The Clyde puffer is a type of small coal-fired and single-masted cargo ship, built mainly on the Forth and Clyde Canal, which provided a vital supply link around the west coast and Hebrides of Scotland.
Built between 1856 and 1939, these stumpy little steamboats achieved an almost mythical status thanks largely to the short stories Neil Munro wrote about the Vital Spark and her captain Para Handy, which produced three television series.
Clyde puffers characteristically had bluff bows, crew's quarters with table and cooking stove in the focsle, and a single mast with derrick in front of the large hold. The funnel and ship's wheel stood aft above the engine room, followed by a small captain's cabin in the stern. When publication of the Vital Spark stories began in 1905 the ship's wheel was still in the open, but later a wheelhouse was added aft of the funnel giving the puffers their distinctive image. Their flat bottom allowed them to beach and unload at low tide, essential to supply remote settlements without suitable piers. Typical cargoes could include coal and furniture, with farm produce and gravel sometimes being brought back.
The puffers developed from the gabbart, small single masted sailing barges, which took most of the coasting trade. The original puffer was the Thomas, an iron canal boat of 1856, less than 66 ft (20 m) long to fit in the Forth and Clyde Canal locks, powered by a simple steam engine without a condenser, since as it drew fresh water from the canal there was no need to economise on water use. Once steam had been used by the engine, it was simply exhausted up the funnel in a series of puffs as the piston stroked. As well as the visual sight of a series of steam puffs following the boat, the simple engines made a characteristic puffing sound. By the 1870s similar boats were being adapted for use beyond the canal and fitted with condensers so that they no longer puffed, but the name stuck. Some non-condensing puffers (included those with compound engines) were built until the 1920s when purely canal traffic decreased and the vast majority of coasters had to operate in sea water. A derrick was added to the single mast to lift cargo.
From this basic type of puffer three varieties developed: inside boats continued in use on the Forth and Clyde canal, while shorehead boats extended their range eastwards into the Firth of Forth and westwards as far as the Isle of Bute and from there up the length of Loch Fyne, their length kept at 66 ft (20 m) to use the canal locks. Both these types had a crew of three. Puffers of a third type, the outside boats, were built for the rougher sea routes to the Hebrides islands with a crew of four and the length increased to 88 ft (27 m) still allowing use of the larger locks on the Crinan Canal, which cuts across the Kintyre peninsula. There were more than 20 builders in Scotland, mainly on the Forth and Clyde canal at Kirkintilloch and Maryhill, Glasgow.
During World War I these handy little ships showed their worth in servicing warships, and were used at Scapa Flow, and for World War II the Admiralty placed an order in 1939 for steamships on the same design, mostly built in England, with the class name of VIC, standing for "Victualling Inshore Craft". After the war a number of VICs came into the coasting trade.
The Innisgara was fitted with an internal combustion engine in 1912, and while puffers generally were steam-powered, after World War II new ships began to be diesel engined, and a number of VICs were converted to diesel. The coasting trade serving the islands was kept up by the Glenlight Shipping Company of Greenock until in 1993 the government withdrew subsidies and, unable to compete with road transport using subsidised ferries, the service ended.
The short stories that Neil Munro first published in the Glasgow Evening News in 1905 appeared in the newspaper for over twenty years and achieved widespread fame, with collections issued in book form since 1931 still in print today. With the continuing popularity of these tales, the puffers became film stars in The Maggie, and Para Handy with his Vital Spark was the subject of three popular BBC television series dating from 1959 to 1995.
A small number of puffers survive as conservation projects, though most have diesel engines.
VIC 32 [1] is one of the last few surviving coal-fired steam-powered puffers and is based at The Change House, Crinan. She was built by Dunston's of Thorne, Yorkshire in November 1943 – a busy time for the Clyde Ship building yards. As the wartime Admiralty needed 50, (later 100) victualling boats in a hurry, they were built in groups of three by various yards in England. No new designs were needed as the perfect boat existed in a Clyde Puffer.
Steam sailings on VIC 32 have been available to the public from 1979, latterly as cruises on the Caledonian Canal. From 2004 she underwent extensive refitting at Corpach Boatyard at the west end of the canal near Fort William, funded by donations and lottery funds. After fitting of a new boiler by Pridham's Engineering and Corpach Boatbuilders, [2] she steamed down from Fort William to Crinan, from where cruises on the Caledonian Canal have now re-commenced. [3]
VIC 56 was built by Pollock, of Faversham in 1945. She is preserved in working order at Chatham Historic Dockyard, regularly steaming in the Thames and Medway estuaries. [4]
VIC 96 was built by Dunstons of Thorne, South Yorkshire in 1945, and after disposal, was restored at Maryport. The restoration was completed in 2009, retaining its steam engine, boiler and winch. [5] On 8 August 2009, VIC 96 arrived at her new home, Chatham No. 1 Basin, after an epic 1,000 miles voyage from Elizabeth Dock, Maryport, which took five weeks.
VIC 27 was built at Rowhedge Ironworks. She was renamed Auld Reekie, and starred as the Vital Spark in the third BBC TV Para Handy series where she was berthed at Crinan Basin for 14 years, deteriorating. She was purchased (Oct 2006) by the owner of the Inveraray Maritime Museum who carried out some work on her. She has since been resold to a new owner who has already started on her major restoration work. As she is the oldest surviving steam-powered puffer in existence she must be restored and preserved as part of Scotland's heritage afloat.
VIC 72, renamed Eilean Eisdeal, continued in operation as the last of the true working "puffers" into the mid 1990s. In 2006 she was again renamed as Vital Spark of Glasgow after the Inveraray writer Neil Munro's Para Handy stories. She is now accessible to the public, alongside the Arctic Penguin at the Inveraray Maritime Museum, and continues to make sailings.
The Spartan, another diesel-engined "puffer", is on display at the Scottish Maritime Museum at Irvine. Spartan has recently undergone restoration work on her hull, and is still being refitted. The museum also features the diesel-powered motor coaster MV Kyles at Irvine (an early Clyde built coaster, not a puffer).
The Pibroch, built at Bowling, West Dunbartonshire in 1957 as a diesel-engined boat for the Scottish Malt Distillers Ltd, had been lying at Letterfrack, County Galway, Ireland, in desperate need of restoration, since 2002. The Pibroch deteriorated further as time passed, and her bulkheads began to give way. In 2010 she was sold and was subsequently scrapped. A sister-ship, the Julia T., Lies in 30 m of water in Killary Bay some 300 yards off Lettergesh.
There have also been reproduction puffers built to a smaller size, most recently the MV Mary Hill for tourist traffic on the Forth and Clyde canal.
The Forth and Clyde Canal is a canal opened in 1790, crossing central Scotland; it provided a route for the seagoing vessels of the day between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde at the narrowest part of the Scottish Lowlands. This allowed navigation from Edinburgh on the east coast to the port of Glasgow on the west coast. The canal is 35 miles (56 km) long and it runs from the River Carron at Grangemouth to the River Clyde at Bowling, and had an important basin at Port Dundas in Glasgow.
A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. Steamboats sometimes use the prefix designation SS, S.S. or S/S or PS ; however, these designations are most often used for steamships.
A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine driving paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, whereby the first uses were wheelers driven by animals or humans.
The Crinan Canal is a nine miles (14 km) long navigable canal in Argyll and Bute, west of Scotland. It opened in 1801 and connects the village of Ardrishaig on Loch Gilp with Crinan on the Sound of Jura, providing a navigable route between the Firth of Clyde and the Inner Hebrides, without the need for a long diversion around the Kintyre Peninsula, and in particular the exposed Mull of Kintyre.
Charlotte Dundas is regarded as the world's second successful steamboat, the first towing steamboat and the boat that demonstrated the practicality of steam power for ships.
The PSComet was built in 1812 for Henry Bell, a Scottish engineer who with his wife had become proprietor of the Baths Hotel offering sea bathing in Helensburgh. On 15 August 1812, Bell's ship began a passenger service on the River Clyde, connecting Helensburgh to Greenock and Glasgow. This was the first commercially successful steamboat service in Europe. Bell obtained the engine from John Robertson of Glasgow, and the ship was built for him by John and Charles Wood of Port Glasgow.
TS Queen Mary is a Clyde steamer launched in 1933 at the William Denny shipyard, Dumbarton, for Williamson-Buchanan Steamers. She is currently being restored as a museum ship, in Glasgow.
The 'Maggie' is a 1954 British comedy film produced by Ealing Studios. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick and written by William Rose, it is a story of a clash of cultures between a hard-driving American businessman and a wily Scottish Clyde puffer captain.
The Vital Spark is a fictional Clyde puffer, created by Scottish writer Neil Munro. As its captain, the redoubtable Para Handy, often says: "the smertest boat in the coastin' tred".
Para Handy is a character created by the journalist and writer Neil Munro in a series of stories published in the Glasgow Evening News between 1905 and 1923 under the pen name of Hugh Foulis. He is the crafty Gaelic skipper of the Vital Spark, a Clyde puffer (steamboat) of the sort that delivered goods from Glasgow to Loch Fyne, the Hebrides, and the coast of Argyllshire and Inverness-shire in the early 20th century.
Crinan is a small village located on the west coast of Scotland in the region known as Knapdale, which is part of Argyll and Bute. Before the Crinan Canal was built, Crinan was named Port Righ which meant the king's port. The canal was named from the small settlement of Crinan Ferry on the edge of Loch Crinan where a small ferry landed. The name Crinan probably derives from the Creones tribe who lived in the area in 140 AD. The canal starts at Ardrishaig sea loch on Loch Gilp, and ends nine miles away at Crinan sea loch on the Sound of Jura. The canal was designed to provide a short cut between the west coast and islands at one end and the Clyde estuary at the other, and so avoid the long voyage around the south end of the Kintyre Peninsula.
Bowling is a village in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland, with a population of 740 (2015).
Neil Munro was a Scottish journalist, newspaper editor, author and literary critic. He was basically a serious writer, but is now mainly known for his humorous short stories, originally written under the pen name Hugh Foulis. The best known of these stories are about the fictional Clyde puffer the Vital Spark and her captain Para Handy, but they also include stories about the waiter and kirk beadle Erchie MacPherson and the travelling drapery salesman Jimmy Swan. They were originally published in the Glasgow Evening News, but collections were published as books. A key figure in Scottish literary circles, Munro was a friend of the writers J. M. Barrie, John Buchan, Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham and Joseph Conrad, and the artists Edward A. Hornel, George Houston, Pittendrigh MacGillivray and Robert Macaulay Stevenson. He was an early promoter of the works of both Conrad and Rudyard Kipling.
The Tales of Para Handy is a Scottish television series set in the western isles of Scotland in the 1930s, based on the Para Handy books by Neil Munro. It starred Gregor Fisher as Captain Peter "Para Handy" MacFarlane, Sean Scanlan as first mate Dougie Cameron, Rikki Fulton as engineer Dan Macphail and Andrew Fairlie as Sunny Jim. These four made up the crew of the puffer Vital Spark which was employed by the Campbell Shipping Company, headquartered in Glasgow and run by Andrew Campbell, Para Handy's brother-in-law and owner of the Vital Spark.
Henry Bell was a Scottish engineer who helped to pioneer the development of the steamship. He is mostly widely known for introducing the first successful passenger steamboat service in Europe in 1812.
The Pibroch was a Clyde puffer that was built in Glasgow during 1957. It was one of the last of that type of vessel to survive. Built at Bowling, Scotland in 1957 as a diesel-engined boat for the Scottish Malt Distillers, she had been lying at Letterfrack, County Galway, Ireland, in desperate need of restoration, since 2002. The Pibroch deteriorated further as time passed, and her bulkheads began to give way. In 2010 she was sold and was subsequently scrapped. A sister-ship, the Julia T., Lies in 30 m of water in Killary Bay some 300 yards off Lettergesh.
Fort Matilda is an area of the town of Greenock in Inverclyde, Scotland. Its name comes from a coastal battery built on Whiteforeland Point 1814–1819 to defend the River Clyde.
The Victualling Inshore Craft, or VIC, was a type of auxiliary vessel built for the Royal Navy during the Second World War. The VIC was modelled on the Clyde puffer, and over 100 were built during the conflict.
The Britannia of 1815 was a wood-hulled British paddle steamer built at Port Glasgow for services on the Firth of Clyde. Later she ran between Glasgow and Derry. Britannia was wrecked at Donaghadee on 12 October 1829.
Basuto is a Clyde puffer built in 1902 by William Jacks & Co. in Port Dundas in Scotland for its own use on the Forth and Clyde Canal.