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Notes Rec. R. Soc. (2009) 63, 191–202 doi:10.1098/rsnr.2008.0030 Published online 25 February 2009

RECOLLECTION

The University Marine Biological Station Millport: in the beginning was the vision (1970)

P. G. Moore*, University Marine Biological Station Millport, Isle of Cumbrae KA28 0EG, UK

INTRODUCTION

Having recently opted for early retirement (after more than 36 years coming up through the ranks as an academic at the University Marine Biological Station Millport (UMBSM) as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor and Acting Director) and thereby relinquished my status as the longest-serving member of permanent staff, it seemed appropriate to set down my recollections of how the UMBSM came to be (not least to furnish a human dimension for the benefit of future historians of the subject). The history of the Marine Station at Millport is a long and distinguished one1,2 and, in a series of recent papers,3–10 I have been endeavouring to flesh out that early background; that is, before the establishment of the Scottish Marine Biological Association (SMBA) in 1914. When the SMBA—primarily a research organization—finally vacated the then rather run- down Millport laboratory in 1970 and moved to a new site at Dunstaffnage Bay (), it was taken over by the universities of and to facilitate field teaching of at tertiary level, with priority being given to the two parent universities and other Scottish universities (prioritization then cascading to other universities, higher education institutions, field studies organizations and school parties, etc., as space allowed).11 In a not unbiased view expressed at the time, Millport had changed for the better.12,13 The cost of the Millport project to the universities of London and Glasgow at takeover, split 50:50, was £6793 19s 6d. The University Grants Committee (UGC) approved the sum of £10 000 to adapt the Station’s buildings to accommodate 70 student places (spread over three classrooms). Probably, in the end, the ratio of London:Glasgow financial support for Millport stabilized somewhere between 60:40 and 70:30. Full administrative and financial responsibility for the Station by these universities took place with effect from 1 August 1970. In that first year, the princely sum of £48 780 served to run the whole enterprise.11 Departments of zoology within the colleges of the University of London, in the 1960s and 1970s, were awash with marine biologists (an influence, sadly, that has declined steadily over the past 40 years). The heads of zoology departments in many London colleges were distinguished marine biologists: Professor Norman Millott (1912–90) was at Bedford College, Professor Joe Webb was at Westfield, and Professor N. B. (‘Freddie’) Marshall (FRS 1970) was at Queen Mary College. Professor Eric (later Sir Eric) Smith FRS (1909–90) had been at Queen Mary before taking over as Director at the Marine Biological Association at Plymouth.

*[email protected]

191 This journal is q 2009 The Royal Society Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

192 P. G. Moore

Professor Richard Purchon (1916–92) was at Chelsea. Rodney Phillips Dales was also at Bedford (as was John Dodge in botany), both Phil Rainbow and Andrew Campbell were at Queen Mary in the mid 1970s, and Richard Newell had been there. Minnie Courtney, Brenda Thake and Rob Hughes were at Westfield (where Professor Jim Green had a broad interest in crustaceans besides the purely freshwater ones). Alan Brafield was at Queen Elizabeth, and Mary Whitear had some marine interests at University College. Both John Evans and John Binyon were on the staff at Royal Holloway, as was Roland Emson at King’s College. Queen Mary College, at one time, boasted a small field-hut facility at Whitstable on the north Kent coast (run on a shoestring, with an eye kept on it by Professor Gordon Newell, who lived close by)14 but the Thames estuary foreshore had its limitations and there was no dedicated facility in the University of London for marine fieldwork on the scale of that which was seen to be desirable. Things came to a head after Gordon Newell’s death14 in 1968 and, in that year, a UGC Working Party was formed to investigate the matter; when the greater part of the SMBA pulled out of Millport, the University of London made its case (mainly as a result of the advocacy by Norman Millott and Joe Webb) and was offered the Millport Station.11 It should be borne in mind that London University, with its vast experience of running its external degree programme and administering university colleges in far-flung parts of the Commonwealth (for example the West Indies and Nigeria), found no difficulty in contemplating running a facility merely at the other end of the . No doubt adhering to the principle that he who gets (shares?) the vision gets the job, Millott was persuaded to move north to take charge of establishing the new enterprise for the few years before his retirement. Besides, he had already had the experience of setting up a marine station at Port Royal in Jamaica.15 His eldest daughter recalls that he was very happy at Millport (see also note 12), even if some might have regarded the move as a step down. At least he had relinquished a load of administration in London University,15,16 and field courses were lots of fun.17,18 He had himself described a Sheffield University field course, recalled from his own student days at Robin Hood’s Bay, as ‘a rumbustious affair’.19 The , however, had had a long (and chequered) history of involvement with the management of the Millport Marine Station going back to its earliest manifestations (see references above) and doubtless felt that it should not just sit back and watch a Sassenach university set up shop on ‘its’ territory. So, it was agreed that the Marine Station should be managed in partnership between them; this in spite of the fact that, as Millott had recounted to a reporter,12 ‘the two universities have nothing whatsoever to do with each other’.13 This accounts for why the UMBSM was given its cumbrous, and oddly anonymous-sounding, title (although all the locals simply refer to it as the Marine Station, as they have done for more than a century). The novelty of this arrangement should not be underestimated. The prevailing Realpolitik in autonomous British universities, where empire- building was rife, was (and often still is) that even sister departments rarely cooperated with one another; let alone two competing universities (interestingly, Millott himself had been antagonistic to the subsequent merger of Bedford College with Royal Holloway College within the University of London, which took place after his translation to Millport). The partnership between London and Glasgow universities may have set out to be one between equals but it was always led through London; all members of staff at the UMBSM were employed on the London payroll, for instance (academic staff having been granted honorary status in Glasgow). World-class marine biologists from Glasgow had been intimately involved with Millport’s Marine Station in the past (Sir John Graham Kerr FRS (1869–1957) and Sir FRS (1899–1986) most notably)—if sometimes locally Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

Millport’s vision 193 controversially in the case of Graham Kerr (see references above)—but in the 1970s Professor J. D. Robertson, Peter Meadows, Peter Spencer-Davies, Peter Norton (and later Alan Taylor and Douglas Neil) retained active marine interests in the Zoology Department, while Professor Don Boney and Trevor Norton were authorities on seaweeds in the botany department. Professor Alastair Wardlaw and Harry Birkbeck nurtured marine interests in the microbiology department, as did Professor Adam Curtis in cell biology. Maurice Yonge, of course, had also been the first chairman of the Field Studies Council, so there had been no lack of sympathy for marine biological fieldwork at Glasgow at one time. In an undated typescript from that period, written by Millott, proselytizing the potential of the UMBSM (which I assume he had circulated sedulously around the universities)—much reminiscent of an earlier such missive of similar intent dated 1909,7 which I rediscovered when clearing out my old room recently—he had stated: It is obviously important that the acquisition of these valuable facilities and the plans for their development, which could have far-reaching implications for teaching, research, and the development of marine biology in the U.K., should be made known as quickly and widely as possible. Many biologists will already be familiar with the Millport Station in its former role, but it is hoped that the appended outline of its reorganisation will prove helpful and in addition may perhaps serve to allay some anxiety that has been expressed concerning the future of the Station and the facilities on which many universities and other institutions of higher education have come to rely. It is of interest that the typescript listed the charges then applying: table fees for research workers, £3 per week, £10 per month or £100 per year; undergraduate courses given by the Station, £6 per head per week; other classes taught by their own staff (depending on time of year), £4 to £2 per head per week. I had been encouraged to apply for the first advertised academic post at the UMBSM by John Gray (1941–2007) at my old laboratory at Robin Hood’s Bay (run by Leeds University). The advertisement had for some time been pinned on the noticeboard in the galley area, where we all assembled for coffee. Pointing to the advert, John asked me whether I had applied for the position, to which I replied, ‘No, as it was advertised as Lecturer/Senior Lecturer’ and I thought I would not stand any chance of even getting offered an interview (because at that stage I had not even finished my PhD). At the time I had been setting my sights, more modestly, on a postdoctoral fellowship (which the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) simultaneously offered me). John, however, berated my diffidence, reminding me of the old adage ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’; so apply I did. And much to my surprise and delight I was called for interview (in a letter from Norman Millott, which began, jarringly anachronistically to my young eyes, ‘Dear Moore’; so I replied impishly, in the affirmative, ‘Dear Millott’) and duly arrived at Pier for interview on a hot summer’s day, to find I could pick out the other uncomfortably suited candidates among the mele´e of tee-shirted and shorts-clad holidaymakers quite easily. I met John Gamble for the first time in that way. I held out little hope of success; all the other candidates interviewed already had their PhDs. Indeed, some had done postdoctoral work, so I looked forward mainly to the chance to see Millport for the first time, which was in my mind the other holy grail of British marine laboratories (besides Plymouth, where I had already made my obeisance on the Easter course in 1967, alongside Tony Stebbing and Steve Lockwood). I recall that my interview committee included Norman Millott, Joe Webb and Glasgow’s David Newth (1921–88). One question therein posed still stands out vividly: Joe Webb asked me what I knew about the mechanical properties offish slime. Apparently, there had been a recent paper in Nature Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

194 P. G. Moore about it that he felt I should have absorbed (in his mind, my having worked on kelp fauna and kelp plants exuding plenteous mucilage should have proved enough of a piscine interest provocation!). The quizzical sideways looks that the other members of the interview panel gave Joe remain a picture in my mind to this day. My reply, that I knew absolutely nothing about the mechanical properties of fish slime, seemed quite apposite to my then-adjudged hopeless prospects of ever being offered the job (as I read the runes). However, maybe blunt honesty had been appreciated, because that evening Norman Millott and Joe Webb came round to the caretaker’s house, where I was being put up overnight, to offer me the job. You could have knocked me over with a feather; I accepted with alacrity and was cock-a-hoop as I set off around the island on a borrowed bicycle to check out the place that was to be my home for a few years at least. Here was I potentially set up for life: a permanent job, a marine biologist at one of the cathedrals of the subject no longer needing to be beset with worries about how to support a pregnant wife. My luck had held. Still none had seen through my deficiencies or had adequately appreciated the extent of my gaping knowledge lacunae (something of which I was only too aware; and still am). Norman later told me he had wanted to appoint an all-rounder, a bucket- and-spade ecologist (as he often called me); in retrospect, perhaps one who was cheap to run as well. He valued my coming from Jack Lewis’s stable (as, all my subsequent life, have I; see Preface to Moore and Seed’s compilation of essays, The ecology of rocky coasts).20 I started as a (very green) lecturer at the UMBSM on 1 October 1971 on a salary of £1600 per year. Norman Millott (always ‘Prof.’ to the rest of us) was Director, Eva Palfalvy was Station Secretary, arriving a few days before me, and Steve Gorzula was the Station’s first PhD student (working under Millott on Ophiocomina nigra, a black brittlestar). The technical staff had all been inherited from the SMBA, but even though long retired, Millport’s most famous scientist, Sheina Marshall FRS (routinely),21 and the ex-Laboratory Steward, Ted Latham (occasionally), still had a presence in the laboratory. The SMBA’s technical staff had all been given the option of either moving to Oban or staying under new management at Millport. Millott was quoted in an article in the local paper12 as stating [t]he Station had been rather run-down before the changeover . and the staff did not know what was going to happen as far as their jobs were concerned. When the Universities took over, and there were different kinds of work involved, the staff responded wonderfully, and quite frankly, I don’t know where we would have been without some of them.13,22 That certainly did mean though that the embryonic UMBSM benefited from a wealth of local experience of marine organisms in the form of the Specimen Sales Department staff (Bill ‘Bud’ Finlayson, Donald Cameron and Bobby Wilkie) and the boat crew (Robbie McBay, Johnnie Mackenzie and Hughie Aiken). The SMBA’s Thermal Pollution Unit remained (under Ian Barclay), directed from Oban by Peter Barnett. The smaller of the SMBA’s two research vessels, the old MFV Mizpah (BA 11, a 40-foot herring boat with a biblical name denoting a benediction) suitably re-liveried, had been transferred to the UMBSM after a brief interlude in joint ownership with the SMBA (figure 1).

WHY DID THE SMBA MOVE FROM MILLPORT?

This is a question to which there is no single answer. Several issues contributed to the decision, relating to biopolitics, fashions in marine science, secondary educational and lifestyle issues, staff recruitment difficulties and personal animosities. Although the earliest suggestion within the SMBA was for a ‘hut in the heather’ further north, while retaining Millport as the main base Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

Millport’s vision 195

Figure 1. MFV Mizpah in the UMBSM’s green livery. (Online version in colour.) for its activities, this rapidly disappeared as a prospect. The Director of the SMBA in the late 1960s, Dr Clifford H. Mortimer FRS, who was—and very much still is—basically a lacustrine hydrologist (ex-Freshwater Biological Association (FBA), Windermere),23 was of the opinion that better access to the continental shelf for oceanography could be obtained from Oban than from Millport (interestingly echoing a view expressed by none other than that doyen of dredger naturalists, Canon Alfred Merle Norman (1831–1918), in Victorian times).8 That view prevailed with the NERC, which was moving increasingly to big ship-based operations in the Rockall Trough and wanted to base the then new RRS Challenger at Oban. Peter Barnett, however, recalls his father-in-law (a retired Master Mariner) prophesying at the time that as soon as anything went wrong, the ship would soon be round in the Clyde. And so it proved. Challenger used regularly to berth at Ardrossan, 8 miles from Millport, and at Fairlie, opposite 1 the Marine Station, some 2 ⁄2 miles away, for trans-shipping activities, as these were more convenient points of mainland access than Dunstaffnage Bay (in fact Dunstaffnage Bay proved to be quite awkward for berthing such a large vessel). Mortimer also was of the opinion, one reiterated to me by Maurice Yonge after the universities had taken over at Millport,5 that it was the problem with recruiting skilled technical staff that bedevilled Millport (a conclusion reached by Mortimer after problems he had encountered with the wife of a key electronics technician). Indeed, in a report about the proposed move to Oban published in the Largs & Millport Weekly News,24 Mortimer stated that it was necessary ‘because of a tremendous upsurge in the amount of research being tackled. And it was also difficult to expand on an island where [hiring] clerical staff and educating children is a problem’. Certainly, those among the younger generation of scientists at the SMBA, notably those with young families at Millport (Robin Gibson and Peter Barnett), favoured a mainland Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

196 P. G. Moore base to circumvent the weekly boarding requirement at (on the adjacent island of Bute) for secondary school-age children then prevailing at Millport. Yet others, such as Harry Powell, looked forward to easier access to the rich collecting sites in the western sea lochs. Tim Bagenal eventually rebelled against the inadequacies of the ferry service to the island (in the 1960s amounting to five ferries a day, car ferries three times a week, last ferry to Millport at 18.30) after being left stranded on the mainland once too often (he left to go to the FBA at Windermere). Mortimer had even advanced the idea that the bright lights of cultural Glasgow would be more readily accessible to Oban-ites (who could go out to the theatre and get back that same night, although Peter Barnett said to me recently that he managed to do this once, getting back home at 01.30). Tensions also existed at Millport among the scientific community (what was new?), as between the Lord Rothschild FRS/Harold Barnes axis on the one hand and the old guard of Sheina Marshall FRS, A. P. Orr and Maurice Yonge FRS on the other. The eventual transfer of most of the SMBA’s scientists did not happen overnight; it was phased between 1967 and 1970,24,25 but eventually the removal of the library became the final deciding factor in everyone’s mind. It was with a certain amount of foreboding among Millport’s populace, though, that the move was taking place;24 the Marine Station was a very significant driving force to this small island’s economy. The change to local government boundaries that subsequently saw Cumbrae being removed from Buteshire and transferred to Ayrshire (Cunninghame district), which occurred in 1975, and the improvement to the ferry service (roll-on-roll-off car ferries introduced in 1972,25 making a 10-minute crossing to Largs, half-hourly at the height of the tourist season, from the old Tattie Pier at the north of the island; a distinct improvement on the erstwhile half-hour steamer route to Millport’s Pier), both came too late to have any effect on the transfer decision.

NORMAN MILLOTT: FIRST DIRECTOR OF THE UMBSM (1970–76)

Norman Millott (figure 2)26 was an ‘echinoderm man’, a physiologist and functional anatomist (not only of the old school); one much taken with the extra-optical responses to light, for example of tropical long-spined Diadema sea urchins.14,15,27 He had been a professor in London University’s college in the West Indies before taking over as Head of the Zoology Department in Bedford College (then a ladies’ college) in London University. Dr Steve Gorzula, a much-loved member of Millport’s community during his three-year residence here (Millott’s memorably apt description), has supplied me with the following illuminating reminiscence: I had the privilege of being an undergraduate at Bedford College when Millott was Head of 1 Department. He gave a unique elective course called Animal Mechanics. It was only a ⁄4 unit, but it was one of the most interesting courses that I have ever taken. At the beginning of the course ‘the Prof’ told us that when he was young he had wanted to study engineering. However, his father insisted that there was no future in that field because anything worthwhile had already been discovered in the nineteenth century. Thus, he became a zoologist but his research on Diadema attests to the fact that his core interest was to discover how things work. In that undergraduate course we learned about the mechanical similarities between the struts and ties of the Golden Gate Bridge and those of a bison’s vertebral column and rib cage, the stable flight of gliders and albatrosses, the unstable flight of Spitfires and sparrows, swing-wing jet fighters and kestrels, tube girders and femurs, fibre-glass and cartilage, and so on. Perhaps Norman Millott was among the first to teach bioengineering principles. Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

Millport’s vision 197

Figure 2. Professor Norman Millott. It is indeed interesting to recall—as an aside—that McNeill Alexander FRS once averred27 that it was Rodney Dales, in Millott’s department, who in 1966 was behind the invitation to him to write a book on the mechanics of animal structures that became his classic Animal mechanics.28 Assuredly, animal mechanics was alive and well at Bedford College in the late 1960s. Suave and urbane, with a vast store of classical zoological knowledge and anecdote, Millott had served as an officer in the Royal Air Force (Volunteer Reserve) Technical Branch during the war. His crinkly haired ‘Brylcreem-boy’ image remained untarnished while at Millport, and he cut a dapper pipe-smoking figure striding to and from his home (Dunmore House) in Marine Parade, clad in gabardine raincoat, Tyrolean-style hat set at a jaunty angle and battered briefcase always in hand (London commuting-style). Coffee times—bizarrely held in the Station’s draughty entrance foyer at the bottom of the stairs so far as the academic staff were concerned—would be made memorable by Norman’s stories about the great and the good of zoology. How else would you know that the great American invertebrate zoologist Libbie Hyman (1888–1969) could ‘spit like a man’? Or, that the immaculately turned out London zoologist Harold Munro Fox FRS (1889–1967) (whom Norman replaced as Head of Zoology at Bedford College in 195529 but whom, by his own account, he had first encountered at Birmingham University when sitting a school certificate zoology practical examination) possessed ‘an incomparable collection of pornography’? Norman’s anecdotes about organisms extended to poems and ditties about them, theatrically enhancing lengthy evening seminars to student classes about the results of a day’s dredging on Millport’s MB1 courses (an accredited ‘half course unit’ course). I only wish I could recall his cracker about the megrim (Lepidorhombus whiffiagonis). The trouble with Norman’s fund of anecdotes, though, was that their delivery tended to expand beyond the time that students were used to regard as appropriate to a seminar at the end of a long working day and on one memorable occasion, with a large class (maybe 70–80 students) packed tightly into Classroom 1 with standing room only at the back, I well recall seeing the door behind the class mysteriously and silently open and close, while Norman was in full flight and turned to write on the blackboard, as several students crawled out on hands and knees unbeknown to their impassioned instructor.30 Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

198 P. G. Moore

The Prof. was renowned for his effortless ambidextrous drawing ability, creating composite pictures in coloured chalk on the blackboard with lightning speed. His capabilities in zoological drawing doubtless stemmed from his Sheffield mentor then at Manchester University (whose staff Millott had joined as a demonstrator in zoology), H. Graham Cannon FRS (1897–1963), of whose stippling technique31 Norman was a great advocate and admirer. Drawing skills, of course, were once de rigueur for zoologists (see Morton’s obituary of Dick Purchon,32 and Andrews and Allen’s of Alastair Graham FRS).19 Millott’s lecturing technique was equally riveting, involving a very characteristic rocking motion backwards and forwards on feet planted like a runner’s at the starting line, for all the world as if about to launch himself at the front row. The sparkle in his eye, referred to elsewhere,16,29 was notable. Following a naturalist tradition with an impeccable pedigree stretching back to Gilbert White,33 it twinkled most in response to female forms. Millott showed a distinct preference for young ladies, particularly those who had emanated from his old Bedford College. He often declaimed, in those less politically correct times, that his selection criteria for undergraduates there had been simple: one-third academic achievement, one-third interview performance and one-third easiness on the eye. Although at Millport he drove an immaculate dark blue Lancia saloon (assiduously chamois-leathered before being garaged whenever it got wet), I feel sure that in the RAF he must have driven a sports car (note below)! He retained other old-school values and peremptorily ejected Hull University’s Dr David Lewis from the premises after he had discovered him bathing his baby in the prep room sink. David (a visiting researcher) and his wife, with babe, had driven up to Millport and were camping in the car park in their Dormobile, whose washing facilities were inadequate for the task. Millott referred to pretty much every male he met, regardless of age, as ‘laddie’, a term of endearment that sounded a mite patronizing to some (Professor Don Boney, his contemporary, had registered to me its feeling bizarre on one occasion); but it was affectionately meant. His only paternal words of advice to me as a tyro academic were memorably these: ‘don’t write too many joint papers, laddie, if you ever want a DSc’ and ‘you’ll not need more than ten sides of notes to give a lecture, laddie’. With those instructions ringing in my ears I was let loose on a career teaching the next generation all that they needed to know about marine biology (nowadays the induction course for newly appointed lecturers in Glasgow University takes three years to complete). I remember thinking at the time that it was a pity that Millott was no longer active in research (I had much looked forward to John Allen’s arrival to establish that ethos when Norman retired) although, as I can well understand now, it was readily explicable; if for no other reason, the Prof. would hardly have had the time. I recall his telling me, though, when we were on a ’bus together going to a meeting in Glasgow University, that he had got to the stage where his knowledge of physics was limiting his ability to take his researches on the light responses of Diadema any further. That said, he had continued doing important original work on echinoderm physiology and functional anatomy (with his collaborators Keiichi Takahashi in Tokyo and H. Gwynne Vevers at London Zoo) well into the 1960s. He himself realized acutely the primacy of re-establishing a research reputation for the Station. As he made clear in the Third Annual Report of the UMBSM, ‘a nucleus of only one permanent scientist and a handful of temporary researchers is not enough for the maintenance of long- term viable research within the Station’.34 He consolidated his own earlier research work on extra-ocular photosensitivity and, in retirement, produced a little book on the subject.35 He also set about writing a textbook on marine biology, battling increasing arthritis to do so. Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

Millport’s vision 199

Sadly for him it never saw the light of day because his only copy of the completed manuscript (a lesson to be learned) got lost in the post between Millport and the publishers and he abandoned the project that had taken him so long to accomplish. During its gestation he had bounced bits of it off me and my colleague Jim Atkinson (who was appointed in 1974) and I think we were both of the opinion that he might have had a hard job selling it to students, for it came across as rather old-fashioned ecology. Norman, however, certainly did a magnificent job in getting the UMBSM off to a cracking start. According to Professor John Cloudsley-Thompson, the University of London took the setting up of the UMBSM very calmly. In general, people there liked the idea.36 And Millott certainly knew the ins and outs of the administrative machinery and the key personnel who made the decisions that mattered in London University (The Clerk to the Court, Mr J. R. ‘Hamish’ Stewart OBE, proved a long-term doughty ally of the Marine Station); that all helped immensely. In addition, his own administrative skills were considerable: he had been a Staff Councillor and Dean of Science (and, later, Governor) at Bedford College, as well as having chaired the Board of Studies in Zoology at London University (1961–65).16,29 He had also ‘headhunted’ Eva Palfalvy, a sharp lady of Hungarian background from London University’s administration, to help him run this new venture. He acquired an impressive string of major capital assets for the Station in quick succession: two new research vessels (MFV Leander and MFV Evadne; the latter was initiated by Millott but commissioned, in 1977, after he had retired. Subsequently, these vessels were re-registered as RV Aora and RV Aplysia when they were required to come off the fishing-boat register.); the nearby property Ravenscraig, which was converted into flats for postgraduates and visiting scientists; Keppel Pier, which he took over from Caledonian MacBrayne; and the undergraduate student hostel block (now named the Norman Millott Hall of Residence in his honour) that he had built. I recall his secretary, Mrs C. S. Mackay (‘Nina’ to some, always ‘Ky’ to us), saying to me on one occasion—in admiration of Norman’s administrative abilities—that she did not know how his mind could take in so many things simultaneously (proving that women do not have the monopoly on multitasking skills). Sir Eric Smith was spot-on when he wrote, in a letter to Norman dated 28 September 1970:37 ‘How busy you are, and to good effect. But it is easy to maintain one’s enthusiasm in a good cause and when working in pleasant surroundings as I well know from Plymouth experience.’ Memorably, and (justifiably) paternally proud, Norman took the wheel of Leander on her maiden voyage from the builder’s yard (Morris & Lorimer at Sandbank, Dunoon) to Millport, pleased as Punch to be sailing ‘his baby’ down the (the skipper, Mick Parker, quietly reassuring me out of earshot that the boat was safely steering itself on autopilot; after all, had not Norman equally memorably once nearly put his car onto the beach when failing to take the right-angled bend in the road at Lazaretto Point, approaching Sandbank, slowly enough). Above all else, Norman Millott was propelled by a vision for the UMBSM. He believed passionately in the need for marine biology students to experience organisms at first hand in the field, a passion with a long pedigree in .38 His American experiences39 were doubtless what led him to promulgate the notion that a facility to rival Woods Hole could be built at Millport. He told me on my appointment that the plan was to expand the lecturing staff to 10 within 10 years. Sadly, that vision never ultimately materialized. Thirty-six years later we have just retracted from the maximum we have ever achieved of five academic staff to four. His Woods Hole concept was probably only ever pie in the sky (given university funding restrictions nationally and declining interest in marine biology first in London and then, more recently, in Glasgow University) but it remains incontrovertible that it is always Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

200 P. G. Moore preferable to aim high. In his proselytizing typescript, referred to above, Norman highlighted the potential of Millport thus: ‘it is very evident that Millport could become a Mecca for biologists in wide variety and it is my earnest hope that it will develop in that way’. He would have lauded the fact that the UMBSM, under subsequent directors, maintained its advocacy of marine biology field teaching, most prominently in recent years by hosting two forums devoted to the development and sharing of best practice in marine-related fieldwork;40,41 its primacy was also recognized by the Higher Education Funding Council’s designation of the UMBSM as the National Centre for Marine Biological Fieldwork Teaching. I teased him, in my address delivered at his retirement party, about the fact that if he had only been able to overcome his millstone of coming from Yorkshire’s ‘second’ University (Sheffield), compared with my own beloved Leeds (Leeds leads), who knows what he would have achieved. He took it all in good part (and his widow, Margaret, when she eventually moved back south, gave my wife and me their oil painting—by H. Todd—of the old coastguard station building that became the Wellcome Marine Laboratory at Robin Hood’s Bay, which, in its early days, had been co-owned by Sheffield and Leeds universities). I like to think that Norman was proud of something he had seen in me (he once told me he felt thoroughly vindicated in his decision to appoint me when my PhD thesis was awarded the T. H. Huxley Prize of the Zoological Society of London in 1972) and I am forever grateful to him for backing that hunch. Conversely, I am now particularly conscious of just how much he achieved here in those few years leading up to his retirement. It is indeed a proverbial truism that ‘the whole world steps aside for a man who knows where he is going’, especially at Lazaretto Point.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Professor Jim Atkinson, Dr Peter Barnett, Professor John Cloudsley- Thompson, Dr Steve Gorzula, Professor Phil Rainbow and Dr Ann Ralph for their inputs. Memories fade, but I have checked mine against those of my contemporaries. However, any errors remain my own. Lady Budd, Norman Millott’s eldest daughter, kindly supplied personal insights into her father’s life and motivation. Mrs Stephanie Pollard, his youngest daughter, kindly provided press cuttings and photographs. Ian Webb helpfully provided comment from his father, Professor Joe Webb, who has been indisposed for several years following a stroke. Andrew Lightbody and Fiona Wilson diligently tracked down the source of a local paper cutting. Steve Parker, as usual, skilfully digitized the photographs.

NOTES

1 S. M. Marshall, ‘An account of the Marine Station at Millport’ (edited by J. A. Allen), University Marine Biological Station Millport, Occasional Publication no. 4 (1987). (Published posthumously.) 2 J. Davenport, ‘A window on the sea’, Biologist 41, 211–214 (1994). 3 P. G. Moore, ‘Capt. Alexander Turbyne and the origins of the Marine Station at Millport’, Linnean 18, 25–31 (2002). 4 P. G. Moore, ‘Victorian natural scientists overlooking the of Clyde: a rare group-photograph decoded’, Archs Nat. Hist. 25, 10–25 (2005). 5 P. G. Moore, ‘Stephan Ion Pace (1872–1941): a “little local difficulty” in the history of the Marine Station at Millport’, Linnean 22, 17–36 (2006). Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

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6 P. G. Moore, ‘Marine faunistics in the Clyde Sea area: fieldworkers in cultural context prior to 1850’, University Marine Biological Station Millport, Occasional Publication no. 9 (2007). 7 P. G. Moore, ‘The Marine Station at Millport: the “troubled years” between 1897–1907 and their continuing resonance’, Linnean 24, 21–36 (2008). 8 P. G. Moore, ‘The short-lived Marine Station substitute facility on the (1914–1922)’, Linnean 24, 25–39. 9 P. G. Moore and J. A. Gibson, ‘The Marine Station at Millport: laying the permanent foundations (1896)’, Linnean 23, 31–49 (2007). 10 P. G. Moore and E. G. Hancock, ‘Alexander Patience (1865–1954): Glasgow’s little-known Edwardian carcinologist’, Glasg. Nat. 24, 119–129 (2004). 11 UMBSM, First Annual Report, 1 June 1970–31 July 1971 (1971). 12 I. Lundy, ‘Millport Marine Station started 80 years ago’, Largs & Millport Weekly News (25 July), 10 (1975). 13 This is one of the several phrases underlined by Millott in a cutting of the article by Lundy12 in the possession of his youngest daughter. Millott, who had personally experienced an aloof attitude of SMBA scientists towards his visiting class in earlier times, always made a point of extending hospitality at his home to staff accompanying visiting courses during their stay. 14 I. Webb, personal communication, 5 March 2008. 15 Anonymous, ‘Prof Norman Millott’, Daily Telegraph (31 March), 15 (1990). 16 Anonymous [J. A. Allen], ‘Emeritus Professor Norman Millott 1912–1990’, in Twentieth Annual Report, University Marine Biological Station Millport, 1 August 1989–31 July 1990, pp. 40–41 (1990). 17 G. Ponting, ‘Marine biology at Millport’, In Our stories . and yours?, pp. 45–47 (Millers Dale Publications in association with Monks Brook U3A, Eastleigh, 2006). 18 Susan, Lady Budd, personal communication. 19 E. B. Andrews and J. A. Allen, ‘Alastair Graham, 6 November 1906—12 December 2000’, Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. 48, 129–150 (2000). 20 P. G. Moore and R. Seed (eds), The ecology of rocky coasts: essays presented to J. R. Lewis, D.Sc. (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1985). 21 R. H. Millar, ‘Sheina MacAlister Marshall, 1896–1977’, in Seventh Annual Report, University Marine Biological Station Millport, 1 August 1976–31 July 1977, pp. 27–29 (1977). 22 By ‘some of them’ he could have been referring to the ‘some’ that opted to stay in Millport instead of moving to Oban, rather than meaning only ‘some’ of those who stayed in Millport. But he had accentuated the words ‘some of them’ by underlining them. Alternatively, he could have underlined the phrase because he felt the journalist had reported him inaccurately there. 23 Mortimer went on to become Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, establishing the Center of Great Lakes Studies in the University of Wisconsin. 24 Anonymous, ‘Marine research move. Might mean loss to Millport’, Largs & Millport Weekly News (20 September) (1963). 25 J. R. D. Campbell, Some Cumbrae yesterdays (J. R. D. Campbell, Largs, 2007). 26 UMBSM, Sixth Annual Report, University Marine Biological Station Millport, 1 August 1975–31 July 1976 (1976). 27 R. McN. Alexander, Curr. Contents 16, 16 (17 April) (1989). 28 R. McN. Alexander, Animal mechanics (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1968). 29 J. A. Allen, ‘Professor Norman Millott’, Independent (2 March), 17 (1990). 30 Ponting (op. cit., note 17) recently supplied a revealing vignette of a visiting field course at Millport (consisting of eight students, to whom Scotland represented an exotic locality), as undertaken by students from Southampton University in the summer of 1960. ‘In the rather run- down buildings of the marine station, we drew and identified our finds, and compared them with specimens in the aquaria and in the little museum, before returning them to their natural habitats. Field work, lectures, film shows and laboratory studies filled our days. But we had weekends free, Downloaded from http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/ on March 29, 2015

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for horse-riding, exploring the island on hired bicycles or steamer trips to other islands. The evenings were spent in typical student activities. When the tavern closed, we could join the proprietors of the water-ski school for a late-night sing-song in their hut on the beach, or lounge around in Kames Bay Guest house in the eternal student activity of planning a better world’. These were halcyon days, indeed: before the advent of quality assurance, league tables and continuous assessment of students, when raw enthusiasm carried academics and undergraduates along; veritably the stuff of nostalgia. 31 H. G. Cannon, A method of illustration for zoological papers (The Association of British Zoologists, London, 1936). 32 B. Morton, ‘Richard Denison Purchon, 1916–1992’, J. Mollusc. Stud. 59, 268–271 (1993). 33 A. G. Jenkins, The naturalists: pioneers of natural history (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1978). 34 UMBSM, Third Annual Report, University Marine Biological Station Millport, 1 August 1972–31 July 1973 (1973). 35 N. Millott, Extra-ocular photosensitivity (Meadowfield Press, Durham, 1978). 36 J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson, personal communication to P. G. Moore, 18 February 2008. 37 Letter in UMBSM archives (box file marked ‘Correspondence prior to 1980’). 38 T. J. Parker, ‘The Scottish Zoological Station’, Nature 21, 159–161 (1879). 39 W. D. Russell-Hunter, ‘An evolutionary century at Woods Hole: instruction in invertebrate zoology’, Biol. Bull. 168 (Suppl.), 88–98 (1985). 40 UMBSM, University Marine Biological Station Millport, Occasional Publication no. 7 (1998). 41 UMBSM, University Marine Biological Station Millport, Occasional Publication no. 8 (2001).