Old Photograph Clyde Puffer Harbour Troon Scotland

Old photograph of a Clyde Puffer in the harbour in Troon, Ayrshire, Scotland. The Clyde puffer is essentially a type of small steamboat which provided a vital supply link around the west coast and Hebrides islands of Scotland, stumpy little cargo ships that have achieved almost mythical status thanks largely to the short stories Neil Munro wrote about the Vital Spark and her captain Para Handy. Munro was born on 3 June 1863 in Inveraray, the illegitimate son of Ann Munro, a kitchen maid. His death certificate gives his father's name as James Thompson Munro. He was brought up by his maternal grandparents and an aunt. He attended Glencaddie Primary School and Church Square Public School, leaving at 14. For five years he worked in the office of the Sheriff Clerk of Argyll, a fairly prestigious post that has led to speculation that he may have had undisclosed family connections. He then moved to Glasgow and worked briefly in the cashier's office in an ironmonger's shop in the Trongate before working as a journalist on the Greenock Advertiser, the Glasgow News, the Falkirk Herald and the Glasgow Evening News. He semi-retired from journalism in 1902 to concentrate on other writing, but returned in 1914 and became editor of the Glasgow Evening News in 1918. Munro published several novels under his own name. Initially he had some success writing historical novels, most of them set in the Highlands and exploring the coming of change in the comparatively recent past. His best known novels from this phase of his writing career are John Splendid, set around Montrose's campaign in the First Civil War and his attack on Inveraray, and Doom Castle, set around the Jacobite rising of 1745, which was dramatised by the BBC in 1980. Later he attempted to expand his range, with more mixed success, writing novels with contemporary settings. These include The Daft Days. In 1914 he returned to a Highland historical setting with the last of his novels, The New Road, dramatised by the BBC in 1973. He then concentrated on journalism again, but his work was affected by his poor health and the death of his son Hugh in the First World War. He died in Craigendoran, Helensburgh, on 22 December 1930.



All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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