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Davy Bell (left) and Donald McArthur – two coopers and the product of their labour.
When I look back on my life, there are a number of wonderful people who have befriended and, above all, shaped me. One of those very important people is undoubtedly Davy Bell. I would certainly not have become who I am today if he had not existed. Davy Bell was simply the person who inspired me the most. That is why I would like to give a lot of space here to remember him and to thank him from the bottom of my heart. Davy was not only my teacher in the art of barrel making. He was much more than that, and I learned so much about life from him.
When I was a young apprentice just beginning to find my way in this world in 1963, the first days in the distillery were very exciting for me. I wanted to be good at what I did, with Mr McColl’s announcement that I would have a sort of probationary period first, during which I could do no wrong, always at the back of my mind. I had no concerns that I would deliberately cause trouble; rather, I was worried that I would make a mistake because I didn’t know any better. That’s why I needed someone to take me by the hand, Davy being exactly the teacher I needed, and believe me, there couldn’t have been a better one. He’d known me as a child and took me under his wing. He knew how to ease my fears with few words and gave me a great sense of security. My place was definitely by his side, and for whatever reason, he adopted me. I was so proud to be able to learn with him, to learn from the number-one barrel maker. Every barrel maker is given a number when they join the union and every time one of them retires, you move up one. When I started, I was number 782 – but Davy was and still is number one for me! He was number one not only in Scotland, but across the world.
Jim’s teacher Davy Bell (right).
Davy had always been a well-known and respected man on Islay. You could count on him attending church every Sunday to reinforce his beliefs. Although he certainly did not have an easy life and had seen a lot of death and suffering in the First World War, this hadn’t thrown him off the straight and narrow. Perhaps that is why Davy was a great man throughout his life, not only for me, with very firmly held and reliable values. I remember very well his first words as my teacher at Bowmore, “Stay away from drinking whisky, work hard, and don’t steal whisky!”
He had experienced all too often what happened when these rules were not followed. Too many didn’t follow them, and had to bear the consequences. If you were dishonourably fired from a distillery back then, it was hard to gain a foothold on the island again. Davy was familiar with such personal situations and knew that it was usually the families, the wives and the children who suffered. This was not unique to Islay, but was a phenomenon that occurred everywhere whisky was made, exactly what Davy wanted to protect me from. I, his apprentice, was not to meet this fate. For him, his craft as a passionate barrel maker was not just a profession, but a vocation. For him, it took much more than technical skill and ability. He was looking for a fundamentally honest, sincere character, for that is precisely why barrel makers were respected everywhere. They were special men who had a wonderful charisma, and I was apprenticed with the number one.
Jim at 21 as an apprentice cooper on a sherry butt in 1968.
August 1st 1963 was not only my first working day at the distillery, but it was also to be important in my life for another reason. I showed up on time for work, perhaps even overly-punctual, having dressed in what I thought was appropriate for the job. When Davy approached me, he looked me up and down and said, “You have a hole in your shoe.” He was right. In those days I didn’t worry about shoes. I had only one pair – that was all we could afford. Davy admonished me: “You can’t possibly work here with shoes that have a hole in them. You can’t! You really need decent boots to work in.” I tried to convince him to give me a month, after which I could afford new shoes from my first wage, but at that moment it was not even remotely possible to think about new shoes. But Davy was adamant, because he knew how important decent footwear would be. So he took me by the hand to the local shoe shop, and there picked out the best pair and bought them for me. They cost a guinea (one pound and one shilling), a princely sum for the day. “Listen, Jim, every Friday you get your wages and you give me five shillings. That’s how you pay me back. You need good shoes as a cooper.” You won’t believe it, but those were the first new shoes I’d had in my life – mind-blowing! I will never forget that. It was day one of a new beginning for me that started with a new teacher and ended with new shoes.
In those days, when I started learning the craft of barrel making, the hogshead was particularly popular, a type I first got to know when rolling countless numbers of these casks with my hands to various locations in the distillery. A hogshead holds 55 gallons of whisky. A gallon is an imperial measure of volume corresponding to about 4.5 litres. At that time, a hogshead was usually made from former American bourbon barrels, supplied by the puffers in the form of flat packages tied together with a wire, consisting of the individual cask staves and the lids. The American bourbon barrel only holds about 40 gallons, so the barrels could not simply be reassembled directly from a bundle of staves; you had to find the right staves from different packages. In addition, a new and larger lid had to be made. If you wanted to increase the volume of the American barrels in comparison to that of the hogsheads, you could only do so by increasing the diameter, because the height remained the same.
All in all, making a barrel is a very laborious business and sometimes a very dangerous one at that. Coopers work with extremely sharp tools and great heat to bring the hard oak wood into a precise shape. The barrel rings from America could not be used because they were too narrow, so they also had to be made new as riveted and precisely round iron bands. Heat, smoke, sharp edges, blades and dangers were everywhere. With a hammer, one hit the ring hard but evenly over the lid and the staves, to be able to build such a barrel. You can imagine that one wrong blow could have had devastating consequences. Those were not the only challenges back then, because barrel makers were not paid by the hour. The abbreviation ‘PBR’ – Paid by Result – applied. You only got paid if you produced a perfect, 100 per cent leak-proof barrel. If you worked sloppily and the barrel leaked, you had merely wasted material and time.
Davy Bell – cooper #1.
For Davy it was also a question of honour, adamant that only perfect barrels left his workshop. That meant a hard school for me, as Davy really wanted me to learn the craft from scratch. I soon learned that the word ‘craft’ would mean to complete the work entirely by hand. In the meantime, Bowmore cooperage had machines powered by electricity, removing all kinds of hard and dangerous work and making things somewhat easier. However, they were taboo for me. For a long time, Davy only let me work with the hand tools; I was only allowed to use the knives and the hammers. At one point I dared to ask why I wasn’t allowed to use the machines; after all they were safer and faster. Davy slowly turned to me, took his pipe out of his mouth, blew his smoke into the hall with relish and put his arm on my shoulder. Then he said: “You know, my boy, if the next power cut brings all the machines to a standstill and absolutely nothing works here in the distillery, you’ll be one of the lucky ones. Because you can still make barrels and earn money.” He was often right – power cuts were (and still are) not uncommon. He wanted me to learn how to make barrels, that I should master the craft, and become one with it. And I desperately wanted to become like him. This hard school I went through was my university of life, with Davy as my professor. I was allowed to learn so much more than just making barrels, Davy proving to be the greatest teacher I could ever have imagined. He was tough, consistent, strict, but always fair. On top of
