Nigel Tranter - The Price of the King's Peace

For these galleys had very low free boards and moreover were already well filled with their own double crews, with two men to each oar and the spare team required to maintain high speeds and act as boarding crews. The largest were already carrying 250 Islesmen, without passengers-although none of Bruce’s dozen craft were of that size.

It was not long, however, before all concerned perceived the reason for

this crowding. Off the south tip of Arran, with a freshening breeze

and the long Atlantic swell already beginning to make the overloaded

craft pitch and roll alarmingly, the fleet split up, and into very

unequal squadrons. Angus Og himself, with about thirty ships,

continued on course for the open sea, south westwards now. While the King’s galley, with its tail of heavily-laden followers, swung off to starboard in a fully ninety-degree turn, to proceed due northwards up the narrow Kilbrandon Sound, between Arran and the eastern coast of long Kintyre.

Quickly the breakwater effect of Kintyre became apparent, and the ships gained speed and comfort both. The southwest breeze, funnelling round the Mull, now much aided them, bellying out the great single square sails, which each bore the proud un differenced device of the Black Galley of the Isles. With the long oars sweeping rhythmically, to the squeal of row locks and the gasping, unending chant of the crews, they thrashed up-Sound at a speed fast horses would have been unable to maintain, exhilarating, scarcely believable.

The smell of sweat was almost overpowering, as strong men purged their bodies with vast exertions after the over-indulgences in the taverns, alehouses and brothels of Ayr.

By evening they had left Arran behind and were into the lower reaches of Loch Fyne, one of the longest sea-lochs in all Scotland.

It probed for forty miles deep into the mountainous heart of Argyll. But the King’s squadron was not going so far; not halfway in fact, to where, a mere dozen miles up, a small side-loch opened off to the west East Loch Tarbert.

In June it is never really dark in Scotland, and the galleys drove on through the half-light confidently, even in these narrow, skerry strewn waters. Before dawn they turned into the side loch.

It was only a mile long, and at its head was a settlement where a new stone castle was being built-Brace’s own, the result of an understanding with Angus of the Isles, who was also Lord of Kintyre.

Below these unfinished walls the galleys moored.

But there was no rest for the crews or passengers. Immediately all were set to felling trees, in which the area was rich, choosing straight pines. Oatmeal and water, laced with strong Highland spirits, served for breakfast, eaten as men laboured.

By early forenoon all was ready. The logs, trimmed and smoothed, were in position on the shingle beach. Long ropes were run out from the first two ships, and hundreds of men attached themselves thereto, like trace-horses. Crews waded chest-deep into the water to push. Then the King’s trumpets blew a long blast that set the echoes resounding through the enclosing hills.

As more than a thousand men took up the strain, and heaved mightily, the two vessels began to move forward, up out of the water like leviathans. Under the tall thrusting prows teams pushed the round logs to act as rollers, a team to each log, positioning them, guiding them beneath the keels, catching them as they came out below the sterns, and then picking them up and hurrying to the bows again, The galleys moved up the slope, heavily, but went on moving. Bruce led the way, encouraging the long lines of haulers, taking a hand frequently at the ropes himself.

He had remembered what the chief of MacGregor had told him, long ago when he was a hunted fugitive, how from time immemorial the proud Clan Alpine had been wont to drag their chiefly galleys across that other tairbeart, the narrow isthmus of land between Loch Long and Loch Lomond, from sea-water to fresh; and how King Hakon’s son-in-law Magnus, King of Man, had heard of the device over fifty years ago, before the Battle of Largs, and had surprised the Scots by appearing without warning in the Clyde estuary, from the Hebridean Sea, by crossing this more westerly tar bert For here also was only a mile-wide isthmus. Just over the intervening low ridge, West Loch Tarbert struck inland for ten miles from the Sound of Jura and the Western Sea.

The ascent was stiff for such heavy loads, and taxed all the muscle and

determination. Then Bruce realised that, as so often of a summer

morning, there was an onshore wind. This, sweeping down Loch Fync’s

cold-water surface, blew on to the wanner land here from an easterly direction. Hurrying back to the leading galley, he yelled to the few men still on board to raise the great sail.

It was worth trying, and could do no harm.

The moment that the sail began to open, the effect was felt by every man pulling and pushing. The wind seemed to take half the weight off the vessel. Speed increased dramatically. Quickly the other craft hoisted sail likewise. Everywhere men laughed and cheered, however breathlessly. Here would be a tale to tell, a great song to sing, something to twit Angus Og with-how the Lowland king sailed from Loch Fyne to Jura Sound!

They did not in fact sail all the way; for once the crest of the ridge was passed, the east wind died away, and any breeze there was came from the west. However, it was now downhill and easier going. In little more than two hours after leaving the East Loch, the first two vessels were dipping their forefeet into the West.

There was no triumphant pause in the men’s Herculean exertions.

Without delay, all but a few turned back, to repeat their

performance.

They improved on their methods, their route and their expertise, but it was early evening nevertheless before all the galleys were safely into the West Loch, with men exhausted and tempers frayed.

The King himself had been seeking to hide his fretfulness for hours. It had all taken longer than he had anticipated, and he was working within narrow time limits.

Whenever the last keel was in the water, and despite the grousing of tired and hungry men, he gave the order to sail. Down the long narrow loch they sped, in line astern, through the low Knapdale hills, into the eye of the westering sun.

In ten miles the wide waters of the Sound of Jura opened before them, ablaze with the sunset. Only a few miles ahead, to port, lay the small isle of Gigha, with beyond it all the long unbroken line made by the great islands of Jura and Islay, purple against the evening light.

Walter Stewart, who did not know the Hebrides well, standing beside the King on the high poop of the foremost galley, stared.

“A

goodly sight, Sire,” he said.

“Fair. But … where is John of Lorn?”

Bruce pointed southwards.

“Between us and Angus Og, I think!”

he said.

“It is my prayer that he will learn the fact before long.

And too late!”

MacDougall was, in fact, using the narrow seas of the Sound of Jura as a fortress area, guarding his own territory of Nether Lorn. It was ideally suited for this purpose, skilfully used. A great funnel fifty miles long, a dozen miles wide at its base between Kintyre and Islay, it narrowed in to a mere couple of miles between the Craignish peninsula and the northern tip of Jura. By massing his fleet at the southern end, and stretching a boom across the narrows at Craignish, with guard ships, the rebel Lord of Lorn, whose mother was a Comyn, could turn this whole great area into an inland sea; and even though the islands to the west were Angus’s, his ships of war could dominate all therein. Only the one alternative water access was available, the narrow gap lying between the north end of Jura and the next island of Scarbia. And this was the famous Sound of Corryvrechan, with its menacing whirlpools and tidal cauldrons, better guard than any boom of logs and chains.