IT’S not unusual for a character to overshadow his creator, but it often happens, and while it feels a little awkward, I present to you Para Handy, created by Neil Munro.

Let us first, though, pay the latter due. Inveraray-born journalist and proper writer Munro, whose other works included The Daft Days and The Lost Pibroch (short stories), was often deemed the successor of Robert Louis Stevenson. At his memorial service in Glasgow Cathedral, the critic Lauchlan MacLean Watt described him as "the greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott".

Yet his hero was neither a boy tussling with pirates nor a larger-than-life Highland outlaw. Para Handy was the canny Gaelic skipper of the Vital Spark, a Clyde puffer delivering coal, wood, gravel, furniture or livestock from Glasgow to Loch Fyne, the west highland coast, and the Hebrides.

He first appeared under the “Looker On” column for the Glasgow Evening News between 1905 and 1923, with Munro using the pen-name Hugh Foulis.

The first story, Para Handy – Master Mariner, describes “a short, thick-set man, with a red beard, a hard round felt hat, ridiculously out of harmony with a blue pilot jacket and trousers and a seaman's jersey”.

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Conversing with the journalist narrator, he observes: “Cot bless me! and do you tell me you can be makin' a living off that? I'm not asking you, mind, hoo mich you'll be makin', don't tell me; not a cheep! not a cheep! But I'll wudger it's more than Maclean the munister.”

He explains that he is, at that moment, “out of a chob”, and waxes lyrical about how he misses the Vital Spark, a “chust sublime” vessel, admittedly with a troublesome boiler, but composed essentially of “four men and a derrick, and a watter-butt and a pan loaf in the fo'c'sle”.

Alas, he’d temporarily lost his command when, delivering coals to Tarbert, he and his crew had popped into Greenock for “some marmalade”, a stop that ended up taking three days, due to the drams.

That, in his view, was the fault of Dougie the Mate, who’d suggested the stop, knowing full well how it would end up. Luckily, Para Handy got his job back, and was able once more to ply the high seas with Dougie, and Dan Macphail, the over-wrought and somewhat precious engineer (but “chust a fireman” in Para Handy’s eyes; he’d a weakness for penny novelettes and bodice-rippers), and The Tar, the lazy deckhand and cook “who was usually as tired when he rose in the morning as when he went to bed”.

The Tar was replaced by the young accordion-playing deckhand Sunny Jim, though not before Para Handy, to his distress, had thought he’d fallen overboard. However, on entering a public house in Ardrishaig – “No drinking, chust wan gless of beer” – he found him at the counter and was moved to ask: “What are you doing here with your eye in a sling?” Long story.

Another character who pops up is Hurricane Jack, whom Para Handy regards as a romantic buccaneer, “a sort of demigod … the most experienced seaman of modern times”, who wore on his feet “never anything else but 'lastic-sided boots”.

Para Handy himself was a bachelor, despite being “the sort of man, in many respects, who would fall an easy prey to the first woman on the look-out for a good home”. However, it was being away at sea so much that kept him out of their grasp. That was the thing about sea captains: they were not “aalways hinging aboot the hoose wi' their sluppers on”.

His many eccentricities included referring to swearing as “Abyssinian language”, and he always worried about being called in to see the vessel’s owner: "It's either a rise in pay, or he's heard aboot the night we had in Campbeltown.”

The name Para Handy is an anglicisation of "Para Shandaidh", which means "Peter (Paraig) son of Sandy", and his Sunday name is Peter Macfarlane. Whatever the handle, he will with excruciating false modesty describe himself as “Chust wan of Brutain's hardy sons”.

He exhibits no such modesty about the Vital Spark, “the smartest boat in the tred”, on a class with the Clyde steamers and certainly more than a cut above the Clutha ferries that carried passengers across the river.

Dougie the Mate is superstitious, which doesn’t help when the Vital Spark is engaged to transport Kirk ministers or gravestones, both considered bad luck on a boat. The Kirk and its various schisms feature often in the stories, with scripture expertly misquoted.

I’m guessing that Para Handy maybe appeals to Scots of a certain age. Though a ready-made audience was provided by Glaswegians of Highland lineage or who went “doon the watter” to Rothesay, Millport or Dunoon, when the stories were turned into a TV series, even people in Edinburgh enjoyed them.

There were three BBC adaptations. The one your correspondent remembers as a boy was The Vital Spark, broadcast in black and white in 1965-6, and later in colour in 1973-74, featuring Roddy McMillan as Para Handy, John Grieve as Macphail, Walter Carr as Dougie, and Alex McAvoy as Sunny Jim. A fantastic cast.

Indeed the televised stories have always been blessed with wonderful Scottish actors. Duncan Macrae starred as Para Handy in the first series, Para Handy – Master Mariner (1959), Angus Lennie as Macphail, the aforementioned McMillan as Dougie, and the equally aforementioned Grieve as Sunny Jim.

The Tales of Para Handy (1994-95) featured Gregor Fisher as his nibs, Rikki Fulton as Macphail, Sean Scanlan as Dougie, and Andrew Fairlie as Sunny Jim.

Literary-wise, various collections have been published, and Dunoon-based Stuart Donald faithfully recreated the originals in Para Handy Sails Again (1995) and Para Handy All at Sea (1996).

So, he’s some man, our Para. As well as coal and wood and farmyard beasts, he carries the soul of west highland Scotland. Let’s hear him sing once more as he returns from another spree: “Rolling home to bonnie Scotland/Rolling home, dear land, to thee/Rolling home to bonnie Scotland/Rolling home across the sea.”