to do, ass soon ass we have sailed, is to get a couple o' the longshoremen to gi'e you a hand to shuft the puffer into the berth the steamer wass in, and nail this to the mast of the
Mingulay
' — and he handed me the Warrant that he'd tore doon from the paddler's mast — ‘so that if onybody offeecial jalouses that there's something no' quite right and comes to mak' an investigation, then you simply tell them that a frien' o' yours hass borrowed the steamer for the day — and that he wull be bringing her back that night in wan piece, with no questions asked — and in the meantime the puffer iss being left ass a sort of a pledge, like in a pawnshop, for the safe return of the paddler.'

“I didna like ony of it, but you know what Jeck's like, wance he has the bit between his teeth there iss no stopping him, so I chust held my tongue.

“Next morning there wass a crowd ten deep on the quayside by half-past-eight, when Jeck opened up the gangway. He stood at the tap of it himsel', wi' a leather satchel that he'd managed to borrow frae a conductor with wan o' the toon's charabancs round his shouthers, and twa rolls of cloakroom tickets in his hand, blue for adults and yellow for weans, and took the money.

“Wance the shup wass full — and she wass that full they couldna have squeezed the matchstick man from Hengler's on board — Jeck headed for the brudge, cast of fore and aft, and conned her out into Loch Ryan and awa'.

“The trup wass the talk of Stranraer for weeks. The refreshment rooms did a roarin' tred, for Jeck had had a word in the ear o' the landlord o' the Harbour Bar, and the prices wass set very reasonable indeed. ‘Better sell 1,000 pints at saxpence than 500 at sevenpence' as Jeck put it, and the result wass there wass a great air of jollity aal the way to the Isle of Man and back.

“Jeck didna daur land her there, of course, for there would be too many questions asked, but she made three or four close passes o' the main pier at Douglas, Jeck oot on the brudge wing wi' his kep on three hairs, a cheery wave for aal the world and the whustle lanyard in his hand, keeping time wi' the baund, which he had playin'
Liberty Bell
in the forepeak.

“On the way back the refreshment rooms and the dining saloons wass busier than ever, and there was dancing on the promenade deck and a great sing-song going in the fore-saloon.

“She docked back at Stranraer at seven o'clock that Saturday evening, but I wassna there to see it. By that time someone had gone to the polis aboot it — Jeck was aalways convinced it wass wan o' the publicans who hadna been invited into the act by the landlord o' the Harbour Inn, and him jealous because noo Jeck had taken aal his Saturday trade awa' to the high seas.

“The local polis came roond and looked at the state of things at the pierhead, and took a good long look at the puffer and me sitting smoking on her main-hatch. He said nothin', chust shook his heid and walked away. But soon afterwards he came back wi' fower big men in dark coats and snap-brim hats, and they read something I couldna understand from a long document that wan of them held up in front of him.

“Then they came aboard the puffer and it wass made clear that if I didna go to the polis station of my own free wull then I would very quickly go the hard way.

“They arrested Jeck the moment the shup docked and the case came up furst thing Monday morning — they dinna haud back doon in Wigtonshire. In the cell Jeck had told me not to worry, he'd tell them I had chust been his dupe — I didna think that wass very flattering of him but I knew fine he meant it for the best so I didna tak' offence. And he'd have no trouble paying the fine, said he. It couldna be more than £50, and he'd taken near on £200.

“The shuriff wass the meanest-lookin chiel I'd ever come across and though I wass discherged ass ‘nothing mair nor less than a fool in a rogue's clutches' ass he put it (and thenks for the kind words, I thought at the time) he threw the book at poor Jeck. He gi'ed him hiss ancestry and telt his fortune for the best pert of 30 minutes and then said: ‘sentence of the court is a fine of £200 or three months imprisonment.'

“Jeck paid the fine, of course.

“As he said, money iss only money, but to give up your freedom iss to give up your heart, and to give up your heart is to cut yourself off from the happiness and friendship of the world.

“So that's wan o' the mony reasons, Dan, that I neffer begrudge Jeck anything. The man is wan o' life's leprechauns, dispensing nothing but kindness and mirth and wi'oot wan drap o' malice in him. He should be preserved ass a national monument, for he iss a credit to the human race.”

F
ACTNOTE

Stranraer would probably vie with Campbeltown for the title of most isolated Scottish town were it not for its importance as the sea-link to Northern Ireland. Most of the goods coming from or going to that country, which used to trundle in and out of Stranraer by rail, are now transported by juggernauts for which the roads and (more basically still) the rolling landscapes of Wigtonshire and its environs were never designed.

The town stands at the head of Loch Ryan and it was from here, in Para Handy's time, that ships of the Larne and Stranraer Steamboat Company ran their services. Today there are two major roll-on, roll-off shipping terminals located on the Loch, one at Stranraer, the other at Cairnryan on its eastern shore.

T
HE
I
RISH
D
IMENSION
— There was, around the turn of the century, an established and comprehensive steamer service around the towns and villages of the Belfast Lough, and the MacGrory brothers visited Northern Ireland on more than one occasion. Here is the paddler
Slieve Bearnagh (Mount Bearnagh)
leaving Belfast Docks. She was built on the Clyde at J and G Thomson's yard in 1894.

More than 50 years ago the Loch was a vitally important wartime base. Its sheltered waters were home to huge squadrons of flying boats, notably the Catalinas and the larger Sunderlands which patrolled hundreds of miles out into the Atlantic to guard and protect the vast convoys of merchant ships, Britain's lifeline of hope, from the waiting U-boats whose wolf-packs lay in stealthy ambush in the Western Approaches.

Later in the war it was at Cairnryan that component sections of the ‘Mulberry' floating harbour, itself crucial to the ultimate success of the D-Day landings, were constructed.

One especially poignant memory of the Stranraer to Larne service was the foundering in heavy weather off the Irish coast of the
Princess Victoria
on January 31st 1953. There was heavy loss of life in this, one of the worst-ever maritime disasters in British waters in peacetime. The ship was the fourth vessel of that name on the service: but she was also, to the time of writing at least, the last.

On the outskirts of Stranraer stands the imposing North West Castle Hotel, a popular destination for golfers and curlers (it has its own ice-rink) but once the home of the Arctic explorer Sir John Ross. Like Parry before him and Franklin after him he was obsessed with the idea of discovering the fabled North West passage across the top of Canada to the Pacific. So was the Royal Navy, which explains why so many unsuccessful expeditions were funded out of the public purse. Ross's published account of his second voyage recounts in detail how he and his ships put in to Loch Ryan en route to the Arctic, and how he came ashore to visit home before they left.

That particular expedition sailed from Loch Ryan on June 13th 1829: it did not return to this country for more than four years coming into Stromness harbour in Orkney on October 12th 1833.

A
ND
F
INALLY
— Perhaps the greatest evocation of how the sea around the coasts of Argyll was the life of our Victorian and Edwardian forebears would not be the handsome steamers, which were the investments of the wealthy: nor the more humble steam-lighters and gabbarts which were the bread-and-butter of the employed seamen: but the simple fishing skiffs, numbered in their hundreds, which were owned and crewed by families, their skills and their knowledge (like the boats themselves) handed down from generation to generation. This picture of just one tiny corner of Campbeltown harbour says that more eloquently than words could ever do.

Stern views of paddlers are rare, which makes this fine plate from the MacGrory archive specially interesting. It illustrates perfectly the spaciousness afforded by the wide paddle-boxes in contrast to the fine lines of the hull itself, and the dramatic wake left by the twin blades. The steamer is the Duchess of Hamilton, and she has just turned away from Campbeltown pier and is heading out to sea towards the Ayrshire coast. When this picture was taken she was at the beginning of her career — in contrast to the unidentified square-rigged naval vessel anchored out in the bay, very much at the end of hers.

The late Stuart Donald was a West Coast aficianado and author of
In The Wake of The Vital Spark
,
Para Handy All At Sea
and
Para Handy Sails Again
.