Sowing the seeds for an oasis in the desert

THE Oman sun was at its fiercest, scorching the ground and burning the backs of workers as they dug deep, racing against the clock.

The rugged surface of the northern gravel desert - formed from stones and pebbles that have washed down over thousands of years from mountainsides - was a challenging foe.

Hard work, sweat and gritty determination was vital to turn this harsh and unforgiving landscape into anything resembling an oasis of flora and fauna...

"Yep, it was hot," laughs Leigh Morris, one of a team sent from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to the furnace of Oman, where the Sultan has ordered millions of pounds to be poured into creating the largest botanic garden on Arabian soil, at the outskirts of its capital, Muscat.

"I can honestly say I have never drunk so much water in my entire life," he adds.

"It was up in the 40s most of the time, so plants were starting to "fry" in the heat. There wasn't much of a window for planting, we had to work pretty hard. As it turned out, the plants grew back extremely well. We're delighted." It's a long way from the Botanics in Inverleith to the outskirts of Muscat, where the heat is soothed by just four inches of rain a year and occasional cooling breezes from the Arabian Sea.

Yet when it came to creating a showcase for the country's 1200 species of plants - 200 indigenous to Oman, many at risk of being lost to climate change and over-grazing - it was Edinburgh expertise that came to the rescue.

Staff from Inverleith have spent three years working there, travelling high into the mountains and deep into its harsh deserts, trekking over landscapes that alternate between dusty and dry to damp and foggy searching for hundreds of plants.

Last month the intense preparation, propagation and planning finally reached a peak when work was finished on the "northern gravel desert" section of the new Oman Botanic Garden, the first of seven display habitats designed to reflect a specific area of the country's landscape.

Creating a massive garden in the desert may sound like an impossible task. Harder still when Oman's diverse landscape includes an unusual "fog" desert, where there is seldom rain but a shroud of mist enables some plants to thrive, miles of salt flats and sand dunes and mountain areas where peach and juniper trees flourish.

Which is why the garden will eventually feature five enormous biomes - similar to the Eden Project in Cornwall - which work in reverse, helping to keep fragile plants cool and moist in the searing heat of the desert.

"The entire area is huge," explains Leigh, who as head of education at the Botanics in Edinburgh has been involved in collecting and preparing plants and helping design the garden layout and facilities. Eventually there will be a sand desert, salt desert, woodland and rivers habitat, northern gravel desert, northern mountains, south mountain and agriculture with date palms and pomegranate.

"Because the actual site near Muscat is located in the northern gravel desert area of Oman, it made sense to make that the first habitat we planted."

The result is a striking miniature display of elegant grasses, large shrubs, lavender bushes and pretty annuals which erupt from the rough ground after a sprinkling of rain and bloom only briefly. There are the thorny Acacia torilis trees and low scrub, lush greenery amid the rocks dissected by streams and wadis - dry riverbeds.

At its heart stands a pretty "sarh" tree (Maerua crassifolia), with petite white flowers that lure butterflies, rescued by the team from certain destruction at a road development site six months earlier and brought to Muscat.

In all, 1794 plants of 48 species - including 30 trees - were planted by 22 workers in five hectic days under a blistering sun. And almost every one was grown at the new garden's nursery from seed which was collected by garden staff - in some cases, the first time plants had been propagated in such a way.

Developing the garden, which when it opens in 2013 will stretch over 425 hectares, has meant overcoming challenges barely imagined when the Sultan of Oman first unveiled plans four years ago for one of the modern Arab world's largest botanical projects.

And the biggest headache was how to provide the most vital ingredient for a garden - water.

"Getting water is one challenge we don't usually have to consider in Scotland," agrees Leigh. "In Oman, it is currently being trucked in. Soon we'll be able to start using water from the wells that have been drilled on site, but sustainability is an issue."

The project, adds Leigh, who will discuss it at a special lecture at the Botanics tonight, is more than simply creating a showcase garden.

For it could also help save some species currently under threat of extinction from climate change and the vast number of goats that love to chew on Oman's most fragile vegetation.

And as well as lending their expertise, the work has also benefited the Edinburgh garden staff whose new found knowledge of Arabian plantlife could eventually lead to even better collections at the Inverleith site.

"The experiences I and others are gaining will undoubtedly help us in future projects," adds Leigh.

"There's a lot more work to do before the garden is finished in 2013, and we'd hope to be involved for as long as possible."

*******

A choice of eight palaces and five yachts

The Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said Al Said, ordered the creation of a multi-million pound botanic garden - the largest of its kind in Arabia - four years ago.

The aim is to create a garden that combines pleasure with serious study of native plants. Conservation of threatened species - around 200 of Oman's 1200 species of plants are endangered - is a key priority of the new garden.

The 69-year-old Sultan presides over an oil and mineral-wealthy nation of around 2.8 million people.

He became Sultan in 1970 after overthrowing his father in a palace coup.

He has the choice of eight palaces - most with private helipads and two with their own airports.

He also owns five super-yachts, including Al Said, the world's third largest yacht, which features its own orchestra.

Appeared Edinburgh Evening News September 24,2010

When boys were boys...

IT was a life in so many ways tougher yet so much simpler than today.
Messing about on the river, warming hands around an open fire, climbing precarious ledges and playing ‘soldiers’ with sharp sticks for guns, and then heading home again, bodies crammed in the back of a rickety truck.
Not a health and safety officer with a clipboard to tut-tut, not a strictly worded government rule saying ‘Don’t do that, you might get hurt’ to be seen.
No Ninento, no Xbox, no iPod and no smartphone.
And not a care in the world.
These striking, sometimes poignant images, have been gathered in print for the first time, recalling an innocent age which wasn’t so many years ago but could surely not be further away.
For they show a lost age when boys could be boys, their playground was the great outdoors and there was little more thrilling than rowing a handmade boat to a rocky outcrop in the Forth and noisily charging across its barren landscape.
Some of the photographs have a haunting poignancy: such as one showing young Scouts with toy guns skirmishing on Blackford Hill in 1910, blissfully unaware that in just four years’ time they might be marching to war for real.
And who knows how many ever came back…
The images are part of a fascinating lifetime collection of photographs taken by a man who not only recognised the benefits of letting boys be boys, but whose generosity and dedication to the Scout movement gave them an opportunity to enjoy the outdoors to its utmost.
Keen photographer William Edgar Evans (pictured right) was 26 years old when Lord Baden-Powell began the boy Scout movement in England - he was never a cub and he was never a Scout.
What he was, though, was probably the best Scout leader the boys of Morningside’s 6th troop Charlotte Chapel could ever have dreamed of: a First World War veteran, a natural science expert who made digging around rock pools a thrilling education, a natural-born leader and a storyteller with a brilliant knack for a good campfire ghost story.
When he became their scoutmaster in 1920, he brought along his camera, capturing his young charges on camping trips to Gullane and Oxton in Berwickshire, collecting on behalf of the Scott Antarctic Fund, messing about on the canal and, in one striking image, perched on top of one of the towering masts of a wreck lodged in thesands of Aberlady Bay.
That could have been enough.
But Evans - eventually he’d become known as Pa Evans to his Scouts - also recognised that city life for some lads could be dire, an escape to the countryside or better still, the seaside, a rare treat.
He bought two cottages, a large property and a playing field at Canty Bay in 1923, using money left by his well-to-do father.
By 1936 he’d established the Evans Trust for Boys and transferred Canty Bay to be used as a place for the Scouts to camp, climb, sail, where they could feel the sun, often the rain, on their young faces and the sea breeze in their hair.
One of them was Jack Cairns from Morningside, now in his early nineties, who vividly recalls his first Cub Pack holiday at Canty Bay in July 1929, as if it had happened yesterday.
“Apart from an occasional visit to Portobello beach I knew nothing about the sea-shore so a foray into the rock-pools at low water with Pa Evans was a learning experience not easily forgotten,” he remembers.
“A walk along the coast past Tantallon Castle produced much information on birds and flowers and a potted history of the castle.
“In the evening we sat around the den fire drinking cocoa, the lighthouse on the Bass Rock sent its six flashes in to the room, Pa told stories of prisoners on the Bass and the possibility of smugglers in Canty Bay until the cub leader chased us all off to bed.”
Evans other passion, of course, was photography. And, unlike many amateurs, he kept meticulous notes and diaries to accompany his images.
They have been brought together in a fascinating book that spans his lifetime, with images of Edinburgh streets, places, landmarks but especially people, some of them stiff in their Sunday finery, some proud in their Scout uniforms and some just enjoying life.
The book has been compiled by local historian Malcolm Cant, who says the minute he saw Edgar’s collection of glass slides and glass negatives, each dated and indexed, he knew it was of major significance.



“Evans photographic archive is undoubtedly a major contribution to the Edinburgh scene and deserves to be better known,” he adds.
‘Pa’ Evans died, aged 79, in 1963, when Britain was entering the Swingin’ Sixties, Beatlemania was at a peak and Flower Power was around the corner.
Even then, life for boys was changing. The age of innocence was already being lost.
But Canty Bay, Evans’ gift to young people, remains. Today it is still run by the Evans Trust, its facilities are still used by church organisations, schools, other Scout and Guide Troops and youth groups.
And the bay where its founder once thrilled with tales of smuggling and ghosts, pirates and adventures, looks just as it always did.
The passage of time has altered our children’s lives in ways Pa Evans couldn’t have imagined but, says Jack Cairns, Canty Bay remains.
“The Scout Association has changed radically in the 90 years since Pa’s first camp at Canty Bay,“ he agrees, “but the trustees and leaders of today remain united in the desire to maintain this idyllic place as a living memorial to a man who could bring natural sciences alive, but could also tell a good ghost story.”

Edinburgh and the Forth Through the Lens of Morningside Photographer William Edgar Evans, by Malcolm Cant, is published by Stenlake, price £15.99.

Heroes went Forth to beat Germans

THE scene is a boy's bedroom above a busy pub, a stone's throw from the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
Young Ferg Handley is turning the pages of his favourite comic, eyes darting between pictures and story, imagination lost in a bloody war fought and won before he was born, brought vividly to life between the pages of his favourite Commando comic.
Inside titles such as Walk - or Die!, Hellfire Landing and Hun Bait lurked Nazis called Wolfgang and Herman, armed with Karabiner 98 Kurz machine guns yelling "Achtung!" and "Die British!" before a well placed bullet finished them off.
There'd be thrilling tales of high drama, risk, a few hand-grenade explosions and a bit of comic relief. Tommy might have shouted "Aaargh, I'm HIT" once or even twice but eventually he'd march home, victory ringing in his ears.
"The Second World War was part of my growing up," recalls Ferg. "I read these comics years after it had ended but at the same time my dad had served in Bomber Command in the Second World War, with more than 1000 hours flying time to his name.
"My parents and grandparents would speak about people having been evacuated during the war.
"They'd talk about rationing and how my mum queued for three hours and came back with a banana only for my uncle to take one look at it and announce he didn't want it.
"So the war, although in the past, wasn't really that far away."
Today the war is, of course, much further in the past. Ferg is 47, he might have been expected to have outgrown those days of war stories and be using his MA in politics, pushing his pen in a sterile office somewhere.
Instead he's still flicking through copies of Commando. The only difference is he's the one telling the stories.
As one of Commando's regular writers since 1996, Ferg has hundreds of tales of British derring-do to his credit.
But it's his most recent that is closest to home.
Divided Aces was published yesterday, a high-octane action tale inspired by the real-life drama in the skies above the Firth of Forth, 71 years ago.
It was 1939, RAF 603 Squadron - founded in 1925 as something of a hobby flying club for well-heeled city gents - had been embodied into the RAF and placed on a war footing for the first time in its history.
Its motto was the Doric "Gin ye Daur" (If You Dare), many of the pilots nicknamed their planes after their home city - names like Portobello, Auld Reekie and Corstorphine. The last thing they expected on October 16, 1939, was a German
raid.
Nine German aircraft took Scottish air defence by surprise as they roared over the Forth towards the Royal Navy base at Rosyth.
Their audacious raid left three boats damaged - HMS Southampton and two cruisers, HMS Mohawk and HMS Edinburgh - 16 Royal Navy crew dead, 44 wounded.
Startled members of 603 Squadron were scrambled from their Turnhouse base. Likewise, 602 City of Glasgow Squadron were raised from Drem in East Lothian.
Eventually, they shot down two Heinkels into the Firth of Forth and a bomber off May Island - the first enemy aircraft to be shot down over Britain.
Ferg came across their remarkable - and often neglected - tale as he researched background for other Commando tales to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
"I'd read a book about the Battle of Britain and it gave me some ideas for Commando stories," recalls Ferg, of Willowbrae. "But all the action seemed to be set in the south of England.
"I knew there had to have been action further north, but there was not a lot of literature about it.
"Then I started to really look at it and I figured that there was definitely enough material for a story."
The facts from 1939 merged with a fictional story around a central character who - like Ferg - returns to Edinburgh after a spell away to rediscover the city of his youth.
"I was born in southern England," he explains. "We moved here when I was three so there was some stick about my English background.
"It was only after I returned here after living in London for 15 years that I started to appreciate what a wonderful and inspiring city it is."
Divided Aces is just the latest of around 300 Commando comic stories he's penned. When he's not tackling the Germans or the Japanese in Commando, he's Spider-Man - Ferg has been publisher Panini's sole writer for the superhero for the past three years and, for one story, brought the webbed one to Edinburgh. Once he created an X-Men story - plonking them in the depths of Dumfries.
Yet controlling the destiny of superheroes and battle-scarred soldiers was never his original career plan.
"I was doing an MA in politics but by the time my course was finishing I was pretty scunnered with it all," he recalls.
"I started to think about whether I might have a career in writing."
Those childhood days spent immersed in his comics flooded back.
"I knew there was this big underground scene, that comics like Dark Knight Returns and Watchman and V for Vendetta were adult stuff.
"I thought I'd like to do a graphic novel. The problem was how to do it."
He learned how to write in comic script form - a laborious process that involves writing everything from the cartoon characters' dialogue to descriptions of scenes for the artist.
With the Commando comics, comes a requirement too for fine historic detail and research.
In Divided Aces, the attention to detail is meticulous.
"I went for the most familiar images, partly because it's easier to get references for the artist. I wanted to depict the beauty of Edinburgh, to suggest that it was so important to protect the city.
"Pretty much all of the landmarks I scripted made it into the artwork. Jose Maria Jorge, the artist, is Spanish and got so many small details in - like iron railings missing from a school playground, melted down for the war effort."
Divided Aces is one of four new adventures which marks the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and although Commando comics is heading for its own 50th anniversary next year, Ferg believes it will be around for years to come.
"Several factors account for the British fascination for the war," he says. "We were on the winning side, which makes it a popular slice of history. It's why there are so many films, dramas and books. Commando taps into all that."
• Commando: Divided Aces is available now, £1.35.
Additional reporting by Liam Rudden

Published Edinburgh Evening News, 16 September 2010.

'We're fighting for the loved ones left behind by drugs misery'

TWO years ago Keith Fowler was a joiner. He'd get in his van in the morning, do what needed done, then come home in the evening with hands rough from working with wood, and dirt from an honest day's graft under his nails.
If anyone had said to him then that one day he'd mingle with society's select few at a royal garden party, stand in front of MSPs, police officers and university professors and tell them straight, in his ordinary working man's voice, how to make things better, his reply would have been straightforward and to the point.

He'd never have believed it.

But today Keith has a voice that's hard to ignore. It was always strong and his language pragmatic, now it's also revealed itself to be articulate and passionate, words spilling out ferociously fast, devastatingly poignant.

This is a voice that perhaps even he didn't know he had. And Keith found it following the tragic death of his 24-year-old son Perry. "The thing is," he explains, bristling with intense resentment. "That once someone is dead and it's drug-related, it becomes like it's not a problem any more.

"The typical attitude is 'well, you haven't got this drug problem in your life any more, so off you go, get on with it'. But it doesn't go away at all. In some ways, it's just the start.

"All I am is a joiner," he adds with a shrug. "I sit there in my old suit in front of doctors and professors, people from the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, specialists and all that, and I try to explain it the only way I know how."

Keith is perched on the edge of his living room armchair talking about how he's morphed from joiner to the voice of Scotland's grieving parents, siblings and friends of drug addicts.

As he talks, overlooking him on a shelf is a framed photograph of Perry, handsome, fresh-faced and oozing life.

Keith found him upstairs on a Sunday morning, July 6, two years ago
He'd gone to Perry's bedroom to jokingly chide him for taking his cigarette lighter, but when he threw open the door it was to find him lying lifeless from a drug overdose.

The nightmare which started five years earlier when the family discovered Perry, traumatised by terrible violent attacks in his childhood, was taking drugs had now entered a new, harrowing phase.

Simply dealing with their own grief might have been enough but Keith and Perry's mum, Debbie, had other ideas.

Later this month, the Perry Fowler Trust Family Support Group, will meet in Musselburgh; a meeting open to anyone who has watched a loved one wrestle with drugs or alcohol.

It's a chance, says Keith, for people to find their own voice or just listen to others share how addiction has affected their lives.

"We want recognition for what families go through," he says. "There's enough out there for drug users, there's enough education programmes in schools and there's enough support for people who are the addicts.

"But what about the people who have to put up with the abuse? The ones who are stigmatised in the community because there's a drug or alcohol user in the family? The ones who have to live through it too? Because drugs aren't just the abuser's problem, it's their problem too."

The couple, of Osborne Terrace, Port Seton, were still reeling from Perry's tragic death and planning how to turn it into something positive, when it became clear the greatest need was close to home.

"The police were fantastic at the time," says Debbie. "But they're not counsellors. Once they'd moved on, we realised there was no-one to go to for help."

The couple were stunned when one bereavement counselling organisation admitted they couldn't see them for at least six months. "We had all these issues to think about. We were tormented thinking about the abuse he'd gone through and then how to deal with losing him.

"But there was nowhere to go," adds Keith.

Keith, 46, took the first steps to launching the Perry Fowler Trust and met with representatives from Scottish Families Affected by Drugs (SFAD), an organisation which encourages the formation of local support groups.
His passion and determination was getting noticed.

Soon his straight-talking calls for support for families led to a position on the National Forum for Drugs Related Death in Scotland,sitting alongside Crown Office representatives, doctors, crime specialists and addiction experts.

It's largely down to him that its latest submission to the Scottish Government calls for services dealing with addicts to try to ensure support is in place for families, and even recommends national guidelines on how to guide grieving families through the complex legal issues they typically face.

Earlier this year the couple's achievements were formally recognised with an invitation to the royal garden party at Holyrood, where they mingled in circles they'd never before imagined would open to them.

"It was a bit strange," grins Keith. "There were all these people, all dressed up, and there was us."

As Keith's confidence has grown, he's appeared on radio and television, most recently representing the Scottish Drug Recovery Consortium, which last month hit headlines by calling for an end to the word "junkie".

"It's about not labelling people," stresses Keith. "We want people to look at the person, rather than the addict. We want them to remember that person has a family and they're not necessarily bad people because they are addicts."

Debbie, 47, nods. "I'd go to the shops and I could hear people say, 'That's her, that Perry's mum'. So I ended up not going. I knew my son worked and could be the nicest, most polite boy. Drug users aren't bad people, but drugs can make good people do bad things.

"But whatever he did I was never, ever not proud of him. I had 24 beautiful years with him. I loved him and he loved me."

She prefers to remain in the background of the Trust. Keith, she insists, knows how to put it all into words. "I feel the pressure of it," he admits. "There's times I wonder why I'm putting myself through it, because it can be hard when the phone rings and someone's upset because they've lost someone to drugs and want to talk.

"Or when I'm sitting in front of professionals.

"But people seem willing to listen, because if anyone knows what it's like to go through this, then it's us. It doesn't bring Perry back, but if doing this helps other people get through it, it'll be worthwhile."

The Perry Fowler Trust Family Support Group will meet at the Gate House, Lewis Vale Park, Musselburgh on September 22 at 7pm. Meetings will then be held every fortnight. For details log on to www.perryfowlertrust.co.uk or call 01875-811 155

Talented youngster's tragic end
Perry Fowler went to Cockenzie Primary and Preston Lodge High School.

He was a talented artist who loved sport and was said to have had potential to compete at international level weightlifting.

However at the age of 13 he was attacked near his home by two other boys.

He was beaten and shot at with an air gun, reawakening memories of another traumatic event in his youth. Perry had kept secret until he was 15 that he'd been raped when he was just eight years old while living in England.

His parents believe his anguish sparked his downward spiral into drug abuse, culminating in heroin addiction.

Ironically, Perry had weaned himself off the drug and had been clean for seven months until his fatal overdose.

sdick@edinburghnews.com

Sordid 'Jekyll and Hyde' real life secrets of Robert Louis Stevenson.

Published 8 September 2010

EDINBURGH, he wrote, was not so much a city as the largest of small towns, not so much beautiful as interesting, and that, "in a word, and above all, she is a curiosity
And so too, it seems, was Robert Louis Stevenson.

For beneath his veneer of respectability and charm, his status as celebrated writer and his social rank as the son of a highly regarded god-fearing citizen of the New Town, Stevenson liked nothing better than to satisfy his own carnal curiosities among the city's seedy underbelly.

The forbidden fleshpots around Leith Street, where bawdy brothel girls flaunted disease-ridden wares and negotiated hurried sex for a few shillings and the illicit drinking shebeens where booze flowed regardless of the law, were where, according to a new biography, one of the Capital's most famous writers frequently spent his nights.

Just like his most famous character, Dr Jekyll, Stevenson had another dimension to his character - one which would have had his church-going father broken by shame.

For while the writer was busy making the short journey from the New Town to the sleazy brothels around Leith Walk, his own family were campaigning against the evils of prostitution and donating money to "save" the city's fallen women.

They were women who made their living selling sex to outwardly respectable men like Stevenson, who - thanks to biographer Jeremy Hodges' laborious research - now have names and ages, backgrounds and identities.

"Many of these girls would have been only around 19 to 24 years old," says Mr Hodges, who trawled through census papers from 1871 in a bid to uncover detail about the ladies of the night who so fascinated the Edinburgh writer.

"Some reports from the charitable institutions set up to try to help them suggest many were just 14.

"It would be quite possible that within ten years, they'd be dead. For many, it was a grim existence."

Stevenson's mother, a daughter of the manse, and his father, a brooding, religious character with strong Calvinistic convictions, were seemingly unsuspecting: they thought their only son was studying hard at university.

In fact, says Hodges, as d arkness fell and the city shed the strait-laced daytime outer shell to reveal its hedonistic and wanton streak, he had no qualms about joining in the "fun".

He certainly didn't need to travel far to find a seedy side to the city.
The High Street, says Hodges, thronged with "sixpenny whores", loose women who sold themselves for pennies which typically would be used almost immediately to buy booze.

The New Town, meanwhile, may have had a classier exterior, but behind the prim walls of some of its impressive properties, the same kinds of salacious acts and transactions were taking place.

"You can picture the scene of horse drawn carriages and gaslight," says Hodges.

"Stevenson lived in Heriot Row, he would have walked along Queen Street which would be perfectly respectable, but turn right to Elder Street and he'd have found a wicked place which decent people would not go near at night.

"St James Square was known for its large number of brothels, but Stevenson was most likely at Leith Street.

"The tobacconist shop at number nine was where he had his 'private' mail delivered - items that, presumably, he didn't want his parents to see. Below was a network of cellars, which, at night became a shebeen."

Stevenson, who was given just a small allowance by his prim father, couldn't have afforded a visit to Clara Johnson's Clyde Street brothel, the most posh in town.

"There, clients would pay £5, which was a fortune by today's standards," adds Hodges.

Clara's girls were far removed from the High Street's "streetwalkers", he says.

Instead, they were given the much less tawdry title of "gay ladies".

The 1871 census revealed them to be young women with previously respectable jobs such as milliner and dressmaker, whose £8 annual salaries would have been dwarfed by their earnings under Clara's roof.

Indeed, morally bankrupt as she was, Clara was eventually found to be worth around £14,000 - in the region of £2m by today's standards. And while she operated a high-class prostitution business, many brothels were far less salubrious.

"There were around 200 brothels known to the police in Victorian Edinburgh, and of course, there would have been a lot of "part-time" prostitution which doesn't show on police records of the time," adds Hodges.

"Some parts of the city would be barely recognisable by night.

"In Princes Street and Hanover Street, once the shops shut, it would be all prostitutionIf you were respectable, you would not even go there after the shops closed.

"Prostitution was a massive problem for respectable people and they could be quite hysterical about it at the time."

Among them were Stevenson's own family.

"The girls whose company he enjoyed were the same 'fallen women' his father, a respected engineer, was trying to save at the Edinburgh Magdalene Asylum," says Hodges.

"His uncle David, meanwhile, supported the Scottish National Association for the Suppression of Licentiousness in its campaign against vice, including the banning of nude models at the city's school of art."

It seems unlikely that the man known as "Velvet Coat" for his Bohemian style jacket and for his charming manner and consideration for the women he encountered, did not partake in some services.

"He mentioned one, Mary H, who worked in a factory in Leith but at times she apparently went on and off the game, sometimes a perfectly respectable woman who would not welcome advances at all, and then there'd be periods of prostitution," Hodges says.

"Stevenson seems to have known her very well."

In visiting these brothels Stevenson was, adds Hodges, dicing with danger. For those found to be dallying with women of loose morals often paid a very high price.

"It was a very claustrophobic society," adds Hodges. "Stevenson's parents actually thought they would have to leave Edinburgh when he married an American divorcee, such was their shame.

"Whether they were aware of his shenanigans, I don't know, but he certainly had a lot of upset with his parents which was usually put down to his opposing views on religion."

Worse though, Stevenson's dark side may even have been the death of him. For fraternising with Victorian prostitutes could be a deadly business.

"Stevenson had TB but he died from a stroke," says Hodges, who has delved into ageing census records and historic reports in a bid to unravel key elements of Stevenson's short but prolific life.

"And a stroke had nothing to do with TB.

"However, it could have been one of the things that happened to you in the later stages of syphilis."

It's not completely clear whether Stevenson visited the brothels for illicit sex or simply because of his fascination for Edinburgh's underbelly - eventually he'd drawn on its schizophrenic nature for one of his most famous works.

"What is known is that while he wasn't a great physical presence, he had enormous personal charm," adds Hodges.

"He would chat away with anyone. And that is one of the things that made him a great writer."

n Lamplit, Vicious Fairy Land by Jeremy Hodges, is being serialised on www.robert-louis-stevenson.org, which is hosted by Edinburgh Napier University's Centre for Literature and Writing (CLAW).

Colourful life of talented writer
Robert Louis Stevenson was born in November 1850, at Howard Place, Edinburgh, son of lighthouse engineer Thomas Stevenson, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of a Colinton minister. The family later lived at 17 Heriot Row.

Stevenson's childhood was plagued by illness which left him frail and thin. He studied engineering at Edinburgh University but his talent was writing. He eventually made his home in Upolu, one of the Samoan islands.

He died from a stroke aged 44 on December 3, 1894, leaving behind his works including Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped.
sdick@edinburghnews.com

Secrets of the Forth stir memories for war child Joan

10 September 2010

IT must have been exciting for the young table maid as she made her way north from her home in Devon to Scotland, bound for work in the fine Murrayfield mansion of a local well-to-do family.
It was a Saturday in 1926, and 25-year-old Mary Gooding had paid a whole £1 for her one-way, second-class cruise on board the SS Royal Fusilier, a 2.1 tonne steamship berthed in Wapping in preparation for the voyage to Leith.

On board this fine vessel - which was described at the time as a "miniature liner", with her grand fittings and impressive fixtures - was chief engineer Archie "Nobby" Clark.

Ten years older than Mary, he'd already seen the world as a merchant seaman. Now 35, his thoughts had turned to settling down, the London-Leith "commute" less challenging than the Atlantic routes he was used to sailing.

As the Royal Fusilier steamed northwards, somewhere between the Thames and the Forth, the chief engineer and the table maid met.

Their destiny was sealed.

Love may have bloomed on the Royal Fusilier, but there would be no romantic end for this fine vessel. Today she lies embedded in the mud, 46m below the surface of the Forth.

According to those divers determined to endure the chill of the estuary waters, she is tipped on to her port side, brass portholes still shimmering slightly in the murky water, her surface well preserved and home to colonies of marine growth.

A few miles away lies the broken remains of her almost identical "sister" ship, the SS Royal Archer, scattered across the sea bed some 15 miles west of May Island.

Stablemates in the London and Edinburgh Shipping Company, war with Germany transformed them into Merchant Navy workhorses, ferrying cargo between Scotland and England's capital cities, gum and paste for manufacturing, paper and that most crucial wartime commodity, food.

To be on board one when it was sunk by a Nazi attack would be bad enough.

Yet Archie, with his unsuspecting wife Mary and their daughter Joan waiting at home in Leith, ended up fighting for his life on both.

Incredibly the loss of the vessels just months apart did not even merit a mention in newspapers at the time.


Understandably, though, they dominated the childhood memories of Archie's daughter Joan Woodburn, now 79.

Now thanks to another quirk of fate, her vivid recollections of the Fusilier's unique role in bringing her parents together and both vessels' dramatic demise, are helping bring wartime history to life.

Tomorrow she will be a special guest of honour at Trinity House museum in Leith, where maritime history experts will explore the fates of the Forth's many wrecks as part of Scottish Archaeology Month.

Historic Scotland's maritime unit will reveal footage of a sonar survey of the Firth's most famous wreck, HMS Campania - one of Cunard's first great liners which sunk in 1918 - and a Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber.

Movingly for Joan, they'll also unveil recent underwater photography of the Royal Archer.

It will be a poignant event for the pensioner who spent years searching for two striking models of the vessels which she graphically recalled from her childhood, only to finally find them just a few miles away from her Portobello home, at Trinity House.

"I always remembered these huge models of the Fusilier and the Archer from when I was a little girl," says Joan, of Bryce Avenue.

"My mother would go to the shipping company offices in Bernard Street to pick up my father's wages and they were there. They were beautifully made, big with lots of detail and I loved to look at them because they reminded me of my father.

"When the offices closed, I always wondered what had happened to them."

Joan had given up hope of ever setting eyes on them again until last year when she popped into Trinity House for its open day.

"I walked in and, oh my goodness, there was the Archer," she says. "When I walked upstairs I found the Fusilier too.

"I'd been looking for years, and there they were."

Becoming reacquainted with the two vessels after so many years reopened poignant memories of when, as a little girl, she waved her dad off to serve on the Fusilier and the Archer.

The outbreak of war had transformed the glamorous liners into Merchant Navy workhorses, a far cry from the days when they'd cater for passengers in plush surroundings, serving breakfast for three shillings, dinner for four.

As war raged, Joan and her mother often had no idea where Archie might be. Which made his arrival on the doorstep of their home at 206 Leith Walk one bitter February evening in 1940, dishevelled and barely dressed, all the more disturbing.

"Of course there were no telephones, so we didn't know his ship had gone down," recalls Joan. "We heard a taxi outside, which was unusual enough. Then out he walked.

"He was wrapped in a blanket, wearing just long johns and shoes that didn't fit - he'd lost everything when the ship went down
"He'd been in Leith hospital, checked over and just sent home."

Her father had been on board the Archer, loaded with a cargo of gum and paste bound for Leith, when the blast from an underwater mine ripped through her bow.

The explosion destroyed three of her lifeboats and engulfed the wireless room in steam from burst pipes.

The captain frantically ordered three remaining lifeboats to be launched only for one to capsize, throwing the ship's quartermaster overboard.

Unable to swim, he drifted towards the damaged bow of the vessel, supported by his lifejacket.

In chaos, the remaining 28 crew, including Archie, struggled to launch the remaining lifeboats, pausing to rescue two stricken colleagues on the way.

The Royal Archer's demise was rapid - just 30 minutes after the explosion had occurred, she was gone. There was little time for recuperation for her crew either. Joan recalls her father being sent back to sea almost immediately.

This time he returned to the vessel which held such fond memories - the Royal Fusilier.

She was ferrying a cargo of rice and paper from London to Leith in June 1941 - an easy target for the German aircraft hunting for their prey along the east coast.

She was seven miles east of Amble in Northumberland when she was bombed.

As she began to list, the crew of 15 piled into lifeboats only to be told to return to the vessel while it was towed north by one of two destroyers in the area.

Seven miles north east of the Bass Rock, she could go no further and capsized.

Hugh Morrison, Collections Registrar for Historic Scotland, who runs the museum, says Joan's links with the two vessels has been invaluable in helping bring history to life.

"It is fantastic to have someone like Joan present who can bring the personal story to life of those who lived and served on some of Leith's most famous vessels," he says.

"We are delighted that she will be here this weekend to share her story with visitors."

The Trinity House, Secrets of the Forth, Archaeology Day takes place on Saturday. Entry is free.