Vic 32, Rothesay Bay, Isle of Bute
SL VIC, Clyde Puffer, Rothesay Bay, Isle of Bute. VIC 32 ("Victualing Inshore Craft") is one of the last few surviving coal-fired steam-powered puffers and is based at The Change House, Crinan.
She was built by Dunston’s of Thorne, Yorkshire in November 1943 - a busy time for the Clyde Ship building yards. As the wartime Admiralty needed 50, (later 100) victualling boats in a hurry, they were built in groups of three by various different yards in England. No new designs were needed as the perfect boat existed in a Clyde Puffer.
(The first skipper had proven to be a drunken maniac. He had taken a cargo of cement out to Barra to build a pier. The boat had suffered damage all along the starboard side, a propellor blade had been knocked off, the crew were in jail for stealing the shop’s petty cash, one had septic sores and another had a nasty seaman’s disease. Obviously merchant men could, to a certain extent during the war, choose from the Merchant Navy Shipping Pool what type of boat they worked on. So the reality was that the crew were no gentlemen.
Vic 32, Rothesay Bay, Isle of Bute
SL VIC, Clyde Puffer, Rothesay Bay, Isle of Bute. VIC 32 ("Victualing Inshore Craft") is one of the last few surviving coal-fired steam-powered puffers and is based at The Change House, Crinan.
She was built by Dunston’s of Thorne, Yorkshire in November 1943 - a busy time for the Clyde Ship building yards. As the wartime Admiralty needed 50, (later 100) victualling boats in a hurry, they were built in groups of three by various different yards in England. No new designs were needed as the perfect boat existed in a Clyde Puffer.
(The first skipper had proven to be a drunken maniac. He had taken a cargo of cement out to Barra to build a pier. The boat had suffered damage all along the starboard side, a propellor blade had been knocked off, the crew were in jail for stealing the shop’s petty cash, one had septic sores and another had a nasty seaman’s disease. Obviously merchant men could, to a certain extent during the war, choose from the Merchant Navy Shipping Pool what type of boat they worked on. So the reality was that the crew were no gentlemen.