Sailing on the Clyde

I was working in Dumbarton around 1902 and decided to buy a nice cutter rigged sailing yacht. It was moored on the Firth of Forth and I had it delivered to Dumbarton by way of the Forth and Clyde Canal. It was about thirty-five feet long and was built of teak. It had a nice cabin that could

sleep four with a squeeze. I joined the DumbartonYacht Club which had about a dozen members and about eight sailing yachts. It was a very daft hobby as the cost of the yacht and its upkeep took all of my savings. My mother was dead set against the project. However, it was good experience and I learned how to handle a sailing craft. I had many pleasant trips out of the Leven, along the Clyde to Greenock, Helensburgh and the Gare Loch. On holidays there were longer cruises to Loch Long, the Kyles of Bute and Loch Fyne to Inveraray. The last and longest journey was to Campbeltown in Kintyre. There were a few mishaps and I often wonder how I escaped drowning as I was not a mariner.

Once, when sailing up the Clyde from Helensburgh with two of the draughtsmen from Paul & Co.’s office the wind failed us and the tide was running out. We needed to keep to the edge of the channel because the ships from the upper reaches were running out. It was dark, about midnight, when we were off Cardross. We could see the lights of the village a mile to port. We had no way on and were standing stationary when we heard the clank of machinery somewhere in the dark. A black mass was seen to be moving out from shallow water on our port beam. We had no lights and they did not see us. We shouted and howled at them and it turned out to be a scow loaded with gravel being pushed out by a launch into the channel. They banged into us amidships heeling the yacht nearly onto her beam ends. There was no great damage done, fortunately, but what a swearing at we got from an old fellow on the scow for not having our lights lit. When we told him we had no lights his language became even more lurid but they eventually moved too far away for us to hear. As we were making no progress we decided to anchor where we were because we were well out of the shipping channel then. We decided to row the last ten miles to Dumbarton in the dingy. We got home at 2:00 AM. Next day after a tiring day at the office the three of us took the dingy out again and rowed to the yacht. She was lying on her beam ends and full of water, the dirty water of the Clyde. We hadn’t noticed that the tide had only half run out when we had left her the night before. So, when the tide had fallen she had settled on her side in the mud. When the tide rose she had flooded half full before floating off. It took us an hour to bail the water out and another two hours to get her sailed into the Leven to her anchorage. It then took more than a week to get cushions, sails, etc. dried off and the mud cleaned out of the corners.

We entered a few yacht races but I never managed to place first always third or fourth. Even third or fourth came in for a small cash prize that couldn’t do more than pay for a little varnish or paint. In October I got the yacht hauled up for the winter in a boatyard on the Leven. I had lots of help at the yacht races. The young fellows from the office were eager to help. Also, a worker at Denny’s Shipyard who was a keen yachtsman gave me a hand and lots of advice. It was he who eventually bought the yacht at the end of the next summer.

My old school companion, Arthur Muirhead, of Bridge of Weir had heard that I had a yacht. So, he invited me down to their camp at the south end of the Island of Bute when my summer holiday started. I sailed the boat down there from Dumbarton single-handed in one day. I anchored in a little bay called Kilchattan Bay where I found numerous tents. There were

about twenty campers; Muirheads, McKies and other friends. I spent the first night sleeping amongst the bracken because the tents were too full and the overflow visitors had to bed down wherever they could. Four of us decided to take a cruise up Loch Fyne. There was Arthur and Roland Muirhead, Jack McKie and myself. We had a four-day sail going up past the Island of Inch Marnock and then along the Ardlamont coast into Loch Fyne. The wind left us as darkness descended. We reached Strachur on the Argyleshire coast and a shower of rain began. We were in the middle of the loch as the lights in the cottages ashore began to go out. We heard voices and the sound of oars approaching. It was a herring fishing fleet coming out from Strachur to their fishing grounds. We got a direction from them to an anchorage off Strachur. Next day we were off Inverary and saw the castle of the Dukes of Argyle. We did not go ashore as we were not much interested in dukes. We did go ashore near the head of the loch to renew our water supply and then sailed south again for the foot of the loch. The loch was at least forty-five miles long.

We camped that night at a little bay near Ardlamont Point. We got our tent up that night. Next day we were interested in exploring the scene of the Ardlamont murder case, a ‘cause celebre’ from a few years back and took some photographs. The next day we got aboard and sailed for Loch Ranza in Arran. This was the birthplace of our Aunt Orr of Kaim. The Kerr family and the McLean family were there and gave us a great welcome. They had summer visitors with them and we had a great time playing parlour games and dancing till the small hours. Not to mention flirting with the highland lassies of Loch Ranza. Next day we visited Loch Ranza Castle with a crowd of the lassies and they all came to the beach to see us off to the yacht. We were just getting sail up and were about to haul in the anchor when a boatload of girls in bathing suits arrived to see us off. They gave us a display of diving and splashing as a sendoff. We heard their giggles and squeals even when we were well out in the bay.  Two hour’s sailing brought us back to the camp at Kilchattan Bay. The Muirheads had to take the steamer for Largs and return to work. I sailed the yacht single-handed back to Gare Loch and anchored there.

It was about this time that I heard of and got interested in the new horseless vehicles that were being built. I saw my first automobile passing through Dumbarton at the fast pace of ten miles per hour. It was a great attraction to everybody in the street. Work stopped and shopkeepers came to their doors to look. The horses all took fright after their first glimpse of the noisy contraption. They needed to be held in with tight reins and much language. This would have been about the year 1903. My lodgings at Dumbarton were at a sharp corner of a block – just west of the bridge over the River Leven. The sitting-room was at the apex of the corner so we had a good view of all the traffic. I shared a bedroom and this sitting room with a young man who worked in a lawyer’s office in Dumbarton. He had a bicycle that he had no further use for. I bought it from him and cycled to Lochwinnoch often on weekends.

One of the daughters of the couple I boarded with got married that summer and the lawyer and I were invited to the wedding. It was a great affair as they had many friends. After the wedding and wedding feast we danced till nearly dawn at a nearby hall. At the wedding dinner I got the job of proposing the toast to the ladies. I must have done fairly well as I got a great clapping when I sat down. Even the minister beamed at me and the young lady I was sitting beside gave me a kiss on the cheek that set off another round of hilarious applause. All together it was pronounced a very successful wedding even though it was entirely tee-total. When I told my mother about having proposed a toast to the ladies at this wedding she laughed and asked me did I know about ladies anyway?

My cycle runs home on the weekends, that is, the weekends I wasn’t away sailing were by way of the Erskine Ferry across the Clyde and then through the villages of Houston and Kilbarchan about twenty-five miles in all and over many hills once past Houston. I tried different routes to find the easiest. One time I came home by Johnstone and Milliken Park. I was just within a half mile of Lochwinnoch, on the station road, when one leg took a severe cramp so suddenly that I was thrown off onto the road at the bridge over the river Calder. A few men were walking several yards away and one came and helped me up. Finding my leg as stiff as a poker he got me to sit on the stone wall of the bridge and massaged it until the circulation returned. He told me to walk the rest of the way to get my leg working right. He evidently knew my name. After I had thanked him for his help he said, “It’s all right. I ken you. My dad worked for your grandfather.”

When I got the yacht hauled up ashore in a boatyard on the River Leven when the yachting season was over and with winter coming on I began to think of changing jobs. I took up a new appointment with the Arrol & Johnstone Motor Car Co. in Paisley.

During my stay in Paisley I got better acquainted with a friend I had made some years before. He was Daniel Wright, a lawyer. I don’t think I have mentioned him before. He stands out in my memory as a real friend and advisor. Although he died many years ago his memory is as vivid as anyone I have known in my long life. I first became acquainted with him when I was a draughtsman in Glasgow. My mother had a large garden and sold a great quantity of gooseberries, raspberries, currants, etc. to shopkeepers in Paisley. The boxes of fruit were collected by a Lochwinnoch to Paisley carrier and disposed by him to shops in Paisley. A Miss Wright who had a grocery near The Paisley Abbey was one of the best customers. Dan lived with his aunt in a house next to the grocer shop and I met him once when I went in with a message from my mother about some fruit that was being sent. Dan was then a lawyer’s clerk in the Paisley County building. When I started the job with Arrol-Johnstone he had started in business for himself at 19 High Street, Paisley. In later years he did well and eventually the firm became Wright & Crawford with a large staff of two dozen clerks. I invited him out to Lochwinnoch occasionally and my mother thought well of him.

Dan was amused when he heard I owned a yacht and he came down to Greenock and Gourock sometimes for a day on the water. We had quite a few nice runs to the Holy Loch and Loch Long. Dan only had enough free time for day sailing. I found that I could keep the yacht very cheaply in the James Watt Dock at Greenock. In the early summer we brought it down the Clyde from Dumbarton and into the James Watt Dock. I went to the Dock Master to see if I could get a berth to tie it up for a week. He asked me what tonnage I had – the charge depended on the tonnage. I told him three tons. “Three tons,” he said, “Our charges are for hundreds of tons.” He looked up his scale of rates and scratched his head. “I can’t get more than two shillings a week from you. All right. Tie it up and I’ll keep an eye on it for you,” he said. So it came to a lot less than I had expected. It seldom stayed in the spot we had left it. It had to be moved to make room for the larger vessels tying up at the dock.

The last trip Dan and I made was a failure. There were four or five aboard. We got the yacht away from the wharf and tied her to a buoy in the middle of the dock until we raised the sails. The weather looked nasty and the buoy was just opposite the wide entrance to the dock. One of the men working on a tug shouted something to us and pointed out to sea. We looked and there was a black cloud careering rapidly across the Firth which is about five miles wide at Greenock. A sudden gale howled down on us and a sea got up that rocked us about like a merry-go-round. We stayed moored to the buoy but half our company was on their knees vomiting into the dock. As I was taking in the jib the tail end flapped my face and my gold spectacles flew from my face and I was then also on my knees. What added to our confusion was the ribald laughter from a few stevedores working in a sheltered corner of the dock unloading a steamer there. After the first few hard blasts were spent we got the yacht into a sheltered corner after a lot of trouble. A very moist crew then got up the steps on the way to the train. I never did hear the last of that from Dan and the others. It was always, “When are you going a sail in the James Watt Dock, Heppy?”, every time I met them.

However, the next time I took the craft out we had a real trip in her. Tom Wishart, the young draughtsman who was engaged to our lady tracer in the office got his holidays at the same time as I and we agreed to spend a week sailing about the Firth. He had no sailing experience so I had a lot to teach him. We took her down to Gourock Bay first and we anchored there among hundreds of yachts. We soon had the necessary groceries and food for a week’s holiday. Raising sail, the next morning we had our first bad luck. In trying to raise the anchor we found it was caught on something. Try as we might we just could not budge it. The crew of a steam yacht were watching us. They shouted to us to bring the cable over to their steam winch to give it a haul. We did so and they hauled on it so well that the chain broke and we had to sail off without our heavy anchor. Luckily we had a light anchor and we hoped this would be sufficient.

We had a beautiful sail down the Firth. First around the Cloch Lighthouse and down to Rothesay in Bute where we spent a night. Next day we had a

leisurely sail through the Kyles of Bute. We anchored off Tighnabruaich for the night. It blew a little from the west that night and the next morning but we were in the shelter of the Argyllshire Hills. We sailed out the next morning as it did not look too bad until we came round Ardlamont Point. There we got the full force of a good westerly. Wishart wanted to turn back but I said it was just a nice wind and we would tack across to Tarbert in Loch Fyne before it got dark. We did that but we were not half way across, in fact only a mile or two beyond Ardlamont, when Wishart got sick and went down and shut himself in the cabin. I was left to manage the boat alone. The waves came over the bow a little and she pitched and tossed until I had to take a reef in the mainsail which was a ticklish job when I had to steer as well. I was too busy dodging the higher waves to have time to get sick. It took five hours to sail across to Tarbert Bay against the strong head wind. It wasn’t until we were edging across the smooth waters of the bay that my one-man crew put his white face out of the cabin. I shouted at him to get the light anchor ready to set. After that it was a nice, quiet evening and Wishart got his appetite back. We had empty inner parts as we had eaten nothing since breakfast and Wishart had lost his. As we sat and filled our void spaces, we watched the herring fleet sailing out for their night of fishing in the loch. We anchored close to the town of Campbeltown and I wasn’t too surprised when Wishart started bundling up his belongings. He said that he had had enough sailing and was heading home on the Campbeltown steamer. I had seen that he was not enjoying himself. Every time the yacht heeled a little from a stronger puff of wind, he grabbed a rope or the nearest woodwork and looked scared. So, he made for a hotel and caught the early steamer in the morning.

I fixed up everything for the night, locked the cabin door and followed him ashore with the intention of looking up the McCulloch family and spending the night with them. Mr. McCulloch was a schoolmaster at the village of Kilkenzie about four miles west of Cambeltown. I had a four mile walk and it was dark by the time I got there. Mrs. McCulloch gave me a fine reception. She had been one of the bridesmaids at my mother’s wedding and we knew the family well. Walter, their son, shared his bed. The next morning, I was lucky enough to get a lift into Campbeltown in the dogcart with Bella Smith who was driving in to town to do some shopping. Bella was the daughter of a nearby farmer and she could handle the reins like a man. She was one of a family of ten. Her mother was a Howie, a descendant of the famous Covenanting family, the Howies of Drumclog. It was on the fields of Drumclog that the Covenanters defeated their merciless enemy, Claverhouse, known in the Lowlands as ‘Bloody Clavers’.

I left Bella at a grocer’s shop in Campbeltown and made for the yacht. When I got there I had a shock. My anchor line had worn through where it passed over the bow and the poor old thing was on the rocks. The light anchor had dragged as well. It was the lack of the heavy anchor and chain that caused this. It took me all day with the help of a man from a boat yard to get the yacht afloat again and I arranged to have her pulled up for the winter at the same boat yard. They took charge of her and I went to a hotel for the night. I took the next morning’s steamer for Greenock and home. It was a bad end for a fine cruise of three hundred miles. It turned out to be the last time I sailed the nice yacht. I sold her to a Dumbarton man the next spring and he went down to Cambeltown and brought her back to the Leven. I got about half of what I paid for her which is the usual way of ending a hobby I suppose.

When I got back to the office from this summer holiday Mr. Wishart was very apologetic for leaving me when he heard what had happened. I passed it off as all in the day’s work and going on the rocks was my fault anyways. The Chief Draughtsman who was related to Wishart had Wishart’s version of our cruise and he seemed to think I had taken his cousin into a lot of needless danger. We had a few words about it with the result that I was in his bad books for a while.