intheboatshed.net

Photos from the first Big Boat Workshop working
on the Ilen restoration

The loss of Conor O’Brien’s famous Saoirse is long in the past, but another boat commissioned by the round-the-world voyager from Ireland is very much alive and is being restored at Hegarty’s Boatyard, in Oldcourt, Ireland.

She is being refitted in a series of week-long workshops under the expert guidance of three of the few remaining traditional shipwrights in Ireland today, Liam Hegarty, his brother John Hegarty and Fachtna O’Sullivan.

The Ilen was built by the Fisheries School in Baltimore - Ireland’s first vocational school - in the mid-1920s, and when she was launched in 1926, O’Brien and two Cadogan brothers from Cape Clear Island sailed her to the Falkland Islands, where she was delivered to the Falkland Island Company for inter-island trading.

For the next seventy years, Ilen served in the South Atlantic until the mid-1990s, when Limerick man Gary McMahon located her abandoned in the Falklands and brough her back to Baltimore in 1998.

McMahon hopes that the Ilen could help to lead the way to a new era of sustainable development through demonstrating that trading under sail is still viable.

The project has attracted a lot of interest in Ireland - recently a small crowd of celebrities turned up to see work start on her, including film producer Lord David Putnam and award-winning actor Jeremy Irons.

The refitting of the Ilen is now being used as an opportunity for people to experience first-hand the skills of wooden boat building through a series of five-day workshops in which anyone can apply  to take part. The first, which took place at the beginning of November began with a talk by Glenstal Abbey forester Brother Anthony Keane on the types of timber used in boat building, and an introduction to wooden boat construction by Liam Hegarty and McMahon.

Further five-day workshops are planned for next year - see the project websites http://www.bigboatbuild.com and http://www.ilen.ie/. Gary can be reached at gary@ilen.ie or (Eire) 086 2640479.

The Delicate Point - an engraving from the Sea Stories
collection of short stories. Click on the image for a
larger photo

I’d like to present another quotation I found in an old book. This one was published in 1862, and comes from a collection of short stories entitled Sea Stories by an author who simply calls himself Old Sailor.

The whole thing is a splendid piece of nonsense, as you’ll gather from the following short sample, which really needs to be read aloud in a kind of quiet roar:

‘a thorough-bred seaman is one of the drollest compounds in existence: a mixture of all that is ludicrous and grave - of undaunted courage and silly fear. I do not mean the every-day sailor, but the bold, daring, intrepid man-of-war’s man; him who in time of action primed his wit and his gun together without fear of either missing fire. He has a language peculiarly his own, and his figures of rhetoric are perfect reef-knots to the understanding of landsmen. If he speaks of his ship, his eloquence surpasses the orations of a Demosthenes, and he revels in the luxuriance of metaphor. the same powers of elocution, with precisely the same terms are applied to his wife, and it is a matter of doubt which engrosses the greatest portion of his affection; to him they are both lady-ships. Here him expatiate on his little barkey, as he calls his wooden island, though she may be able to carry a hundred and fifty guns, and a crew of a thousand men. “Oh, she is the fleetest of the fleet - sits on the water like a duck - stands under her canvas as stiff as a crutch - and turns to windward like a witch!” Of his wife he observes “What a clean run from stem to stern! She carries her t’gallants through every breeze, and in turning hank for hank never misses stays.” He will point to the bows of his ship, and swear she is as sharp as a wedge, never stops at a sea, but goes smack through all.  He looks at his wife, admires her head-gear and bow-lines, compares her eyes to dolphin-strikers, boasts of her fancy and fashion-pieces, and declares that she darts along with the grace of a bonetta. When he parts with his wife to go on a cruise, no tear moistens his cheek; there is the honest pressure of the hand, the fervent kiss, and then he claps on the topsail-halliards, or walks round at the capstan to the lively sounds of music. But when he quits his ship, the being he has rigged with his own fingers, that has stood under him in many a dark and trying hour, whilst the wild waves have dashed over them with relentless fury, then - then - the scuppers of his heart are unplugged, and overflow with the soft droppings of sensibility.’

Gosh - if old salts really talked in this way, it’s not surprising landsmen couldn’t understand them - and I’d guess their wives thought they were all barking mad too.

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Thames Traditional Boat Rally Prize-winning slipper launch Wishbone.
Click on the photo for a larger image

Many intheboatshed.net readers will be interested in Wishbone, a Thames slipper launch due to appear at the Sail, Power & Watersports Show due to take place at Earl’s Court from the 26th to the 30th November.

Wishbone is in fact a Baby Greyhound model built by Andrews in 1931, and was restored in 2004 by Stewart Marine of Harts Boatyard, which is on the river near Kingston upon Thames. She has won the Top Boat Award at the Thames Traditional Boat Rally on three occasions, and I’m told she’ll probably be the oldest boat at the show.

See the Stewart Marine website at http://www.hartsboats.com. By the way, if the name Stewart is familiar, it may be because he won a Bronze Medal sailing keelboats in the 1992 Olympics.

Stewart Marine’s brokerage list currently includes Willow, a 1920s Messums rowing and sailing skiff complete with all sailing and rowing equipment, and Swift, a 20ft rowing rowing gig built by Turks’ in 1911, complete with a sliding seat, outriggers and two sets of blades said to be all in in fantastic condition. Now that’s two real objects of desire, I’d say!

There’s a short and rather incomplete entry on slipper launches at the Wikipedia, but I don’t know enough to sort it out. Is there anyone around with the knowledge, time and energy to fix it?

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