Re puffers in Ireland, there was one rusting against Letterfrack pier for many a year. Found the following re that vessel on another site
Mark
Remembering The old Clyde Puffer Pibroch at Letterfrack, Connemara...
Puffers were once a familiar sight on the West Coast of Scotland and the Clyde. But times have changed and nearly all have disappeared.
The Pibroch was one of a few puffers which was still afloat, well at least for some years. There was hope in the early 2000’s that she would sail again one day, but over the years nothing happened to restore her and so she rotted away. There were interests in saving the puffer but it is not known why nothing came out of it so in the end Pibroch was scrapped in Letterfrack in 2010.
The 87ft Pibroch, a 157-ton coaster built for the whisky trade by Scott & Son of Bowling was still dodging in and out of Ireland's Atlantic islands including Inishbofin and the Aran Islands with cargoes of sand, tar, and farmer's flittings, when she was the oldest surviving working puffer, before resting rustily against the pier in tidal harbour in Connemara awaiting her final fate.
The Pibroch was commissioned from Scott & Son of Bowling on the Clyde in 1957 by Scottish Malt Distillers and was used by White Horse to carry coal and barley to distilleries in Islay and return with casks of the finished product. She carried a White Horse emblem at her masthead.
She was the first puffer to have steel hatches, which went some way towards stopping the ''evaporation'' of the return whisky cargoes, an occurrence which was not unknown in the trade.
In 1974, the Glenlight Shipping Company bought her for cargo use in the Clyde and the west coast. In 1982, she was chartered to the US Navy's Holy Loch base, where she was tied alongside the nuclear submarines' support ship and used as a floating dustbin, with American detritus dumped into her hold. What was abandoned by the Americans was picked over at the docks in Greenock when the Pibroch unloaded.
In 1987 she was sold to John Hawco of Beauly, who tried to employ her in the coastal trade, but after a year was sold to Eamonn Mylotte, who worked her during her final years.
Strictly speaking, the term puffer applied only to steam lighters which had non-condensing steam engines, which made them puff like a locomotive leaving a station.
The term continued to be applied after condensers were introduced and has passed on even to diesel-engined coasters like the Pibroch.