She was the “"the smertest boat in the coastin' tred", with her blood red hull, shiny brass whistle and cargoes of anything from Heilan coos to furniture, and plenty of whisky.

The Vital Spark and her bungling crew puffed their way into all manner of mishaps as they delivered goods to and from the west coast islands, sometimes more successfully than others.

While the fictional Para Handy stories brought readers and later television viewers a snapshot of Inner Hebridean humour, in real life the west coast fleet of puffers was withering and dying, eventually leaving behind just a tiny handful of the hardy little boats.

Now the Vital Spark puffer, named in honour of her fictional cousin and for years left to decay to the point her hull was eventually likened to ‘Swiss cheese’, is set to reclaim her title of the Clyde’s “smertest boat”.  

Currently being restored at her berth in Inveraray in the shadow of the birthplace of Para Handy creator Neil Munro - and despite a few hiccups redolent of the tales themselves - it’s now hoped the little puffer will soon be back in open water, plying her trade up and down Loch Fyne on a journey back to the islands she once served.

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The rebirth of the battered puffer coincides with a major community push to take over Inveraray’s dilapidated pier so it can once again serve fleets of little boats, tourist vessels and the occasional superyacht.

At the same time there are moves to celebrate the town’s links with Para Handy creator Munro, the former Glasgow Evening Times editor whose Hebridean tales enchanted the paper’s readers and, later, television viewers.

The combined effort to put Inveraray, the Vital Spark and writer Munro back on the map come exactly 100 years since the last of his delightful Para Handy tales appeared in print: they were published in The Herald’s sister paper between 1905 and 1923 under the pen name ‘Hugh Foulis’.

By the late 1950s, the Vital Spark and her crew’s exploits had been adapted for television, with viewers across the country tuning into a now long lost black and white BBC mini-series, Para Handy – Master Mariner, starring legendary Scottish actor Duncan Macrae in the lead role of Peter MacFarlane, captain of the Vital Spark.

But it was the classic versions of the stories, screened in the late Sixties and early Seventies with the cast of Roddy McMillan as the boat’s often inept captain, John Grieve, Walter Carr and Alex McAvoy as his hapless and often argumentative crew, that sealed the puffer’s place in the hearts of a generation of Scots.

The Herald:

According to Munro’s skipper, the Vital Spark was “aal hold, with the boiler behind, four men and a derrick, and a watter-butt and a pan loaf in the foc’sle”.

While the fleet of puffers was a common sight around the Inner Hebrides, with the single masts, coal-fired boiler and, originally, a ship’s wheel that was open to the elements, today just three remain in Scotland including Inveraray’s VIC 72, once named Eilean Eisdeal and later christened Vital Spark.

The boat, built in 1944 at Brown’s Shipyard in Hull, was taken over last year by Ricky Christie of the North of Scotland Distillery Company, whose original plan – before he encountered the scale of work needed to reignite her own vital spark – had been to turn the puffer into a floating distillery.

Perhaps in slight echoes of the Para Handy tales of unforeseen consequences and brushes with chaos, his plans have shifted as the challenge unfolded.

“I had this image of sailing her to international waters and distilling duty free – it was a very whimsical idea,” he says.

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“I didn’t realise the implications of what I was getting involved in, and the reality was that the boat needed a lot of loving care and attention.”

He found the hull in poor condition: “Swiss cheese comes to mind,” he says, adding that since taking it over restorers have repaired two thirds with hopes that the hull should be seaworthy within weeks.

While its diesel engine works, major effort is needed to upgrade the interior of the vessel. That was hindered as the restoration team found they had no access to a power supply – an issue which took two years of working in darkness to rectify. Meanwhile, such was interest in the vessel from ‘boat buffs’ that Christie was inundated with well-meaning but sometimes conflicting advice.

“Anyone under 50 probably hasn’t heard of Para Handy,” he adds. “But when you get involved, you find a thriving group of puffer enthusiasts out there. I’m not short of people saying ‘you should do this or that’.

“The only thing that doesn’t worry me too much is that if she sinks, at the moment she’d only sink about two inches,” he adds. “The harbour is silting up, so we can’t get out apart from at high tide.

The Herald:

“At the moment, there are no adventures planned that would involve taking her far enough away that I can’t swim ashore.”

He has now switched focus from the idea of a floating distillery making run, to creating a puffer that celebrates Scotland’s whisky heritage, potentially offering whisky tours to Islay where visitors can hop off to explore distilleries before heading back – perhaps fuelled a little on local spirit - to Inverary.

“The point is to restore the Vital Spark back to being the smartest boat on the Clyde,” he adds.

The Inverary vessel was one of a number of puffers used in the filming of the Para Handy stories for television. One other remaining puffer, Vic 32, built in 1943 and whose skipper at the time was said to be a “drunken maniac” who crashed her into a pier and with an ungentlemanly crew once jailed for stealing, has been restored and offers West Coast holiday cruises.

Another, The Spartan, is at the Scottish Maritime Museum in Irvine.

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Once restored, it’s hoped the Vital Spark will become the centrepiece at the revived B-Listed Inveraray Pier. Locals this week learned they are to receive £121,000 from the Scottish Land Fund to help complete its purchase and restoration.

The money adds to £30,000 from the Scottish Government and a £45,000 UK government grant from its community ownership fund awarded to Inspire Inveraray to help buy the pier, originally built by the third Duke of Argyll in the 1700s, and extended in 1836.

Having fallen into disrepair and been closed for almost a decade, locals began raising more than £32,000 towards its purchase three years ago.

Linda Divers from Inspire Inveraray says: “The pier has always been a focal point, the Waverley would come, we had steamers bringing people into the town and when I was young people would fish off it.

“But with it closed, people came up the loch to find they couldn’t reach the town. We want to reopen and restore it so people can come back.

“It’s a happy coincidence that the Vital Spark is being restored too – both it and the pier had become a bit of an eyesore.

“It will be nice to have the boat and the pier back.”