Rebirth

I’d very much like to tell you now of the process whereby a vessel can be born again. This is a technical operation but the main requirement is neither nails nor timber but, my friends, it is faith. If you take a cuirt along the shores of Goat Island or Griomsiadair, or enter through the locked galvanised gates of Renfrew or Govan, you will see an abundance of projects. These will be directed at vessels of differing dimensions and type but most of them are unlikely to be completed.

Money is often a concern and we have to concede it is a factor that must be considered. But that is not the main requirement. The proof of this is the number of neglected vessels owned by those who have amassed large shares of the world’s gear. But these owners of vessels and of gear may well be short of time and are almost certain to be also short of faith.

I cannot say that all vessels are capable of rebirth. First the carcass must be found. Titanic was found, though she has not, as yet, been raised. The streamlined Isadora, of the six-metre class, built to international rules, and last seen going bow-down when under tow at Kyle of Lochalsh – she was never found. There was thus not even the solace afforded by wreckage to grieve over. There was no opportunity to take mementos. Only memories remain.

We could consider example after example but friends, we must not lose the intention of this treatise, which is to prove that rebirth is a possibility. Not a waking dream but a thing you can touch. Better to believe without specific example but as we all have an aspect of the psychology of Thomas – the disciple who admitted doubt – we can study the case of one unique vessel. Should you wish to do so, you can rub a nger along the last part of the skeleton of the old and witness where it has grown up again from the very keel to be made almost entirely new. But faithful to the curvature and dimensions and displacement of the old. Like the Titanic herself, this example was first brought into this world in the year 1912.

She was a whole boat when she was completed but she was still called a ‘half-sgoth’. A sgoth is just a skiff, as time goes by but there was a large class, a three-quarter class and a half class. At the time of her building, John Finlay MacLeod would have been helping his own father build these craft at Port of Ness. Maybe his olman’s eye was on his work but I’m guessing he was already trusted to complete the smaller craft. There are records of the vessels they built and the length of their keels, the names they were given. But the meticulous notebooks don’t tell a whole story.

Peace and Plenty survived because she was blessed with such a fine shape that everyone who had anything to do with her was affected by her beauty. Of course, such beauty is dangerous. There’s a tradition in Scotland that you don’t want to make a working boat beautiful beyond the appeal of a good line, well maintained. A decorative touch is allowed – the yellow arrow at the end of the cove line; the scroll around the name, repeated on the wheelhouse. But if you go beyond that, she might be claimed by the sea, for herself. The Scalpay herring boats must have come close to the limit, with their dozen coats of varnish and their perky canoe sterns.

It’s a good thing that Peace and Plenty was used to set lines and creels and nets because the wear and tear leaves scars and scuffs. Some of these go deeper than any paint can cover. When you scraped to investigate possible rot you would find that the layers of paint would make their own map and their own historical documentation of her story. As you rubbed sandpaper, the way she would once have been rubbed with the skin of a dogfish, you would see the contour lines. There would be a deep flag-blue giving way to a shade of maroon, named ‘Bounty’. There would be Admiralty grey and there would be Baltic blue.

You would discover evidence that her mast and her oars were carried in different positions, over the years. So you could imagine that sometimes she might have carried a sail, on spars that could fit inside her hull. And at other times, she may have lay snug at anchor, in the bays of Harris or the inlets of lochs so a taller mast could be stepped. Whatever their shapes, these sails would once have appeared white as cumulus cloud but later they would have been treated with the boiled bark that preserved herring nets of cotton. So a rich russet colour would develop. Suffice to say that our concern here is not with the rig or performance of the vessel. It is possible you will encounter such details elsewhere, for in her own country she is famous. We are concerned with the very fabric of her body.

We must demonstrate now, by this single example, how such a shape can be made again. I must remind you that we left the vessel apparently dead. Her keel was intact but her planking was torn apart and her ribs were shattered. The breasthooks, fore and aft, were torn asunder from her bows and from her quarters. Although I knew that her soul lay not in the lines which gave her shape, I also knew that the preservation of these lines was a homage to her history.

For many years I was custodian of the remains of Peace and Plenty. She was transferred in the registry of vessels to the name of MacAulay. A vessel is owned by alloted shares, there being sixty-four shares to a ship. As my own mother provided one half of the purchase price she was entitled to one half of the shares, being thirty-two. In return, she asked for a small share of the catch. She requested a lobster. I never did pay that debt with an indigo scavenger. And it might be very difficult to do so in the future, even should there be an abundance of them come, in traps, over her gunnels.

This is the story of her resurrection which took place many years after the extent of her decay was identified. With reference to our previous discussion of matters of faith I concede that it would be better if we could agree that her gospel is the memory of her own way through water. But some of you will be, like me, in the camp of the doubting Thomas. Therefore I must endeavour to lead you to a site where you can place your fingers on her renewed ribs.

They were making a film about the rocket-post experiment which took place on Scarp. But they were shooting it on Taransay. Just a little more scenic and the village could be recreated in canvas and paint. There was even a little graveyard and you had to touch the stones to know they were cloth. There was to be a boat scene. The company was attempting to assemble a flotilla of craft, contemporary to the time in the script, just before the outbreak of World War Two.

These were good days for joiners but, as I found, also good days for guys with a good grasp of Kelvins and Listers, Seagulls and Sabbs. Perhaps a recent refugee from the Coastguard Service who had a power-boat ticket and an appetite for shifting boats about.

It was all cash on the table. It would go to help a family find a substitute for Tante Erika. A few optimistic mates had looked at the wreckage of our British Folkboat over the years but I’d begun to give away the viable salvage, like the nearly new sail. Of course I’d got the Yanmar going. Once the corrosive salt water is flushed from the innards, you flood the motor with the stuff of life – diesel itself. Of course you take the starter motor and other bolted on electrical components to the alternator-doctor who lives in Newvalley. There’s no need to visit Silicon Glen.

After the coughs and splutters, you nourish the turning motor with new oil and wipe with clean rags and coax her to sweet running. After all that, the last thing you want to do is to leave her idle so of course I’d given her to the guy who’d stored the wreck of the vessel which had contained the unit. Anna still hadn’t given up hope but I knew I could never trust her life to a vessel with a keel that might have shifted, even if we replaced all the bolts. Better to build an entirely new vessel on a wooden keel we could examine throughout. An open boat is like an open book.