50 years plus: Village Belle IV

This 1970 Noble’s vessel – the last of the series of Village Maids and Village Belles, built for the Jackson family of Tarbert – is still going strong

The Jacksons were a well-known fishing family in Tarbert on Loch Fyne. Tom Jackson started the ‘Village’ tradition when he purchased the Village Maid in 1925, three years after the first canoe-sterned ringers appeared in Campbeltown.

His brother Willie had six sons: Willie, Neil Kennedy, Alec, Kenny, John and Tom. As a pair working together, it was Willie and Neil who mostly skippered the boats. They came to be renowned for their skills at the ring-net, and I’m told easily matched the famous Sloane brothers from the Ayrshire coast. Their memory remains alive in the small community of Tarbert today.

Over the years, the family owned two Village Maids and four Village Belles. The survivor – yard number 65 from Alexander Noble & Sons of Girvan – is the canoe-sterned Village Belle IV, built in 1970 and registered as TT 74. At 60ft in overall length, she was built as a ringer/trawler with a 240-cran capacity in her hold and a T8 Kelvin 240hp in her engineroom.

An aerial view of the vessel from Casting the Net.

She was of typical design with forward accommodation with six bunks and a ‘fitted’ galley with a gas cooker, which was quite an innovation after the earlier one-ring coal stoves or Primus stoves. She had conventional chain steering and a varnished hull. Skippered by Neil Jackson, partnering Willie Jackson aboard Village Maid II TT 25, the two boats worked the ring-net around the Clyde and the north herring.

Angus Martin recounts many of their adventures around the west coast in Herring Fishermen of Kintyre and Ayrshire and The North Herring Fishing. They continued fishing herring with the pair trawl after the demise of the ring-net. In between ringing, as many ringers did, they fished the clams, and Alec Jackson skippered her for a while scalloping.

Tommy Ralston writes in Casting the Net of how he asked Willie Jackson why he didn’t continue fishing after a decline in earnings meant that they had to abandon the ring net and resort to prawn trawling at times to try to make ends meet.

He replied: “Trawlin’ for prawns? That’s no’ fishin’ – that’s sheer f****n’ boredom.”

Village Belle IV and Village Maid II alongside in Tarbert in 1974. (Photo:
Sandy Stewart)

Consequently she was sold in 1989 to Paul Gallagher of Tobermory, who had previously bought the Miller-built Village Belle III from the Jacksons. That was also the year they sold the Village Maid II to Mallaig. Paul Gallagher converted the Village Belle IV for scalloping.

Nearly a decade on, in 1998, she was sold to John Baker of Port Ellen, Islay. Then, in 2002, she was sold to John MacAlister and worked out of Oban, skippered by Jamie Campbell of Carradale.

Jamie told me he skippered her for seven years, and that she was a credit to the way she was built. “She’s incredible for her age – not a dribble of water through her planks. Okay, so there were teething things when trawling and yes, always at the prawns, but she’s a fine boat.”

In 2006, Village Belle IV was leased to Stanley and Steven Gray of Walls, Shetland, fishing out of Lerwick. However, it is believed that Stanley couldn’t get the licence he wanted to enable her to work in Shetland waters because he wasn’t the registered owner. So the arrangement didn’t last long, and the boat returned to Oban.

Between 2007 and early 2009, she was skippered by Bob Dunsire, working the west coast out of Oban and the east side out of Pittenweem – only at the prawns again, Bob assured me, never with the clams.

I asked him what he remembered about her. “Rolly sod, but a great sea boat! We ran across the Minch in the storms of wind, and never not once had a fear in her. Tons of character – a creaking cabin every time she rolled. I went around with the cordless, but never did get to the bottom of that creaking! The sea toilet was in the engineroom, which was great on a cold winter’s morning!”

By Bob’s time, the original Kelvin had been swapped for a TAS8 Kelvin of 375hp, but the crank split whilst at sea and they got a tow up to Mallaig with the Avalon CN 375, where she was re-engined with an NT855 Cummins of 365hp and a new Twin Disc gearbox.

Village Belle IV in Anstruther harbour in 2008, during Bob Dunsire’s tenure.

About 2009, she was being skippered by Garry Buchan, and he took her to the clams for a couple of years. Then, in 2011, she was sold and moved to Northern Ireland, re-registered as B 157 and based in Portavogie, working the prawns again. By 2013 she had been re-registered as B 377 by Paul Coffey.

Then, in 2014, she was back in Argyll after being sold to Malcolm MacKinnon of Tarbert and re-registered as TT 74. Malcolm told me that because of the boat’s connection to Tarbert, he was happy to bring her back to the harbour, and even happier to manage to get her old number back.

She is one of six boats he owns; the others are Good Intent SY 79 and Boy Andrew TT 179, both based in Campbeltown, Elegance PD 33 in Mallaig, Deliverance FR 254 in Ireland, and the recently purchased Crystal Stream LH 147.

Village Belle IV had just come off the slip at Noble’s the day I spoke to Malcolm MacKinnon. She looked spick and span and, as he said, almost back to how she looked originally, bar of course the varnished hull. Today her skipper is Ciaran Mcintyre, and the boat is based in Rothesay.

Off Bradda Head on the Isle of Man in December 2009. (Photo: Darren Purves)

“I’m a man with a young family, so the boat has got a new lease of life with me,” he told me. “I will take her into the next generation, which is what these old boats need: someone young and keen.

“I’ve known Malcolm since I could walk. I’m born and bred in Campbeltown from a long line of fishermen, and am the fifth generation of my family to operate in the Clyde.” But, he says, he didn’t plan to go into fishing. “I wanted to be a vet, but my family pushed me into the fishing as I was the last young male. All my older siblings shunned it, and my uncles never bore a son, only daughters.

“I moved to Rothesay from Campbeltown because I had a small boat and found it too exposed there in bad weather. So I worked the small boat here for a while before going ashore to work in the creamery – then I wanted back to sea, and Malcolm gave me the Village Belle.

“Now I have three young sons coming behind me – 13, four and one years old – and four daughters, so I work this boat for Malcolm, but I also have my own small under-10m boat for my children to learn the job in time.

“I’m also pretty passionate about the traditional way of maintaining the boat, and was pleased when she came off the slip looking lovely. We will now be back to twin-rigging for the prawns, so it’s an easy life for her compared to operating as a scallop dredger.

“Catches haven’t been bad, with an average of 40 boxes in the summer, and 15 to 20 going into autumn. The best day this year was 68 boxes.”

Registered as B157 in Portavogie. (Photo: Darren Purves)

The vessel is still mostly original below decks, with the forward accommodation and small galley. The Cummins is, as Ciaran says, ‘a Chinese Cummins’, which needs constant attention. Two years ago it was rebuilt, and it is due to have the head off at Christmas time. Still, she has a tidy engineroom – although I did note that the toilet has now been taken out!

We took a brief run up Loch Striven to look at the fish farms, the main distraction to the prawn trawling – though that’s another story. The timbers are massive bits of oak, and there was a feeling of solidness to this old wooden vessel – something that isn’t always apparent in the new breed of vessels, few of which will see 50 years. But then again, you look around and see that little is built to last these days.

One story I heard was about when she was surveyed for the MCA. After removal of the lining in the fo’c’sle, the surveyor found a crack in the stem. When this was pointed out to Noble’s, the foreman expressed some surprise, saying that it was a natural crack – or ‘shake’ – in the timber, and that it would have been there since the boat was built. “We won’t be replacing that,” was the reply to the surveyor!

Echoing the words of Bob Dunsire, Ciaran told me that the boat had never let him down and always got him home safe and sound in any sort of weather. “The Village Belle IV is the finest sea boat I’ve had. Nothing is too much for her, and you never feel in any danger.”

Thanks to Jamie Campbell, Bob Dunsire, Malcolm MacKinnon, Ciaran Mcintyre and the photographers.

This feature was taken from the latest issue of Fishing News. For more up-to-date and in-depth reports on the UK and Irish commercial fishing sector, subscribe to Fishing News here or buy the latest single issue for just £3.50 here.

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