A Clyde Puffer, The Vital Spark.

[railroadbill]

Watched the 2 episodes available, interesting about the restoration.  Found their web site

https://vic27.co.uk/

 

which shows current status,  puffer has been afloat after all the hull repairs and they think they will do steam tests this spring.  So doing well.

[KeithMacdonald]

On 31/01/2020 at 15:27, The Johnster said:

Or you could have a go at the infamous ‘Snowflake’; see KNP’s ‘Little Muddle’ thread on ‘Layout Topics’...

 Thanks for that. While I was searching for Puffers that served in Devon and Cornwall, I also found this: https://johnhmoore.co.uk/hele/coal_boats.htm 

On the coal boats in Hele Bay and Ilfracombe. Which largely features the exploits of Captain James Irwin, bouncing the Snowflake off rocks and piers in a manner worthy of Para Handy or Sub Lt Phillips! 

e.g.

Quote

"Never was a more tubby, grubby, quaint and comic little ship. She is about 60' long, slab-sided, with bow and stern, alike rounded, sitting down well aft. A tall mast, an enormous smokestack, a pile of superstructure, which after all is only meant to house the master at the wheel, and you have the Snowflake. Before 1914 she was 'The Strawberry boat', when every summer she used to run hard quick passages to Swansea to carry vast quantities of the world's most delicious berries to the market....A famous trio of brothers, the Irwin's, owned and sailed the Snowflake

...

Says Cap't Irwin at sea one day 'I know every rock in the Bristol channel'; and then, as the Snowflake struck and bounced off -'That's one of them'" (Boyle & Payne 1952 p 215-6)

 

.. and lots more on this vessel's very eventful life. Hope folks enjoy that.

 

In case it's not already been mentioned(?), all known Puffers and VICs are on this website: https://puffersandvics.org/index.htm

Created by Alasdair MacKenzie, who is grateful for any extra info.

[The Johnster]

Thank you for this fascinating link, Kieth.  I heard of 'Snowflake' from my father, a Cardiff pilot apprentice in the late 20s and early 30s, who was familiar with her (everybody involved in shipping in the Bristol Channel was) and found some amusement in her name; she would be filthy having taken coal on at Penarth or the old West Dock in Cardiff until she'd got down channel a bit and either swept by waves or hosed down.  She had a reputation for getting into trouble and having to be towed out of it; describing the Irwins as shipowners should not give the impression that they were Onassis, and she was run on a shoestring.  That she survived at all in the rough environment of the Bristol Channel is a testament not only to her captain's seamanship (he knew every sandbank as well as every rock, personally) and ship handling, but the toughness of her construction.  

 

I had no idea that she had a life after her Ilfracombe years, and the possibility that something remains of her yet in the Balkans is intriguing, but I have to say sadly unlikely.  Then again, quite a lot about her was unlikely...

 

I particularly like the Lydney story!  She seems in general to have been on a par with Neal and West's trawlers; these were a Cardiff firm operating out of West Dock with a fleet named after islands in the very far north.  Like 'Snowflake', they were small and ancient, but would undertake incredible adventures up beyond the North Cape into the White Sea and the Arctic; I remember them from my childhood and wouldn't have thought they were capable of going around Roath Park Lake.  One of them accidentally netted a seal in the Irish Sea.  It was of course chucked back but promptly got itself netted again and installed itself on board as a pet, seeming to like human company.  This was in 1912 and Cardiff's Victoria Park had just opened, and when the trawler got home it was put into the park's ornamental lake (Roath Park was unfenced and thought unsuitable). 

 

Billy the Seal went on to become a Cardiff legend, doing tricks for fish rewards.  When Canton was flooded in the 20s it escaped and got on board a tram to everyone's amusement; it is not recorded whether it bought a ticket.  It's tameness suggests that it might have been a circus or zoo escapee in the first place.  When it died in 1938, it was found to everyone's surprise be a female (Wilhemina?); the skeleton is preserved in the National Museum of Wales and a statue erected in Victoria Park to commemorate her.  The lake was emptied and used to dump bombing rubble during the war and only a paddling pool remains now, but the outline is preserved in brick.

[KeithMacdonald]

I've found The Maggie

 

The Maggie (Ealing) *Digitally Restored [DVD] [2015]

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Maggie-Ealing-Digitally-Restored-DVD/dp/B00U3PW56E/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=ealing+comedy+maggie&qid=1584283722&s=dvd&sr=1-1

£7.99

 

Also in an Ealing Studios collection which includes Whisky Galore.

 

Ealing Studios DVD Collection - Champagne Charlie/The Maggie/It Always Rains On Sunday/Whisky Galore

 

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Ealing-Studios-DVD-Collection-Champagne/dp/B0002W12VW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Ealing+Studios+DVD+Collection+-+Champagne+Charlie%2FThe+Maggie%2FIt+Always+Rains+On+Sunday%2FWhisky+Galore&qid=1584283796&s=dvd&sr=1-1

 

Used set for c.£6

[finelines]

There was a fatal disaster in the mouth of the Ribble in the 1960 when the Druid capsized trying to enter the estuary. I saw the rescue helicopters land on Lytham green. Preston Corporation refloated  or bought the puffer and refitted it to be the pilot barge off Lytham, where it stayed until Preston Dock. I seem to remember reading that an experienced Puffer Sailor said it was a voyage a puffer shouldn’t have taken. Something about getting across the bar. 
 

Roger

Edited March 15, 2020 by finelines

[The Johnster]

Bars, sandbanks at the entrance to estuaries, are very dangerous places.  They shift unpredictably and a spot where you had plenty of water beneath your keel might be the same at which you run aground a few days later.  The shallow water increases the speed of currents, and makes waves bigger, and while you might be able to get off your ship, you are cut off from land and on a sand bar that will disappear at high tide.  Puffers are designed to ‘take the hard’, run aground, but not in these sorts of conditions! 

They are particularly lethal to sailing ships in calm weather.  With no wind to enable her to sail out of trouble, if the strong current makes her drag her anchor she is doomed.