The Canoe Boys

by Alastair Dunnett

  ‘Did you hear that? – the description of yesterday’s race on the wireless. My, I wonder they’ve the cheek to call themselves sailors at all! She’s a good boat, too, that Endeavour, if there was them in her that could sail her. The man on the wireless was saying she was sailing with her lee rail under. What kind of sailing is that? No crew that puts a boat’s rail under will ever win a race against yon Yankees! Man, I could take the engines out of the Marys and put sails on her and beat the Endeavour myself, the way they’re handling her. They’ll never look near the Cup this turn!’

  Another seafaring novelty in the place was a motor-car ferry which had just been built by the joint enterprise of a small local shipyard and the garage where our canoes were lying. It was a craft designed to counter the difficulties involved in carrying tourist cars over to Skye. The design and all the work had been done locally, and whatever the result may have lacked in fineness, she made up for it in fitness for the job. She was built like a flatiron, with the propeller-shaft mounted, like that of a salmon coble, in a concave channel along the keel, so that the screw actually operated at a height considerably above the normal water level. This allowed the ferry, drawing only inches of water, to back right up the shore, drop the entire stern to form a ramp, take three cars aboard, and waddle over the Sound of Sleat to Armadale in Skye, five miles away. Commercial success had blessed this undertaking, and another possible link had been made for a Skye tour. At the time we wrote enthusiastically about this.

  Another transport item to which we gave attention was the state of the road from Fort William to Mallaig, the most celebrated development theme in the whole district. The road was a narrow track for most of its length, and the inability to persuade any authority to have it surfaced and improved had baffled many generations of Mallaig folk. So great was the frustration, so typical of all Highland concerns the lack of authoritative response, so real and brooding the suspicions aroused, that it was freely believed the railway company had a vested interest in keeping the road ruinous to boost their own traffic receipts – an improbable plot, but an inevitable reasoning. We spoke to a Mallaig merchant who had alighted from his car in the darkness on a previous winter’s run, to investigate an engine failure, and had stepped from his running board straight into a water-filled puddle which engulfed him to the actual waist. During that season, it was said, over 60 holiday tourists, completing the run to Mallaig, had railed their cars 40 miles back to Fort William rather than face the return road trip. The surface of the road resembled, in parts, the bed of a river. The naked rock projected through ruts and loose gravel, and drove vehicles asunder. The upkeep of cars and vans in Mallaig was probably higher than in any other British community.

  Although good rarely results, the people of Mallaig have a well-rehearsed system of making their transport and other problems known to anyone in a position to influence a change. No Member of Parliament, no government official, certainly no minister, moves in the area, on whatever innocent business, but the fiery cross goes round, and a deputation is in waiting to escort him to some local room and lay an insistent petition. One day during our stay it was learned that the MP for the county was on his way via Mallaig to Skye on a holiday visit. The smooth machinery went into action; delegates gathered, some of them from a distance; and (an opportunist move) I was co-opted on to this body of vigilantes.

  We lay in waiting in an hotel lounge while scouts were out on the business of interception. Presently the victim was led in, as he had undoubtedly been on a score of former occasions, and on the same theme. This time he proved a receptive hearer, for he had broken an axle of his own car somewhere down the road, and had carried on with borrowed transport. How familiar he was with the plea! He knew it word for word: and the incident made a good story for us, receiving such a wide press distribution, and on so lavish a scale, that, had Mallaig been a burgh, we should have undoubtedly been offered the freedom. Nothing, of course, came of this until the Deluge of War. And then this part of the world developed a sudden strategic importance, and a splendid road is the legacy. This is probably why the Highlander says, with more feeling than any other citizen: ‘It takes a war …’

  One day we repaired the broken cable and floated the canoes in the harbour for any who wanted to sail. At once we had a great waiting list, and had to organise the movement. We took a stance at the stone steps under an arch in the pier wall, and standing there all the afternoon, until in the rising tide we were over our knees in water, we launched away citizens and Buchan fishermen, housewives and shopkeepers, and a ration of schoolboys and girls, until at least 40 or 50 people had been in each canoe. It was a chilling but pleasant ploy, and we did not stop until everybody who wanted had been out. One or two hardy lads, against orders, went out into the heavy weather beyond the harbour and did quite well. But this was condemned as antisocial by those who still waited.

  Among those who sailed were the entire crew of the Gardenstown (Banffshire) drifter Golden Emblem. They were over from the east coast for the herring fishing, and were doing no better than any of the others. By mid-morning of the next day we were off with them down towards the Sound of Rum on the way to the Coll Banks, there to cast our drift nets for the night.

  The Golden Emblem leaves Mallaig: Sandy Watt, the skipper, is the left-hand figure of the three dark-jerseyed men on the right. In front, hands in pockets, is the 15-year-old cook and cabin-boy.

  Drift-fishing for herring, a process familiar to us from many trips with Buchan boats, has often been described. The nets are cast late at night until they string out from the bow of the boat a mile in length, floating upright like a net fence just below the surface of the water. In this position the way is taken off the ship, engines stopped, and she drifts for some hours, during which time it is hoped the rising herring are being trapped. They simply have their gills wedged in the inch mesh, and are suffocated. It takes three or four hours to pull the nets in again, whether there is a catch or not. In the normal season this goes on every weekday; out on Monday morning, fish overnight, back and land about dawn, out again, and so on until Saturday.

  The Golden Emblem was one of the biggest steam-drifters in the fleet; a well-found ship, compared with some of the others. Sandy Watt was her skipper, and he and his younger twin brothers, in the crew, were her chief owners. The ownership was on a share basis by which all profited or lost according to the luck. The ship’s company was nine, including the cook, a lad of 15 who had never been away from home before, and who was sailing – and cooking – without a break during that first four-month season away with the men. Also in the ship, as well as our two selves, was the Watts’ father, retired from the sea and harbourmaster of their small native port of Gardenstown.

  He was sailing on this trip by way of making a holiday at sea. During the four days Seumas and I were aboard he taught us to mend nets – a graceful art which we were not able to carry beyond the novice stage. First he hung up an old net and slashed his knife downwards through the mesh straight, giving us the task of stringing the sundered parts together by simple stitches with the wooden needle. Then he would slash the net diagonally across, so that our repair had to create stitches running two ways and crossing at right angles. Finally, and hardest, he would cut out a whole section, leaving us to build in a completely new section of net with the needle alone, working inwards from the torn fringes. One needs the fisherman’s patience and fortitude for these, and for all the fisherman’s tasks.

  At this time the herring fishing was a depressed industry. Few boats were making catches; and on those which did there fell the curse reserved in all spheres for the primary producer – poverty prices. The herring, king of fish, has not only ruined crews, and ports, since the start of netting, but, in his aristocratic and capricious wanderings about the seas, has brought down kingdoms. None knows where he comes from, and when he will emerge. It could be that the soundest harvesting and marketing schemes, well financed, adequately safeguarded, with all the equipment and gear necessary to take
the prize, and to handle and process and sell and cook it, could tumble – because the herring might simply vanish for an age, as he has done before.

  In these years of the middle 30s, successive herring seasons had failed. Most of the share-owning fishermen were in debt – ‘astern’ is their grim description of that condition. Their houses, villas built of granite along the Moray Firth, out of the earnings of forgotten boom years, were mortgaged for bank advances, and fresh debts were being incurred weekly in the Mallaig waters. Crews saved on their own food to buy coal for the drifter engines. Building of boats had stopped; even repairs could not be afforded, and some of the boats, built in the first years of the century, were past repair.

  I got an incredible tale of decrepitude when, some months later, I went travelling on behalf of a newspaper round the little herring ports of Buchan. There was no cash about; and although the fee was no more than five pounds for the slipping and dry-docking of a boat to examine her hull, few of the boats had been up on the slip in recent times. In one case, after many trips, a boat was docked, and raised, and the men who examined her stood looking at the sight with the sweat running from them cold. Below the boilers of these small ships a flat bed of cement is spread to protect the hull plates from the heat. In this craft the plates below the boiler had long since rusted away, and, for no one knew how long, she had been sailing on her cement patch! Other problems of the herring fisher arise from his temperament, the long patient product of his way of life. I have never lived with men more admirable, nor less organised. Like the crofters, they have the perfect neighbourly sense of community, but no instinct whatever for social organisation. They were men, as we have seen them, who after shooting their nets and fighting to draw them again all through a night, getting not a fish; and, heading for home and another trip towards ruination, would stand round on the deck with uplifted caps, upon the belly of the heaving sea, while the skipper offered up a prayer of thanks to God for His goodness and mercy. He must be a jealous God indeed if He does not take pride in the tribute of such splendid sons.

  And yet this simplicity made them a prey to the ordinary processes of commerce. In the fish business some of these processes are very ordinary. The fishers had to land their catches, sell quickly, and get away again. They had no bargaining margin, even of time. In glut periods, when there was no sale for the sorely-won catches, they were taken back to sea and thrown away, and the nets put out for more. In a primitive society it is enough to catch fish. The modern fisher had not only to catch but to sell; and if that failed, there was no method by which he could even give them away to the hungry.

  During our season there was operating a minimum guaranteed price of ten shillings per cran (of about 1200 fish), or ten herrings for a penny. It was an arrangement which appeared to the fishers to realise an impossible dream of security.

  And it would have been thought that, if such a pitiful price could pay the fishermen, no other dealer could well lose money at the terms. A hitch occurred at once. While there was a guaranteed price, there was no guaranteed sale. And the buyers could readily say ‘No!’ and condemn more and more of the bounty to be dumped back into the sea.

  Other bafflements were also possible. It often happened that a skipper, on coming to port, would be told: ‘I can only give you the minimum.’ ‘I’ll take that,’ the skipper would say, gladly enough, and put his fish ashore. Then, ‘How many crans have you?’ would be the question. ‘Eighty.’ ‘Ah, weel, I’m only wanting forty!’ It was a dilemma with only one practicable solution. Rather than gather up the unwanted 40 crans, and take them back to sea for dumping, the skipper would leave them with the others; and the buyer, paying ten shillings per cran for 40 crans, would get the whole catch of 80 for five shillings per cran.

  The post-war control schemes and high minimum prices, with graded scales according to the process of food or manufacture intended; the loans for boats and gear; the setting up of more canning and freezing plants; have all brought a high security level to the fisher and his community. But these steps were created by the needs of special times, and the needs will change. In the meantime great markets have been lost, and new ones must be found, not all of them at our own doors. Adjustments must still be made. The present reluctance of some of the fishers to take part in schemes shows the need of an endless good will to mend a long-depressed industry. And behind all these manmade buttresses is the lurking hazard of the herring himself, and the decision he will make, to stay at our shore or to depart.

  Whatever commercial or social talents the fishers themselves may lack are more than made up for by their superb seamanlike skill. If there are fish to be caught, they will catch them, and they will sail anywhere to do it. It was in the Kaiser’s war that these qualities were brought out into the light. The fishers were an active unit of His Majesty’s fleet, and became so because such a high proportion of them had the seaman’s instinct for doing the right thing. Between the wars there were drifter skippers and crews sailing our coasts who knew the Adriatic as well as they knew the Moray Firth, having seen Great War service there. Even the Royal Navy had taken them into its service and yet allowed them to do things their own way.

  The greatest tribute I ever heard paid to the seamanship of the navy was spoken by a drifter skipper who did not realise, as he told it, how much his high tribute was, in the by-going, a commendation of himself. He told me: ‘They’re grand navigators in the Navy’, and went on to illustrate this judgment by describing how, in the winter of 1914, he had been told to rendezvous with a destroyer at a certain point in the North Sea. They gave him the bearings, and, in thick fog, he set off from Wick harbour. I can imagine how he would lean out of his wheelhouse, hour after hour, peering into the fog, recognising his road almost by the kent wave-tops. At last, arrived at the spot precisely at the hour and minute arranged, he sounded his siren – and the unseen destroyer sounded alongside him. ‘Aye, they’re grand navigators in the Navy!’ he concluded generously. What he had regarded as normal to himself and his puny craft, he was inclined to think superb professional skill on the part of the destroyer, with her formidable traditions, and braided officers, and their studies and instruments and plottings and well-equipped chartroom.

  With men and a ship like these we cast off from Mallaig pier and steamed for the north of Coll. There was the best part of a half south-wester in our teeth, and it was growing. Normally they would not have gone out, but this was already Wednesday; they had been weatherbound since the weekend, and must try for a catch. The Sound of Rum was a fearsome passage, with Loch Scresort an inviting shelter, and our late Eigg landing-stage at Thuilm now in the lee and showing no breakers.

  We brought them no luck. As we cleared the south of Rum and stood across for the Bank, the sky darkened with the whole savagery of a gale, we had to turn and run for it, without casting a net. It was a typical courtesy on the part of the skipper (without a thought for the convenience of themselves) that he turned and ran, not for Mallaig, but for Canna, because we had never been to Canna.

  Another courtesy, on the part of a young crew member at the wheel, while the skipper was below, brought the ship into a moment of danger. The drifter was taking solid water aboard, and I was leaning out of a wheelhouse window, watching for a chance to photograph the decks awash. The helmsman, bent on providing the best available camera material, suddenly, on the approach of an enormous sea, threw her head off. We got the wave below the belt instead of on the shoulder, and rolled on to our beam, until half the deck was under the surface of the water and even the top of the weather rail went out of sight as she staggered back. I lost the deck entirely as it tilted away from me, and got an indifferent picture while hanging in the air by my elbows from the window-ledge. Sandy Watt came splashing up from below and took the wheel in a thunderous silence.

  Presently we were skirting into the beautiful bay of Canna harbour. Here we lay at anchor for the characteristic three days of a south-westerly gale, which drove endlessly past the harbour entrance in
a black violent curtain, and even in the shelter where we lay stirred us round and round on our cable in a ceaseless fret.

  Canna, like Muck, is clean, fertile, smooth, so that one feels a plough could be driven over every inch of the soil. Crofting and lobster-fishing are the mainstays of the few dozen inhabitants. It has no peaks, like Rum and Eigg, the near neighbours. It is two isles – Sanday, a satellite, and Canna, the mainland. The two enclose the harbour, and approach each other so closely at the inland point that a footbridge connects them – an Atlantic bridge. This little group is the limit of the parish shepherded by the minister and the priest from Eigg. The Roman Catholic chapel is on Sanday; the Church of Scotland on Canna itself. This is a recent building, with a round tower on the ancient pattern serving as a belfry. The door lies constantly unlocked, and the passer-by can drop a coin in the open and teeming collection plate, or even try the harmonium – a harmless musical tribute which I like to permit myself in remote kirks. Sometimes, at Canna, spread out on the green before the church, are to be seen a number of separate jet-black cairns. These are the heaps of coal for the tenants, dumped ashore from the cargo puffer and awaiting carting or ferrying home.

  Seumas and I were able to examine the island on this opportune visit. The Golden Emblem men launched off their lifeboat for us. We paid visits to a pair of puffers, and to another drifter, stormbound in the bay like ourselves and glad of a diversion. On a courtesy visit to the laird’s house we carried back heavy welcome sacks of potatoes and fresh vegetables, and great broths followed. A launch came alongside one night, with two lobster men, who asked: ‘Is it right that you have the Canoe Boys aboard?’ We were produced, and to each of us was handed an immense black and agile lobster, with clashing claws, which we received bashfully, and bowed in acknowledgment as the boat backed away from us, leaving us with the armoured bouquets. One of them was the largest lobster any of us had ever seen. They made a superior supper that night, each man with a bolt from the engineer’s toolbox set by his plate to crack the shells, and the coal-hammer handy by way of heavy artillery.