Had our ideas remained unchanged from the spring of 1945, the factory would have been virtually finished by October. But the extra products which we now intended to market meant additions to the factory which were not, in fact, completed for another year.
Before Christmas I was fortunate enough to sell the Dove (which on a transport journey to Soay had narrowly escaped total wreckage when one of her engines perished noisily with a connecting-rod through the crank-case) to a man who had stepped straight from a Wild West film. He was the typical Hollywood “Western” character, with the whole background actually and factually behind him—gold rush, South American revolution, acting as buying agent for a combine who aimed at starting an arctic fishing fleet, and who needed temporary stock pending the building of their new boats. He oozed goodwill and astronomical figures. I pocketed his cheque, and said good-bye without sentiment to the Dove, thankful that she had found no resting-place with me.
She got no further than Loch Fyne, via the Crinan Canal, and in the spring was still lying in Ardrishaig with engine trouble. Later in the year I was told that she had struck a mine and sunk off Kintyre.
In November I had a meeting with the gunmaker, and drew up a constructional programme with him for delivery by March 1. The programme included harpoons made this time specifically and undeviatingly to my own drawings, both for the Oerlikon gun and for a muzzle-loading whaling gun which I had bought and which was later to become our standard equipment. He had little doubt that he would be able to carry out the work to time. This relieved my mind of all major problems except the boats.
It was clear, after much discussion and detailed comparison, that the main catching craft should be an H.D.M.L. (Harbour Defence Motor Launch). These craft are in appearance much the same as the more familiar M.L.’s and M.T.B.’s, but have a round bilge construction and a three-hundred horse-power Diesel engine in place of the standard three thousand horse-power petrol engines driving the “hard-chine,” or “stepped” hulls of the faster craft. We required the low flared foredeck common to both types, and the running costs of the H.D.M.L. were comparatively low. The main obstacle to acquiring an H.D.M.L. in the available time was that the craft were to be offered by auction by Small Craft Disposals under Admiralty Contracts Board. This meant that the ship for auction went to the highest “blind” offer, and that it could be lost for a matter of literally five shillings. A man who offered, say, four thousand pounds five shillings would secure the boat in preference to one who offered four thousand pounds, and in fact these tactics of offering a round sum capped with a few shillings or pounds were being rather freely employed at that time. After a long delay the Scottish Home Department came to my assistance, and arranged for me to buy one by private treaty with the Admiralty. The delay, however, cost months of preparation, and the craft was not finally released until April 1946.
I remember that winter as one of endless frustration and delays, of business mails averaging forty letters a day—to be answered without a secretary—of the necessity for perpetual travelling. Even at this stage I felt myself in the position of a general trying to wage a war with a platoon and no staff. During all this time I was trying to investigate possibilities for keeping the factory working at something profitable during the off-season, together with other lines of development of the island which might hope to carry the Shark Fishery’s experimental years. I investigated very thoroughly the possibilities of seaweed drying, of peat drying, of a lobster pond—in fact practically everything to which the position and character of the island lent themselves, but each in turn had ultimately to be rejected as unprofitable or requiring larger capital.
The whole island is made of an extremely fine building-stone, varying from pink granite to hard purplish-red sandstone; besides, at the west end of the island, a paving-stone quarry on the seacliff, from which several streets in Liverpool were paved towards the end of the last century. At first sight stone-quarrying seemed a possible use for the boats during the winter months. Samples of the stone were sent to, and highly approved by, several large building firms, but this also had at length to be rejected as impracticable without great expenditure on quarrying machinery.
The New Year had passed without any certainty of obtaining the main catching craft we required. In January I assembled all the ropes and minor gear necessary for a season’s work, and went to Birmingham for a first-hand report on progress from the gunmaker. There had, needless to say, been a great many difficulties. The purchase of a two-pounder gun had taken four months’ argument with the War Office and the Ministry of Supply, and its conversion would not in any case be completed in time for the coming season. The supply date for the rest of the material was put back from March 1 to April 1. Privately, I thought that this meant May; and, with no certain prospect of a boat, I began to wonder whether we should not make 1947, instead of 1946, our first working season.
But that winter had not yet fired its last round; it was, so to speak, still loaded.
In February I was informed by telegram that the factory had been struck by a cyclone. That night I went north from London, where I had been inspecting craft in the dock areas, and arrived at Soay late the following afternoon. It was as if I had stepped from one bombed dockland to another; the familiar rubble of scattered roofing, a hut that had been carried bodily across the harbour and deposited on the opposite side, the old crunch of corrugated iron and broken glass underfoot. It had been with these as my surroundings that I had drawn the ring round Soay on the map in 1940.
The factory could scarcely have been caught at a more vulnerable stage of construction; and the cyclone, which in nearby localities had reached a hundred and twenty miles an hour, had handled much of it like a card castle. The spot estimate for repairs left me silent; moreover, we now had no boat to act as carrier.
The early months of that year were a nightmare, a dream in which one runs but does not move. Factory, boats, catching equipment—the completion of each seemed to retreat before me down the calendar. The Gannet was awaiting her turn for an engine overhaul in Mallaig, the new H.D.M.L. had not yet been finally released by the Admiralty and was still lying at a Clydeside dock. The factory seemed to progress at tortoise speed, labour was becoming difficult, and a note of caution had crept into the gunmaker’s letters from Birmingham.
Our plans were very complete—all equipment and replacements were tabulated. On the catching side were the new H.D.M.L., renamed the Sea Leopard, to carry the breech-loading Oerlikon gun, and the Gannet, mounting a muzzle-loading whaling gun. The harpoon heads for each gun were to be the same, though for the Oerlikon the harpoon shaft was a tube fitting over the barrel, while the Gannet’s gun was to fire a short heavy harpoon on the end of an expendable wooden stick that fitted inside the barrel. The whaling gun was being “re-proofed” for a determined safe charge of black powder, the Oerlikon being repaired, and twenty harpoons made for each.
The minor parts of the catching equipment were the same for each boat—eighteen-foot steel rope-traces to link the harpoons to the main playing-rope, bulldog grips to fasten them, and heavy steel hawser-slings to lasso and hold the shark’s tail when it first appeared above the surface. We believed that the breaking strain of ordinary sisal rope would be too low for use as the main playing line, and we were equipping with nothing but costly yacht manilla, on special permit.
The theoretical handling of a shark from the moment he was secured seemed, for the most part, simple. First he would be towed to the harbour. If it was low tide, the Button would put out from the factory to meet the Sea Leopard, so that the large boat would not have to cross the Soay harbour bar. The shark would be towed to the factory slipway—a steep railway leading down from the concrete cutting-up “stance” into the sea. The carcase would be floated on to a bogie-truck running on these rails, and hauled up the incline by a big steam-winch. We anticipated a certain amount of difficulty in manœuvring the shark squarely onto the concrete. Once onto it, the first operation would be the skinning, for
which I had ordered twelve pairs of armoured gloves to protect the workers’ hands, as the mass of tiny spines would wear through the thickest leather gloves in a very few minutes.
Next the liver would be removed, cut up, and put into the barrels of the oil-extraction plant, to each of which led a steam pipe from the boiler. Then the fins and tail would be removed and placed in tanks for the extraction of glue liquor. The vertebrae would be set aside to dry for later shipment in bulk for manure. The flesh would be cut up and put into the ice-house, of which the concrete cutting-up stance was the roof. All the suitable residue would then go through a plant for conversion to fish meal. This plant, which, like most of the factory components, never fulfilled its function adequately, consisted of a mincer, a press, and an eighty-foot tunnel filled with trays moving on rails, through which a fan blasted hot air from the boiler furnace.
Here was the ivory hunter commercialising the carcase in the jungle. I was a convert for the moment, and, like most converts, I was beyond reason. We had no separate carrying ship, and if any of these components were to break down the catchers must leave their work and sail to the mainland for spare parts and replacements.
The Sea Leopard arrived from the Clyde via the Crinan canal on April 20. I went on board her in Mallaig harbour with very different feelings from those with which I had greeted the Dove a year before. She had cost nearly four thousand pounds, and she seemed to be worth every penny of it. Lying among the fishing-boats she was like a greyhound among bulldogs, seventy feet long, sleek and graceful, and with Admiralty written in every line of her. The engine-room was amidships, below her bridge and wheelhouse; it was twenty feet long, with a high deckhead, and the twin hundred-and-sixty horse-power Gleniffer-diesel engines gleamed with polished copper, chromium, and fresh paint. The crew’s quarters were for’ard of it, and the after-part of the ship contained the officers’ ward room, minute but with all the comfort and fine fittings of an expensive yacht. I went to live aboard her at once, and for two years I regarded that cabin, ten foot by ten, as both my office and my home.
It was another ten days before all the gun equipment had arrived from Birmingham and the bare essentials of the factory were ready for use. We repainted the Sea Leopard from stem to stern inside and out, and the Gannet began her engine overhaul.
We had got a crew together before the Sea Leopard arrived. Bruce was skipper, and had found for mate his brother-in-law, Dan MacGillivray. Dan (photograph 15) was a Skye man, and of the finest type the islands produce. He was in his late forties, a big strong man with a smooth face, blue eyes, and hair turning prematurely silver. He had first gone to sea in a sailing schooner when he was seventeen, and had been at sea all his life but for five improbable years as boundary-rider on an Australian sheep-ranch. The rest of his time he had spent for the most part in big cargo-steamers, and there seemed to be few corners of the world with which he had not at least a nodding acquaintance. He was always good company. He had kept the soft island speech; his voice was gentle, slow, and dignified, and his manners at all times perfect. Dan was a really efficient seaman, quick in decision and imperturbable, one of those men whose very presence inspires confidence. He would have had his Master’s Ticket years before had it not been for a technically disqualifying degree of colour-blindness.
The engineer was a temporary, and stayed with us not much more than a month—time enough for him to run one engine dry of oil and cause costly damage. I suspected him of systematic thieving from my drink store, and was glad of the opportunity for dismissal. Ship’s cooks were ephemeral that season, and few lasted more than a fortnight.
Tex and a seventeen-year-old Soay boy, Neil Cameron (photograph 18), were to be regarded as the normal basis of the Gannet’s fishing crew whenever she was cast off from the Sea Leopard.
One morning Bruce popped his head into my cabin at dawn, and said:
“Come up on deck, Major, and see a great sight. The opposition’s here.”
“What opposition?”
“Watkins of Carradale. The whole fleet’s in here to start the shark-fishing season. They came in during the night. Some nerve, to choose Mallaig.”
I pulled on my trousers and went up the companion-way. It was a full spring tide, and the Sea Leopard’s decks were well above the level of the pier. Berthed at the opposite side were three strange ring-net boats—the Paragon, the Perseverance, and the Dusky Maid, and a steam drifter—the Gloaming—carrying a big clumsy derrick amidships. Each of the ring-netters mounted a canvas-shrouded gun in her bows.
My first feeling was one of intense anger that Watkins had forsaken Carradale and Loch Fyne, far to the southward, for what I had begun to regard as my own preserves. I knew enough by that time to be sure that the sharks that visited the Hebrides had certain favoured bays, and that if Watkins and I had equally good judgment and information service, our catchers would be in direct competition on the same fishing-grounds. I looked up to the Sea Leopard’s bows to make sure that the worthless secret of the Oerlikon gun was as well guarded as his.
There was days’ more work to be done on the Gannet’s engine, and the gun’s full equipment had not yet arrived. The ring-netters were already reporting sharks in Loch Bracadale and Moonen Bay.
“He’ll be at sea before we will.”
“Aye, and he’ll likely make straight for Moonen.”
“I wish we could get a look at those guns.”
“He’ll keep them covered while we’re around. They’re converted two-pounders, by the shape of them.”
Trouble started very soon. Tex, installed as skipper of the Gannet, was helping a marine engineer with her overhaul that afternoon when Watkins himself spoke from the pier. Tex came to me in a rage.
“He’s got wooden harpoon sticks, and he wanted them bound with metal at the bottom, the same as ours, so the wood won’t get blown to bits. He knows there’s only one man in Mallaig could do it, and he was on the Gannet’s engines. Watkins said money was no object, and the b–– just dropped his tools and away back to his workshop. That’s business.”
“Did Watkins say anything else?”
“He asked in that sneering voice of his if we thought we’d catch a shark in that silly little boat. I told him that if I ran across him on the fishing-grounds I’d let him have a harpoon through the boat’s side.”
Tex did not like Watkins, who later became my good friend.
Poor little Gannet—she had well cleared her name of that insult when, in 1949, battered and scarred by victorious struggles with nearly two hundred sharks, she returned to the lobster-fishing for which she had been made. She was built by Henderson in Mallaig, and in fair tribute I doubt whether any other boat of her size could have survived those years.
Two days later I met Watkins myself. He came aboard the Sea Leopard, and eyed with surprise the comfort of my cabin and the office equipment of filing cabinets and typewriter. There was a carpet on the floor, a bookcase, a sofa, and a bunk; the paint was fresh and clean, and I was as pleased with it all as a self-made millionaire who realises his dreams of luxury and magnificence.
The conversation circled as warily as two sniffing terriers, hackles up and a muted rumble in the throat. I said I thought it was a pity that he had chosen to base himself on Mallaig too.
“Well,” he replied, “if there aren’t enough sharks in the sea for both of us, we might as well both give up. It’s the last part of the season that’s best in Loch Fyne, and I’ll be going back there in June or July.”
Neither of us could extract much useful information from the other; each guarded the secrets of his difficulties and doubts. Remembering that Watkins was said the year before to have struggled for a whole day to lift a shark aboard the Gloaming with her derrick, I asked him how long the operation took.
“Oh, we reckon to have a shark aboard the Gloaming half an hour after harpooning, and the liver into the steam barrels in another half-hour. I could never waste time towing back to a shore factory—one’s got to be able to deal
with everything at sea.”
This was uncomfortably near my original conviction.
“Then what will you do with the carcase after the liver’s out?”
“Dump it straight overboard.”
I said I thought that a number of rotting carcases would clear the rest of the sharks out of the area.
“It’s possible, but not likely. If they do move on I can follow them.” The missing words “and you can’t” seemed as clear as if they had been spoken.
“It’ll foul the water for herring—the herring men won’t like it.”
He brushed this aside.
“Oh, we can dump a bit away from the herring grounds, in deeper water. I don’t think they’ll make a fuss.”
I was full of resentment, and I thought, “They will, if I can do anything to encourage it.”
He seemed to sense this, and added:
“There’s no need for a spirit of cut-throat competition; the sea’s big, and there’s plenty of room for both of us. And if we do happen to be working the same area, I can sell you my carcases cheap instead of dumping them.”
Our hackles did not go down then. Neither trusted the other an inch, and for all that season our crews vied with each other in the magnificence of their lies, forgotten failures and multiplied successes, though Watkins and I became more frank with each other. When our crews met in Mallaig throughout the summer, they would ask casually where the other was sailing for the next day, and each be immediately sure that there could be no sharks there. One Sunday late in May I met his skipper in Mallaig, and he asked where I was going tomorrow. We were sailing at midnight for Barra.
“Moonen Bay and the Skye shore,” I replied; “they’re thick there.”
“Aye, I’ve heard that. That’s where we’re going ourselves.”
Very early the next morning we were stealing through a cold grey sea-mist off the Barra coast when I made out the indistinct silhouette of the Perseverance’s bows and gun, running on a parallel course two hundred yards away.