A newly-discovered video has emerged featuring what is thought to be the only colour footage of Dundee’s jute stowers at work.
The video of workers unloading lorries and stacking bales of jute at the Victoria Spinning Company’s warehouse off Brook Street has been uploaded by Dundee website hoolywoodproductions.com after one of the former gang of stowers approached the website’s host Billy Hoolachan.
”It came about when Chic Mitchell, who is in his 70s, contacted me and said he had loads of photos and a video of them all,” Bill said. ”There was only one copy and he wondered if I would be able to put it up on the website.
”It’s a great video. There was about half an hour of footage and I went through it and edited it down to about ten minutes. My friend Steve Buxey and I composed some music for it and we got Chic to do a voiceover on it, telling us who everybody is in the film and what they were doing.
”It was filmed in the eighties, and Chic says as far as he knows it’s the only footage in existence of stowers at work.
”It’s a great wee insight into what they had to do. It was really hard graft. They unloaded about 18 lorries a day that worked out at about 792 bales they stowed every day.
”His mate Alfie Fleming made the film and you can see their other pals Matt McVicar and Geordie Ward.”
”It’s a brilliant part of history,” Billy added. ”Chic is across in Switzerland visiting his family for Christmas, but he’s been on the phone asking when it’s going up on the site.
”It was great when he got in touch and it’s brilliant with him narrating it too. I thought about asking Brian Cox to do it but then we just thought Chic was the obvious one to do it.
”He remembers the guys and tells the story as it was. I just asked a few questions and he was a natural at it. Matt McVicar is the main man he was Chic’s best mate.”