28

The Cargo of Cement

Sunny Jim had been sent up on deck to bring back a report about the weather as soon as the battered old alarm clock (the only item of any ornamental pretension in the fo’c’sle) had gone off as usual at seven o’clock.

“Sorry boys,” he said as he returned. “It’s rainin’ as hard as ever, and no sign of a break in the sky at all.”

The Vital Spark had lain at Berry’s Pier on Loch Striven for four days now and, though the month was May, the rain had been unrelenting for nearly 96 solid hours. The tops of the hills in Cowal to the north and on the Kyles to the south were embedded head first, as it were, in the base of low grey clouds which pressed down to within a few hundred feet of the surface of the loch.

“Still rainin’ on!” complained Para Handy, swinging his feet out of his bunk and reaching for his shirt. “I have neffer known weather like it and I am fair at the end of my tether wi’ it aal.

“I shall go and talk to the builders again. We cannot lie here for effer and a day. What the owner must be thinkin’ I hate to imachine. With there bein’ no telephone in the big hoose for us to get a message to him, he’ll be thinkin’ that we iss aal lost at sea, and his shup wi’ us!”

Their enforced idleness had been caused by a combination of the constant rain, the nature of their cargo — and a very cautious clerk-of-works. The ‘big house’ at Glenstriven was in process of having some amenities added before the annual summer visit of its owners, a Glasgow merchant and his family.

Chief amongst these was the building of a large new boathouse beside the pier which served the estate: and the construction of a substantial flagstoned terrace at the front of the house, as a necessary adjunct to the quite unheard-of extravagance of the small outdoor swimming pool which had been installed there only the previous year.

The paving stones, bricks, tiles and miscellaneous items of hardware for these works had been delivered by the puffer the previous Thursday — together with the building squad, who had spent the weekend carting sand and pebbles from the nearby beaches to the site of operations. On Monday, the puffer had returned from the Broomielaw with the last and most important ingredient in the recipe — the bags of the cement itself.

And that, so far as the supervising agent of the contract was concerned, was the problem.

Cement.

Despite the skipper’s assurances that they had trans-shipped such a cargo successfully many times in the past and that the specially-treated bags were rain-proof, the clerk-of-works, terrified of the effects of such an unending downpour on his precious cement, had refused point-blank to countenance its unloading till the rain had stopped. That was Monday. And today was Friday.

Thus the hatch on the puffer’s hold was undisturbed. The heavy tarpaulin across it was still fastened down tightly, and the bag of rope netting which would transfer the cargo to a waiting horse and cart on the pier hung idle from the derrick.

On the puffer, the crew sat fuming in the fo’c’sle and getting ever more short-tempered with each other: ashore, the builders huddled under the leaking canvas roof of their ramshackle bothy and wished they were back in Glasgow.

And both sets of disgruntled and frustrated men individually and collectively cursed the clerk-of-works — who was himself safely ensconced in the considerable comfort of the staff wing at the big house, courtesy of the estate factor, though to the dismay of the domestic staff who were expected to look after his needs.

“He still insists that the bags would chust turn ass solid ass a rock,” Para Handy protested as he climbed back down into the fo’c’sle and hung his dipping oilskins over a line stretched across the deck-beams next to the chimney of the iron stove in the fore-peak.

“To the duvvle,” said Macphail with feeling. “Is your word no’ good enough for the man, Peter?”

“He wuddna’ believe it even if it wass written in the Good Book itself,” said the skipper bitterly. “He iss that nervous for his chob. We must chust thole it oot for another day, boys, and see what comes.

“At least though we can get a wee break, for when I telt him we wass low on proveesions, instead of offerin’ food from the big hoose, ass any Chrustian wud do, he chust said we could tak’ a trup ower to Rothesay and stock up.”

Within a short space of time, Macphail had steam up, and the puffer eased out from Berry’s Pier for the crossing to the capital of Bute. Though the rain still swept mercilessly out of a grey sky, the prospect of a change of scenery, the chance of some company, and the promise of a quiet dram, went a long way to brightening the day for the crew.

For once, their optimism was not to be disappointed.

The owner, when Para Handy telegraphed his office to report on their problems and their whereabouts, was sufficiently moved by their plight to wire some money to them at once, care of the Rothesay Post Office.

Though this was probably through a sense of relief at learning that his investment was not lost with all hands somewhere off the Cumbraes, it at least made possible a re-stocking of the Vital Spark’s larder, and a welcome refreshment for the crew before they re-embarked for the return crossing to their berth in Loch Striven.

As the puffer edged in to Berry’s Pier, two things immediately became apparent.

Firstly, the clerk-of-works was to be seen, waiting for them on the pier — and in a very agitated state.

Secondly, the rain had stopped for the first time in four days and though it seemed that the respite would be brief (for dark, laden clouds were rolling in from the south west) it was at least a break from the monotonous deluge which they had tholed for so long.

The reason for the clerk-of-work’s agitation was soon made clear. Dunoon Telegraph Office had delivered a wire from the owner of the big house, advising the factor and the steward that his three sons, with a dozen or more of their friends, would be arriving at Berry’s Pier on a chartered steam launch at six o’clock that evening, intending to spend the weekend at the house.

“You’ll have to move the boat immediately,” cried the frantic clerk-of-works. “They will need to berth the launch here and, besides, we cannot have the loch frontage of Glenstriven marred by the spectacle of a steam-gabbart at the pier.”

Para Handy was with some difficulty restrained by the engineer and eventually was able to point out that he had a cargo for delivery here, it was still aboard, and he had no intention of leaving until it was safely ashore.

“The fact that it iss not,” he concluded, “iss entirely your own fault, Mr Patullo, and I would be grateful if you would chust remember that before you miscall the shup!”

The wretched Patullo wrung his hands. “But we’ve got to get the boat away — and my gang, too, if you’ll give them passage back to Glasgow. The gentry will want the place to themselves for the weekend.”

“Well,” said Para Handy. “Get my cargo off the shup, and we’ll can do that for you. But so long ass my cargo iss aboard — here I stay!”

“But how can I do that,” protested the clerk-of-works. “It may be dry enough to unload ye noo — but the weather for the weekend looks set to continue wet, and I’ve no place to store the cement under cover.

“Captain,” said Sunny Jim suddenly. “I think we can maybe sort this all oot…”

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.

FACTNOTE

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!