Obituary: Tom Scott, Loch Lomond legend and ‘laird’ of Inchmurrin Island who saved many lives on the loch

Born: 25 November, 1925, in Girvan, South Ayrshire. Died: 16 April, 2012, in Paisley, aged 86

TOM Scott was known as “the King of the Loch”, the often-kilted owner of Loch Lomond’s biggest island, Inchmurrin, where he spent 80 of his 86 years and became a legend around the bonnie, bonnie banks. But he was also a record-breaking athlete as a young man before running his beloved island as a cattle and sheep farmer, salmon fisherman, rabbit-hunter, boatman, grouse shoot organiser, hotelier, restaurateur and one-man volunteer rescue team.

He was honoured by the Scottish parliament last year for saving more than 60 people during his lifetime from a freshwater loch that can be as treacherous as it is beautiful. He also rented out wooden cabins on 11 secluded acres of Inchmurrin to Scotland’s oldest and most famous naturist (nudist) colony, the Scottish Outdoor Club, and saw the current world haggis-hurling record – 180 feet, 10 inches – set on the island in 1984.

“Big Tom” was an imposing figure, who built almost everything on the island with his own hands – and these were huge hands that could pull nails out of a wooden plank, as a visiting writer noted.

Latterly he was supported in his farming and DIY by his equally-imposing sons, David and Dugald. He was a man never swayed by the status of his visitors. Billy Connolly, Paul Gascoigne, Ally McCoist, countless Hollywood film stars, local fishermen, off-duty cops – all got the same treatment: a warm welcome with a smile that became increasingly toothless over the years, or undisguised contempt backed by colourful language and, if worst came to worst, a 12-bore shotgun as a “deterrent”.

Thomas French Scott was born in Girvan, South Ayrshire, son of local farmer David Scott and his wife Ellen, a Girvan lass who also, by chance, had the surname Scott. Young Tom was brought up on the family farm, Laggish, in Barrhill near Girvan, before his father bought Inchmurrin in 1932 for the nice round figure of £1,000 in Scottish pound notes.

The island is now priceless. For several years it has also been part of the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, something Tom opposed, and delayed, because he felt the “Park” idea was unnecessary bureaucracy and a big waste of money. Bureaucracy was anathema to him, as were the finer points of the law.

Many years ago, after a lucrative night time netting of loch salmon for his family and restaurant, he laid his nets out on a lawn to dry, where they were spotted by mainland police and impounded. “But these are my strawberry patch nets,” he insisted before paying a 10-shilling fine to get them back.

Inchmurrin is the largest island of any inland waterway in Britain, watched over by Ben Lomond, straddling the Highland/Lowland fault, visible across the loch from mainland tourist sites such as Lomond Shores, the Duck Bay Marina (built by Tom’s brother Jay) and the luxury Cameron House hotel.

It was historically used for deer hunting by the Earl of Lennox, King James V1 of Scotland and the Duke of Montrose, whose family owned it until the early 20th Century. King Robert the Bruce planted yew trees on the island, Mary Queen of Scots dropped by, as did Rob Roy MacGregor to steal the island’s cattle.

After the Scott family arrived there in 1932, Tom and his younger brother Jay went to Muirlands primary school in the village of Arden on the mainland shores of the loch, ferried to and fro by their father in a wooden dinghy with a two-stroke British Seagull outboard engine. Rowing whenever the engine failed, they learned as infants how to navigate these difficult waters. (Tom’s own sons continue to ferry their own children or grandchildren to and from the mainland 80 years later, where school buses take them to Luss (Primary) or across the Black Hill to Helensburgh (Secondary).

After Muirlands, Tom attended the private Keil School in Dumbarton, where he wore the traditional green blazer and short trousers, even until he was a bulky 16-year-old, and the kilt on formal occasions. When his father died of pneumonia after saving someone from Loch Lomond, the 16-year-old Tom found himself running the island to support the family and keep his young brother Jay at school. (Saving people from the loch has continued to run in the family until this day).

At the time, the family farm on Inchmurrin was rudimentary, with half a dozen cows, a bull and a flock of sheep. It now has around 80 head of cattle, a dozen homes, mostly used for holidays, and the naturist colony.

With exceptional builds, Tom and Jay went on to become serious all-round athletes from the late 1940s through the 1950s, competing initially at the Luss Highland Games just across the loch from Inchmurrin. In addition to the traditional “heavy events” – wrestling, tossing the caber and putting the shot – Tom was swift of foot and high of leap. He broke the Scottish triple jump record with a leap of 47 feet three inches at the Festival of Britain Clan Gathering in 1951.

He and Jay, who married the well-known actress and singer Fay Lenore, were the finest all-round athletes in Scotland of the era. A famous Scott’s Porage Oats packet featured a shot-putting athlete who looked a lot like Jay, although the porridge makers were not directly related to the Inchmurrin Scotts.

With his brother, and later with his two sons and his wife Anne (from Bonhill, in the Vale of Leven not far from the loch), Tom built holiday homes to supplement the difficult farming income. Later came a hotel, restaurant and bar, which remains a favourite tourist location (though closed in winter), with guests coming either on their own boats or the Scott family’s personal ferry.

In 1947, when Loch Lomond was frozen over, Tom walked the two and a half miles to mainland Balloch to get his mum some cigarettes. He trailed a ladder to have something to hold on to should the ice break. It took him an hour each way. In 1963, when it froze again, he made the same return trip, this time trailing a pink cast-iron bath he had spotted at a decent price in Balloch.

He caught many a fish in the loch but his biggest fish, a 48-pound salmon, he caught in the River Tay. Stuffed and in a glass case, it now keeps an eye on drinkers in the hotel bar. His pride in that catch, almost a record, was only diminished by the fact that a bigger one – a 64-pounder also reeled in on the Tay in 1922 – had been caught by a woman, Miss Georgina Ballantine.

Tom initially supplemented the island’s delicate income by snaring and selling rabbits until the myxomatosis disease in the 1950s put rabbit off the menu in most homes. He later organised grouse and pheasant shoots for would-be marksmen, mostly English, in the season. He was not happy when one English “marksman” mistook one of his cows for a grouse and scored a direct hit. Another shooter blasted a pheasant through the window of one of his holiday homes, The Lodge.

Tom hated leaving his beloved island and rarely did so, except to ferry guests to and fro or buy supplies. When friends showed up for his ruby wedding anniversary in a nice restaurant on the mainland in 1995, they found Anne alone with the rest of her family. He and Anne were delighted when their sons, David and Dugald, married two sisters, Dorothy and Morag Kirkpatrick, also from Bonhill, who had worked in the island restaurant. After a tragic caravan fire on the island in 1959, Tom and Anne adopted the surviving child, Douglas Campbell, who became a dear son to them, and brother to David and Dugald.

I stood behind Tom many a time, just the two of us aboard, as he steered his ferry, Danny Boy, from the mainland to Inchmurrin in all kinds of weather. Few words were ever spoken because none needed to be. In the words of his son Dugald, he was “his own man, bowing to no-one.”

Tom Scott died in the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley. He is survived by his wife Anne (née Hall), sons David and Dugald, daughters-in-law Dorothy (Dot) and Morag, and grandchildren Tom, Ellie, Isla, Hamish, Shona, Iona and Janie. His adopted son Douglas died in 2001, his brother Jay in 1997.

Phil Davison