Scotland's Vital Spark: The Clyde Puffer

For 140 years,

Puffers were the workhorses of the Scottish coastal trade.

'Those days are long gone and now,

'with only three of these historic boats left in Scottish waters,

'I'm on a voyage into a steam-driven past...'

Whoa! The heat!

'..where the puffers would help

'fire the industrialisation of our nation

'and provided the crucial link between the mainland

'and our remotest communities.'

I thought of these men as heroes,

coming with these wee boats to the islands, doing such good work.

'I'll meet the last surviving men

'who lived and worked on these special craft.'

There's not many of them left now.

I mean, I'm 86, but I'm still going strong!

'The puffers were immortalised

'by the fictional tales of Para Handy and the Vital Spark.'

And the reality behind the myth

is every bit as rich as the Para Handy tales.

A lot of rogues, too -

but they were nice rogues, you know?

Let's find out more about the boat that built Scotland.

The River Clyde -

the artery that runs through the heart of Glasgow -

will forever be associated with the magnificent ships

that were built here during

the British Empire's age of industrial and world domination.

The great ships that were built on this river

sailed away from Scotland to distant lands,

to make their fortune and ply their trade.

But there's another fascinating part of Scotland's maritime history -

and it's a story that's almost been forgotten.

For more than a century,

the Clyde puffer was a familiar sight on Scottish water.

There were around 400 of these boats built

and whilst some puffers were owned by their skipper,

most were part of private company fleets.

They were manned by small crews of some of the hardiest

and most able men that have ever taken to the rough seas of Scotland

and could deliver over 100 tonnes of bulk cargo,

with her own gear, in places others vessels dare not go.

The most versatile boat in the water,

she was just as at home in the industrial heart of Scotland

as she was in the remotest corners of the Hebrides.

I'm looking at an old map of Scotland

and you can see the graphic nature of our landscape,

and the Highlands and the Islands -

and it's craggy, with all the inlets and the sea lochs

and these inaccessible, isolated communities.

Now, to get any kind of supplies in there,

you needed a specially-designed and built boat to do that job.

That's where the puffers came in.

Difficult, difficult job,

but absolutely vital to the lifeblood of those communities.

The Clyde puffer -

the boat that once played such an important role in Scottish life

has all but disappeared...

Well, almost.

I'm in Crinan in Argyllshire, on the west coast of Scotland.

It's a haven for sailors from all over the world

and I'm here to visit a very important piece of Scottish maritime history.

And here she is - the VIC 32.

This unique boat is the last surviving steam-driven puffer

still to be found on Scottish water.

She's just like a clumpy lump of iron sitting in the water, isn't she?

I'm dying to see inside.

'The VIC 32 has been kept afloat

'by the last full-time puffer skipper in the world - Nick Walker.'

Nick! Hello, sir.

-Very, very welcome on board the good ship VIC 32.

-It's lovely to be here.

'Nick's agreed to let me join him on a voyage

'that will help me find out

'what life was like on board a working puffer.'

Take up the slack as I come back.

She's quite a beast, to move around this little loch.

Yes, she weighs 160 tonnes,

and there are a lot of very expensive yachts about the place.

So, you've got to be quite careful.

-They wouldn't be very happy if you bumped into them!

-No.

I'm coming astern. This boat will do ballet.

You can turn the boat round in a canal basin like this.

-So, that little wheel controls the engine?

-It's the throttle.

It's the main steam valve.

It just allows more steam or less steam into the engine.

You can hold the wheel. Turn it to the middle.

That's it, keep turning.

This is a treat beyond belief!

'This is the first time that I've been on a steam puffer,

'but like a lot of Scots of a certain vintage,

'it's a boat that I remember well.'

As a boy growing up in Glasgow,

we used to get a ferry across the river to visit my auntie.

And you would have dozens and dozens of ships

and liners from all over the world.

In amongst them were these things, puffing away - puff-puff-puff -

plying their trade up and down the Clyde.

In the mind of a young boy, they were magical.

They were like little toys - toy ships -

they weren't great big ocean-going liners or cargo ships,

they were just wee toys you wanted to have in your bath.

-ARCHIVE VO:

-Puffers, too, have their place in dockland,

for these dumpy little maids of all work carry their cargoes

right up to the shallows, under the city's bridges.

The VIC 32 here was built in 1943

and after her working life, was headed for the breaker's yard.

Thankfully, she was rescued by skipper Nick

when he spotted her laid up at a boatyard in Whitby.

He's kept her afloat by converting her cargo hold

and turning her into a popular holiday cruiser.

If we hadn't found her in September of 1975,

I think she would have been scrapped,

because she was going downhill fast.

The anchor chain had gone,

the navigation lights had gone, the wheel had gone.

Just the core was there.

And, together with the help of some steam enthusiasts,

spent two years doing all the work you can see

and we managed to get her going,

because I knew nothing about steam engines,

but we soon worked it out - that this boat had a heart.

The VIC 32 is now the last of her kind,

but puffers just like her used to be a regular sight

all along this Argyllshire coastline.

But it was on a different type of waterway

that the story of these boats really began.

Now, the story of Scotland's puffers is fundamentally interwoven

with the history of Scotland's canals -

and if you want to find out about the birth of the puffer,

you won't find it out at sea - you have to head inland.

And it's back to Glasgow,

on one of Scotland's most historic waterways, that the story begins.

In many respects,

the puffer was the baby of the Forth and Clyde Canal.

This is the Forth and Clyde Canal system

and you could spend your entire life in the city of Glasgow

going about your daily business and you would never know it's here.

But in the days of the puffers,

these waterways were the veins of the nation,

carrying Scotland's lifeblood - trade.

The canal is 35 miles long

and cuts right across Scotland at her narrowest point,

between Grangemouth in the east and Bowling in the west.

When it opened in 1790,

it was the most important trade route in Scotland.

Steam power in boats had yet to be perfected

and cargo was delivered using a tamer method.

And it's from these earliest canal craft the puffer would emerge.

Over there, hiding in the long grass,

is something I find quite remarkable.

This is an old canal scow.

The forerunner, the granddaddy of the puffers.

And already, you can see the basic puffer design begin to take shape.

She had no engines, no steering system -

apart from a hand-operated tiller you can see at the stern there -

because these boats were pulled along the canals by horses

in the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries.

Now, she's not been cared for by restoration teams.

She's just been left here to rust into memory.

And that's a shame,

because she played a vital part in Scottish maritime history.

In the 1830s, the canals would face a serious threat.

These horse-drawn scows would be overtaken

by a new, faster, steam-powered rival.

The age of the railway had arrived.

But the key thing was efficiency

and the railways thought that they had the upper hand

and that they could develop a more efficient system.

The puffer was the solution to this.

This is a really important part of the canal.

In 1856, a canal engineer called James Milne

lived in that white house behind me,

here in Hamilton Hill, in the north of Glasgow.

He decided to try an experiment.

He installed two steam cylinders

and a newly-invented screw propeller

into the iron hull of a cargo scow.

And the Thomas was born -

the first ever puffer.

And once that boat had been converted,

it was immediately popular.

The big advantage the Forth and Clyde Canal had was the size -

the sheer size of the Forth and Clyde Canal

meant that boats could be developed

that were big enough to, in effect, compete against railways.

These locks on the canal will take a boat 66 feet long,

so that was the dimension that the puffers were all built to begin with.

The average puffer took about 100 tonnes of goods.

You couldn't put that on a railway truck.

It minimised, also,

the amount of handling that you had to do to shift the goods.

These new puffers were an instant success

and they soon became a familiar sight,

as they gave the canals a new, competitive edge.

I'm on board the MV Maryhill,

a miniature replica puffer run by canal enthusiasts.

It gives us a wonderful glimpse into the past,

as the journey along here

is the same route taken by those first puffers.

There's the steeple of Glasgow University.

Then below that, the Western Infirmary.

I've lived in Glasgow all my life

and I've never seen the city from this perspective.

It's really, really unusual and it's lovely.

The early puffers were really simple boats.

They were essentially just canal barges

with an engine bolted on to the back.

It was this rudimentary design that led to its name.

The first generation of Puffers did not have condensers,

which meant that they could not convert the steam back into water,

to go back into the boiler.

They just let it puff out of the funnel -

puff-puff-puff.

And of course, those early Puffers

with non-condensing engines on the canal

- puff-puff-puff through the funnel -

is where the name "puffer" comes from.

That's how it got the name.

The name stuck -

and although the model adapted,

"puffers" they were, to their dying day.

When you think of the heyday of shipbuilding,

it's really almost impossible not to conjure up

images of the great yards of the day -

the Fairfields, the Elders, the Yarrows and the John Browns.

But alongside that, at the same time,

a new industry of canalside puffer boatyards was developing -

and developing fast.

Industries sprang up alongside the canal

and the puffer was part of that whole new industrial mobility.

I'm watching the only known footage of a broadside launch of a puffer -

and it's in the heart of the town of Kirkintilloch - side on.

And it looks amazing, because the boat, when it's been built,

must have towered right above the canal bank

in the centre of the town.

Oh! Oh, my! LAUGHTER

Good Lord, that's really genuinely quite spectacular.

I mean, when she slides off into the canal,

she bounces about like a cork, like a matchbox.

And she crashes into the other bank,

sending a great wave onto the shore.

That's quite spectacular, that.

There are thousands of people round there watching.

This is a remarkable piece of footage and it's very, very rare.

Although the puffers started out life

on the gentle waters of the canals,

it was out on the open sea,

on the wild west coast of Scotland, they would make their name.

'And for Professor Donald Meek,

'who grew up on the remote island of Tiree in the early '50s,

'the importance of the puffer has left a lasting impact.'

I miss the puffer terribly.

I was so used to puffers

coming and going to Tiree for all sorts of reasons.

I'm often amazed at this...

..that a little boat that was developed

to handle bulk cargo on a canal

eventually went out to the Hebrides.

The puffer is how the Industrial Revolution

spread out to the Hebrides.

Like the spokes of a wheel from Glasgow on from the lowlands.

And the puffers were the spokes.

There was a fortune to be made

if the puffers could get out to sea and work the coastal trade.

But before they could reach the open water beyond the canal locks,

a few design modifications needed to take place.

And deep in the archives of the Scottish Maritime museum at Irvine,

we can find the earliest example of the puffer's evolution.

Now, what makes these blueprints so special

is the fact that they're so rare.

The puffers built in the first 50 years of the trade

were built by eye.

But then, when they started to add amendments

and new elements for ocean-going,

that's when these blueprints first arrived.

So, out at sea, obviously, they needed a bower -

a rail round the outside of the boat to stop people falling off.

Common sense.

When they were in the canals, they had an open cargo hold.

If water got into an open hold out at sea,

that would lead to a pretty awful disaster,

so they had to add covers and hatches all over the boat.

In the canal system, it's very easy and straightforward to steer.

A simple rudder was all that was needed,

but once they started going out into the open sea,

they needed something far, far more robust.

The key development would be in engines.

What the canal puffers did was, they took the water from the canals

and blew it up their chimneys.

They puffed.

But you can't do that out at sea, because you can't use saltwater.

The engines just wouldn't work.

So, they created a condenser.

So, there was no more puffing.

By the 1890s, with these refinements and developments in place,

the steam puffer finally took on the shape

it would retain for the next 70 years.

With the puffer now ready for a life at sea,

it would go on to dominate the Scottish coastal trade.

There are probably only a handful of men now,

who actually sailed on puffers.

We're just at the point where we could lose that wonderful link

with a generation of men who were adept

at handling small steam craft in difficult waters,

and doing so brilliantly.

One man who knows more than most

about life aboard these special boats

is retired puffer skipper Bobby Sinclair.

-Bobby, you've done that before!

-Many a time!

Good to meet you. How are you? Welcome.

Bobby, why did you join?

Well, I suppose I was on the boats with my father.

He was on the boats and I always used to come out of school

and first thing was go to the boat.

-So, your father was a puffer man?

-That's correct.

Yeah, he was puffers for many years as well.

So, when did you start to work full-time?

I started at 16, on the puffers.

And that was on Alaska a puffer called Alaska -

a steam puffer with my father as the skipper.

And I started off as deckhand.

The deckhand on a steam puffer had to relieve the engineer

and you were down there firing up the boiler and sometimes,

the skipper would have you steer and things like that, you know?

-You ended up a skipper, didn't you?

-Aye, yes.

Got one command and worked up till about the mid-'70s, the early '70s.

I imagine the conditions under which you worked -

the conditions of the weather and all the rest of it -

it must have generated a great camaraderie

-and a sense of community?

-Oh, it did. Oh, aye.

I mean, you wouldn't see anything wrong.

You'd look after one another as well, you know?

A lot of rogues too -

but they were nice rogues, you know?

-Are you proud of being on the Spartan?

-Oh, yes.

-Very proud of being on the Spartan.

-Why?

Oh, she's a fine wee boat and nice lines -

a fine wee boat to look at. Nice model.

One of the Puffers that Bobby was proud to have worked on

during his long career at sea

is now being looked after by the Scottish Maritime Museum.

This is the Spartan,

berthed here in Irvine Harbour.

It's one of the last of the puffers still afloat.

Another man who can remember life working on the Spartan

was her former chief engineer, Jim McMonigle.

I joined this boat somewhere about 1962.

The last porthole there was my cabin.

And there were three of us in there.

On the other side, the skipper, he had a cabin to himself.

We even had class distinction!

They were a happy enough crowd.

Down at the back end, down a couple of steps,

there was a mess room with a stove and a cooker in it.

No refrigeration, or anything like that.

But we all worked together and you had to get on.

If you didn't get on, you were in serious trouble,

because it's too wee a boat to start fighting.

But we thoroughly enjoyed it. We had a great time on it.

It was the hardest job I had in my life, aboard the puffers.

I've never worked so hard physically in my life,

because if you had 80 tonnes of coal in that hold,

and if you were in a place where you didn't have dockers,

you did the loading yourself.

At the end of a shovel, eight hours a day -

and we had to discharge 80 tonnes of coal in a day.

-80 tonnes?

-80 tonnes.

'Coal was the key cargo carried by the puffers in these massive holds.'

And the guys who worked on board

weren't just expected to be able seamen -

their main job was to load and unload these huge cargoes by hand.

We always used to start at seven o'clock in the morning there.

The lorries would be sitting and waiting on you.

Oh, it was brutal work.

Big number ten shovels into these tubs.

Big coal in those days,

there was none of these small cobbles you get now.

Oh, it was bloody work.

Life certainly wasn't easy on board a puffer.

Hard, physical work.

You can almost sense the presence of those men,

loading and unloading this great cargo hold.

And the other key element, of course, about a puffer

was that she could load and unload under her own steam.

Hence the mast and derrick that you see in all the pictures,

so they could do that at any point along the canal,

or indeed at any point out in the Western Isles.

I heard one guy lost his leg, in a rope and a winch.

There was various other accidents, you know?

Cos health and safety didn't come into it.

You just got on with the job!

One man went on the derrick, one went on the winch,

and two went down in the hold -

and you shovelled coal until you dropped.

We got overtime for that and I'll always remember,

we got the princely sum of one and six an hour.

If you can get somebody else

to shovel 150 tonnes for one and six an hour,

you're off the beam!

The money was never that great on the boats -

not for the hours we were putting in, anyway.

-I think it was about 84 hours a week we were working.

-84?!

Yeah, that was it. That was just the way it went.

So, it was very, very hard work, but we were fit.

I'm 86, and I'm still going strong.

You don't look a day over 60, Jim.

That's what I say, too(!)

Inside, I'm not so good. But I'm keeping going, no problems.

I think that's largely due to having worked the puffers,

for it built you in stamina.

It kept you fit and kept you strong.

It kept you going.

I remember nearly wrecking a Bedford lorry one time.

Discharging sand and I was mate on a puffer

and we had a grab for sand.

I was loading this lorry up - I didn't know about lorries then -

and I loaded it right up.

But the lorry fell apart, because an old Bedford,

it probably held about three tonnes.

-I think I put 10 or 12 tonnes of sand on it!

-LAUGHTER

I'm heading down into the beating heart of the puffer -

the life and soul of the ship -

the engine room.

The 72-year-old engine of the VIC 32 is maintained and stoked

by dedicated young steam engineer Matt Scurr.

-Matt, hi. How are you?

-Good to meet you.

Whoa! The heat!

-It's warm, isn't it?

-The noise, man.

In that fire box, it's about 1,400 degrees.

Gives us a lovely 120P applied pressure -

the engines like to run at.

It's a beautiful piece of engineering, Matt.

Two cylinder of compound steam engine, producing 120 horsepower.

Do you enjoy it? Do you feel like she's yours?

Absolutely, yeah.

There's something that's alive.

Essentially, you feed them, you water them,

you boil them, and they've got their own personality, almost.

How many hours a day do you spend down here?

Up to an eight hour day, sometimes,

depending on where we need to get to.

-I bet at the end of the day, you're dying for a beer.

-Absolutely.

Makes it taste good too!

I love the beauty and the precision of pieces of engineering like this.

All these interconnected parts, all working together.

You know, if you look after engines like this,

keep them maintained and oiled,

they can last forever.

It's a magnificent testimony to the ingenuity of the human race.

I love them. They're like works of art.

Now, this feels really good, steering this puffer.

I'm heading through the Doras Mhor,

which is the "open gate", or the "gateway", in Gaelic.

And it's seemingly quite tricky.

You've got to watch out for a wee sailing boat over there,

because we're much bigger and butcher than they are.

I wouldn't like to be responsible for anyone's deaths at sea!

All over Scotland,

the puffers are held in great affection by people everywhere,

no matter where you come from.

And most of that knowledge

comes from the fictional characterisations of Neil Munro

and his creations -

his wonderful tales of Para Handy

and the most famous puffer of them all -

The Vital Spark.

It was when the tales of The Vital Spark first appeared

that the Clyde puffers sailed into immortality.

They were written over 100 years ago,

by Glasgow-based journalist Neil Munro.

Munro walked the banks of this river

at a time when the Clyde was teeming with puffers.

And he spotted their potential as a way to fill a few column inches.

Now, these are copies of the long gone Glasgow Evening News.

And in here, we should find the first ever... Yes!

..Para Handy story.

So, on Monday, 16th January 1905,

a new and enduring fictional character

hit the Scottish literary scene.

"A short, thick-set man with a red beard and a hard, round felt hat,

"ridiculously out of harmony with a blue pilot jacket and trousers

"and a seaman's jersey."

Para Handy, master mariner, had arrived.

These stories were a huge hit with the Glasgow public

and they became part of Glasgow life.

They were serialised until 1923 - that's 18 years, a very long time.

And they were also published in book form.

And that was over 100 years ago

and since then, these books have never, ever been out of print

and that is a quite extraordinary,

quite remarkable achievement for any writer.

ACCORDION MELODY

'Retired BBC man Guthrie Hutton was part of the team

'who worked on the most famous adaptation of them all -

'a sitcom starring Roddy McMillan as roguish skipper Para Handy.'

Oh, you see? That tune as well.

Look at the size of it!

So, we had to put that white line around her,

because she was the smartest boat in the trade

and she had that white line

- and the white line, of course, was just two-inch masking tape.

Originally shot in black and white in the '60s,

the show starred a host of the finest Scottish actors of the day

and left us with the most enduring image of a puffer and her crew.

-Well, it's wonderful to see that, actually.

-Yes, it's great stuff.

"Designer, Guthrie Hutton".

Oh, God. I remember that - darning the socks.

"Lady Cynthia Sins Again"!

LAUGHTER

Furtive -

that's the word I'd use - furtive.

"Furtive"!

It's the way he kind of spits it out. It's wonderful.

Para Handy has been furtive ever since we left Inveraray.

'The scripts were so good, they were filmed again,

'almost shot for shot in colour in the 1970s.'

There's not a damn thing wrong with the boiler!

If I've told you once, I've told you 100 times -

the whole engines need a complete overhaul.

Well, they're not going in for an overhaul!

They want scrapped, that's what they want - scrapped! Come here!

-You see this thing that's going round and round?

-Aye.

It should be going up and down!

What have you got there?

Well, these are some pages of camera script

from 14th of November 1965.

Episode one, The Quarrel. "They strike fighting poses.

"Jim heads for the door. I'm going to get Dougie!

"It'll take more than Dougie to separate us!"

Separate you? I want to see the fight!

-Yeah?

-No, no. Oh, no, no.

It's not right for the master of the vessel

-to fight with a common stoker.

-Stoker?!

"Stoker?!"

When you were making the programmes in those days,

did you realise that they would become so popular?

Yes, we knew it would be popular, I guess,

-because the Para Handy stories...

-..Are really funny.

..have been popular since Neil Munro wrote them.

This is Inveraray, the hometown of Neil Munro,

the creator of The Vital Spark.

He was born in the mid-19th century,

so he was here during the heyday of the puffer trade

and he was heavily influenced by what he saw

and all the wonderful characters that he met.

This is one of the last remaining puffers.

She was originally called the Eilean Eisdeal,

but then she was renamed the Vital Spark

in tribute to Neil Munro and his original creation.

She was one of the last working puffers until the mid-'90s.

I think it's great that she's berthed here

in Neil Munro's hometown -

the writer of The Vital Spark.

STEAM WHISTLES

Now, we're currently sailing through the mouth of Loch Melfort.

But if you look way behind me,

you'll see in the distance the Paps of Jura - those distinctive peaks.

To the left of them

is a little sliver of land, coming out of the mist.

That's Islay -

and Islay plays an important part in the story of the puffer.

It was a favourite port

for all those seamen who worked in the puffer trade,

because you see, going to Islay meant

they were never very far away from a drop of the hard stuff.

Islay was the puffers island par excellence,

with its distilleries and whatnot.

It was the centre of the puffer kingdom.

I went to a wedding there once - it was three days before we got sober.

Look at that view - isn't it paradise?

I've been coming to this island for years.

I've got lots of friends here. I think it's a magical place.

And its famous for Scotland's greatest export.

Whisky.

Islay is only 16 miles long,

but still has eight working distilleries.

It's a powerhouse of whisky production,

vital to the local and national economy.

The whisky all went out with a puffer, and the coal came in

to fire the boilers and whatever else.

It was one of the mainstays for the puffers.

The whisky made here is famous the world over

and this global trade was once utterly dependent on puffers.

There were shipments, large shipments of whisky going out,

so they would take them from here to Glasgow

and then they would be exported.

Every time I left they were taking out tens of thousands of pounds.

The puffers were like armoured carriers taking money out.

It was liquid gold. It was so, so important.

I have here a wonderful old ledger.

It's the account of the arrivals and sailings

of ships to and from Islay. It's got everything marked.

The Headlight, the Spartan,

you've got the Warlight, the Dorothy, the Petrol.

Page after page of dozens and dozens of entries of the arrivals and departures

of puffers.

I've actually seen three puffers discharging or charging

at Port Ellen harbour, and another three waiting to come in.

It was so busy. Employment-wise, it was just phenomenal.

I was a driver.

We had half a dozen lorries, and all we did, every day,

was empty puffers. Coal, barley, malt.

Barrels. Every day was an adventure.

Whisky and puffers, it was a great match. It was really good

because of the characters involved.

We used to go up to the distillers, we loved that run.

Because we always got a good dram of their local whisky

-while it was getting brewed. The white stuff.

-The white stuff!

Believe me, it was dynamite, it was absolutely potent!

I got this, we all drank it down.

Well, ten minutes later, I didn't know which planet I was on,

oh, dear, oh, dear. It wasn't just ordinary whisky, this was

very, very strong.

It was pure spirits, about 160% proof!

I slept till the next day, because that stuff was just far too strong.

We couldn't go it at all, so we diluted it with about a bottle of sherry and it was quite nice.

And they were pretty handy at opening up a barrel or two, weren't they?

Oh, that's a terrible thing to say, but, yes, they were!

How did you manage to get the whisky from the barrels, Jimmy?

That was a very well-kept secret amongst the puffermen,

but when they were carrying it...

I hope nobody's listening now, but we used to have a wee drill

and we'd shaped pegs of the same type of wood as the barrel.

Drill a wee hole in the barrel, then we used to drain out

maybe a quarter or maybe half a pint, no more.

Wee plug in and bung them, make it all dirty again.

Done that with two or three barrels,

we used to get a bottle each of whisky!

I was sent up to the shop to get lemonade.

The skipper says, "Get a case," so I had this case of lemonade.

"Oh," he says, "Son, do you like lemonade?

"Well, start drinking," he says.

He wasn't wanting the lemonade, he was wanting the bottles.

So they could be filled with... illegal whisky.

But that was illegal. It was good fun.

That was us for Christmas and New Year.

Living in an isolated Scottish island

or an isolated Highland community has its challenges,

but can you imagine what it was like 100-150 years ago?

So what you couldn't get from the land or fish from the sea

had to be brought in from outside, from the mainland,

and the puffers were vital.

Especially if you made produce,

or you were a trader in any way.

The puffers were your connection to the outside world.

The puffer was a lifeline service, absolutely essential to island life.

The bigger vessels couldn't get into places where they've got no harbour as such.

The puffers were the job for that.

Those years were amazing.

Nothing came into the island unless it came by puffer.

Now, a boat, if there's a breeze, the boat doesn't sail.

In those days, they were coming in in horrendous weather.

Horrendous weather, they sailed.

Hard-working guys, you've got to give them their dues.

If you looked at them going up the street towards you,

you'd say, "This is a rough lot, this."

Salt of the earth, they were. They really were.

There were some really nice people.

They had this name for being...

hard drinkers, wild men. They weren't.

They were hard workers. They spent long hours at sea,

on ships with no navigational aids.

Wind and weather never stopped them.

The puffers had a go-anywhere, carry-anything ethos.

They would go to parts of Scotland that other boats couldn't reach,

but they also had one more trick up their sleeve that made them absolutely perfect

for the west coast communities they serviced.

A lot of islands out on the west coast don't have piers,

so you beached on the beach.

The genius of the puffer meant that they could deliberately beach themselves

right in the heart of the communities they served.

Oh, we did a lot of beach work.

Did you? That must have been a tricky operation.

-You really needed to have an exact knowledge of the tides.

-Oh, aye.

Very much so.

The first time you went on the beach, you had a loaded puffer

so you could ram her far up. You really come in at full speed.

-At high tide.

-At high tide.

And sit there, tide would go out, and unload.

The beach work was all tractors and trailers.

In the old days, it was horses and carts.

A farmer would go down with a bogey and a horse.

That was their year's supply of coal.

That was carted away to the farm or wherever it was.

And then you would hear clankety-clankety-clank,

and then when it was just above the trailer,

the big bucket would be tipped and you'd hear this colossal

rumble of coal falling onto the wood of the trailer.

I'll never forget it. Never ever.

And looking back, I thought of these men as heroes,

coming with these wee boats to the islands, doing such good work

maintaining the island economy.

It wasn't the best of jobs, beach work, because you worked at nights,

you had to work tides and you were down in a hole shovelling coal

at all hours of the morning, two and three in the morning.

Things like that. Trying to get a bite of food in-between

and then a sleep, and then you were back up two or three hours later

for the next tide, so I really wasn't impressed too much with the beach work.

Now this seemingly gentle act of beaching had its dangers,

and you needed years of skill and experience to pull it off,

because if you hit something like this, you would be in real trouble.

This lovely little picture is of a puffer called the Roman,

which is beached at Bute, and if you look round the ship,

you see all sorts of little rocks on the beach there, which just shows you

that deliberately beaching, as the puffer skippers had to do,

was a very dangerous occupation.

So how did they manage that time after time without damaging their boat?

The answer lies in this log book.

It's a hand-written beach book from 1933.

It gives you a window into the past.

These books contain all the information you need

to work the west coast's little inlets,

where's best to make shore if you needed to beach and discharge your cargo.

And more importantly, where to avoid if you didn't want to damage your hull.

"Good beach inside first two islands on starboard side.

"Spring tides required."

Let's look at this entry here, it's from Captain McIlwain.

He's describing Loch Feochan.

"Keep your vessels clear, dangerous."

If you think about it,

the information contained in these little books is absolutely vital.

I bet they were like gold dust. They were like Bibles.

In these days, there was no qualification certificates to get.

It was based on local knowledge.

They knew where every rock was and they knew where there wasn't rocks.

They knew where they could shelter,

and each had their own wee favourite place they could go.

The other thing I remember about them

is what marvellous seamen they were. They really were.

They were first-class boat-handlers.

First class.

Very difficult to steer, no hydraulic gear,

just an ordinary chain drive,

but it was extremely hard to steer.

If you were a young skipper, how do I do this and how do I do that?

Experienced men used to tell you.

They were seamen by experience. They started as I started,

as a deckhand, and they learnt the ropes.

That's where the experience would come, learning the ropes.

This intimate knowledge of the waters they sailed

was absolutely crucial, because life on the seas

around Scotland was dangerously unpredictable.

A lot of really frightening times on them.

Especially, you wouldn't want to go out in a gale of wind

but you could easily enough get caught in one

and you had to make the best of it.

There was a load of puffers on what I would term as a half-tide rock.

You know, a half-tide rock

is when the sea is just rolling over the top of it.

And that's what a loaded puffer would resemble.

But, eh, we just went out in all weathers, you know?

It was...a frightening job, you know?

It was sturdy weather all the time.

When the boat was rolling, if you hadn't got your sea legs,

you could quite easily be washed overboard, because water's heavy

and it would just take you off your feet and put you over the side.

It was very, very sturdy boats and they could handle,

as long as the hold was battened down and no water got in,

they were usually quite safe.

The one that I was on before I came onto this, that sank,

going over to Liverpool.

The hatch covers moved and it sunk,

and she capsized. And drowned half the crew.

Really? What was her name?

That was the Druid.

The number of them that sank, that foundered, sprung a leak,

was remarkable.

There was one that was a VIC, like this one.

She was sunk in the Irish Sea, went down with all hands.

It was Hogmanay in 1953.

She left Carnlough at night. She was never seen again.

-Just disappeared?

-Just disappeared.

Somewhere in the Irish Sea, probably.

Stories about sinking, running aground.

The attrition rate on these boats was enormous.

"Lifeboat out to grounded coaster."

"Divers hunt for coaster's crew."

"All five members of the crew lost their lives."

"And when they found the ship, there was no visible signs of damage."

They'd just disappeared.

"If she is undamaged, then she will sail again,"

said a spokesman for the Glenlight Shipping Company.

Aye, the ship may sail again.

But the sailors won't.

We never thought it was dangerous. We just never thought of it.

It was there, we done it and worked away on it.

The puffer and her crews had proven themselves to be brave and resilient

and during Britain's greatest hour of need, this would not go unnoticed.

At the start of World War II, the Admiralty needed a versatile

supply boat to service its fleets and the wider war effort.

And they didn't have to look very far,

because the perfect boat was the puffer.

With its massive cargo capacity,

these hardy little boats very quickly became vital to Britain's war effort.

In the war, they were very, very useful for servicing warships.

We used them to take out water.

We used them to take out food and stores,

anything that the big boats needed.

The Navy had found the boat it needed.

They took the latest Scottish designs

and ordered 100 brand-new puffers.

Only two were built in Scotland, though.

The rest of the ordered VICs were made by English yards.

Each of them were given their own number

and were designated the title Victualling Inshore Craft - the VICs.

They were to be seen wherever you had fleets in need of servicing.

There was another reason the Navy chose the puffer.

The VICs were remarkable for the use of steam propulsion

at a time when diesel engines were taking over

and being installed in all crafts of similar size.

It was quite simple.

Coal, unlike diesel, didn't have to be imported or processed,

freeing up the supplies of diesel for the ships of war.

So, the puffer was pressed into war service.

It was called up, in effect.

And then these puffers came back to Scotland.

By the end of the war, the Admiralty had no more need of the VICs.

So they flooded the market with them

and they were snapped up by many a buyer.

You could buy them for about £2,000.

That was less than half the price of a new-build.

And they were all less than eight years old

so they were pretty damn good bargain.

But, in fact, the purchasing of this new fleet of steam-engined

puffers was what sowed the seed for the demise of the puffer trade.

At that time, they should have been going into diesel

rather than steam, rather than coal.

-Diesel being a much more efficient fuel.

-Absolutely.

Each puffer carried a massive boiler. To feed that boiler,

they carried 12 tonnes of water. They also carried 12 tonnes of coal.

That means that each puffer gave up in space

and dead weight a massive amount.

No match for the economies of diesel.

I originally was a steam engineer.

I served my time as a steam engineer.

But I switched to diesel, earlier on.

Steam puffers were too warm and smelly and dirty.

So, in the early 1960s, these puffers were remodelled,

given diesel engines,

and they changed completely,

compared with the old ones that I knew.

After 100 glorious years, the golden age of the steam puffer

had finally come to an end.

If boats like our old friend the Spartan,

which had been built for the war, were to have any kind of future

they had to convert to diesel.

The capacity needed for storing coal

and suchlike was put to other use, then.

Many extended the hold so that they could carry a wee bit more cargo.

It was very economical, easy to work with.

Despite the late attempts at modernisation,

the tide was turning against the puffer.

Inland improvements to roads and a subsidised rail network

finally put pay to the Forth and Clyde Canal

as an economically viable cargo route.

In January 1963, the waterway that had been

the birthplace of the puffer was closed to all traffic.

The demise of the puffer was slow.

But it was sure.

With no inland trade available,

the puffers now became entirely dependent on work from the islands.

However, the puffer was about to meet a challenge it could not face.

In the late '60s, a strange new craft appeared out of the mist.

The trade was about to be destroyed by a futuristic monster.

The first fleet of Scottish roll-on-roll-off ferries

had now been launched.

It must have been a fairly devastating effect that the

-roll-on-roll-off ferries had on the puffer trade.

-Oh, definitely did.

Especially the whisky, the distilleries.

They went on to articulated lorries carrying over their barley

and taking out the whisky.

You could put almost a puffer's worth inside a big container,

put it on wheels

and tow it on board a ferry.

And the crews on the puffers couldn't run then.

So they started selling puffers and amalgamating companies.

But the lorries killed it, eventually, after that.

They didn't need the puffers any more.

When the roll-on-roll-off ferries came in,

especially in Islay, it must have been a big change.

-Oh, the writing was on the wall.

-Oh, yeah.

Oh, it definitely was.

A lot of folk say it was the best thing that happened to the island

was the roll-on, but not for me, not for a lot of folk.

-The changes must have been brutal.

-It was just brutal.

I mean, as for the company, we had probably seven, eight,

nine lorries.

And that just died away in a year.

Did you sense it was coming to the end of an era?

Yeah, that's the way that we came off.

I left them in the sort of late '60s, early '70s.

I said, "Well, change is on here, you know?"

New roll-on-roll-off ferries would keep on coming.

And they would prove to be a disaster for the puffers.

And, just as the puffers themselves had once killed

the trade in horse-drawn canal traffic

and cargo-carrying sailing scows, their days were numbered.

They were about to become obsolete.

A lot of the roads and a lot of the ferry terminals

and a lot of the boats, even, were built with public subsidy,

and that meant that these little coastal boats,

operating as private business, couldn't compete.

And the competition element then became unfair.

With only a handful of vessels remaining,

the puffers limped on to the early '90s.

But finally a trade which had been part of a costal tradition

for over 140 years sank completely.

Anyway, I joined the puffers.

That was in 1966.

And I was there right up to their demise.

That was it.

There you are.

What a shock to the system that was!

Spending a couple of days on the VIC32

has been a real treat for me.

It's been a joy.

I never thought I would see the day when I would have that opportunity.

It's been lovely, because it's a very tangible boat.

It's there, it's real, it's visceral,

it's sweaty, it's oily, it's noisy, it's mechanical,

it's engineering at its best. For its day.

Um...it's got a personality.

It's got a very, very strong personality,

and a lovely one, at that.

It's been like an adventure.

Currently, the VIC32 is the last of the ocean-going steam puffers

in Scottish waters.

But, very shortly, she might just have an ally on the water with her.

This is Auld Reekie.

She's currently undergoing a major rebuilding and renovation programme

which hopefully means the VIC32 will have a sister ship.

You know, we think of puffers as short, stubby little boats

but when you see them out of the water like this,

you realise the sheer scale of them. They're magnificent.

Like the VIC32, Auld Reekie was built for the Navy

during World War II and then sold back to Scotland.

After her working life, she was used as a training vessel

for youth clubs before narrowly avoiding the scrapyard.

She's now being brought back to life by a dedicated team

at the Crinan boatyard.

This is the refurbished engine of Auld Reekie.

They've done a grand job with it.

Almost like new.

I'd love to see her working, but that won't happen now until next year.

They hope, with a wing and a prayer.

What a wonderful thought,

that another one of these boats could very soon be back on Scottish waters.

You know, those stubby, chunky little ships, for over 100 years,

they would carry anything and go anywhere.

They were a regular sight on this river.

And I am a Glaswegian and I'm deeply,

deeply proud of our great shipbuilding heritage.

We built some of the greatest ships the world has ever seen,

but I bet most of us would say the one that we hold dearest

to our hearts is the little Clyde puffer.

The puffer filled a niche in Scottish life.

But I think it went further than that. It filled a niche in Scottish identity.

And it represented a Scottish solution to a Scottish problem,

and it was built and manned by Scots.

And, you know,

Scotland is the poorer for the passing of the puffer.

And the people who were the puffers.

And that was the story about life on the puffers.

Worked, slept and played hard.

Chased women when we got the chance.

We used to know everybody and everybody knew us.

-So there you are.

-Thank you, Jimmy.

-Thank you.

-Pleasure.

You might get a wee story out of that! Heh-heh!

# I've crossed the broad Atlantic

# I've sailed the China Sea

# I've sighted Honolulu and the far New Hebrides

# But nothing that I've seen or heard

# Can fill me wi' such pride

# As the black smoke fae my puffer as she's chuggin' doon the Clyde!

# Oh, we're no' gaun tae blaw

# And we're no gaun tae craw

# We don't want tae injure your feelings

# But take it fae me

# You'll never, ever see

# Ony braes half sae braw as the Hielans! #

PUFFER'S STEAM WHISTLE