Weekly Maritime News and Affairs with Tom MacSweeney
I met a man this week who wants to make St.Stephen’s Day a national day of remembrance for those who have died in tragedies at sea. There has never before been such a day in Ireland. Noel McDonagh is from…
The dominant subject in the past week has been the weather – pictures on television and in the newspapers of water pouring through streets, into houses, shops, stranded cars and so on – bringing in its wake flooding, destruction, tragedy…
I meet a lot of people as a maritime journalist, people who do and have done amazing things in the maritime sector, but meeting Ireland’s only ‘Flying Angel’ was particularly interesting. A nice chap whom I realised that I had…
I spent last Sunday morning, under a blue sky, with a steady breeze, watching high-tech yachts racing. Impressively beating to the weather mark, reaching and running downwind on a triangle/sausage/triangle course, with a couple of incidents to test the equanimity…
Athy is not really a maritime town in the coastal sense of that description. Its marine connection is, essentially, the Grand Canal on Ireland's inland waterways linking Dublin to Limerick and which was extended to Athy in 1791 when it took…
The first time I sailed the Round Ireland Yacht Race was in 1986 aboard Philips Innovator. That was a time when maxi yachts were not a feature of Irish waters. Innovator had sailed the Whitbread Round the World Race and…
There is always something unusual in the sea, a phrase I have heard very often from marine scientists and which I have been known to utter myself. It comes to my mind time and again when I am preparing this…
I have known Justin Slattery and followed his career for many years as he rose to become one of the top international sailing stars, the winner now of two Volvo Ocean Races in the toughest position on a racing boat,…
Youghal, on the East Cork coastline, was once the biggest Irish port trading with Britain. It has a long and proud maritime history, with many men serving at sea in the naval and merchant marine. The current edition of THIS…
I was doing the RTE television commentary at the start of the 2005 Tall Ships Races from Waterford. Three Irish tall ships led the international fleet ASGARD II, JEANIE JOHNSTON and DUNBRODY, with the State’s vessel, ASGARD, accorded the honour…
It is a point which I feel compelled to make, time and again, because it is people who make up a community of interest, by their determination, their commitment, their focus and that is what I believe the marine community…
I feel an empathy with Jimmy Buffett, the American singer and songwriter, whose words about his boat resonates with me: “Yes, I own a boat… It slides across the sea… Some folks say I’m a part of it…I know it’s…
It seems to me that, without dedicated volunteers, there would be a lot of work not done in the marine sphere, so I like when possible, to highlight what dedicated people are doing. Publicity can help them to raise funding…
Fighting To Clear the Name of Jerome Collins, The World's First Weather Reporter
16th September 2015 Island Nation
Every sailor knows the importance of the weather forecast ….We watch forecasts on television, listen to them on radio, check the Met Eireann forecasts, look at the weather maps in the newspapers… At sea we check the Coast Guard’s coastal…
“We were invited into schools in the North Wall and while all the children had grandparents who were dockers, not one of them knew what a docker was, because all of that tradition is gone….” Amidst the current controversy over…
#islandnation – "Now, why would you say that Tom?" And when Fionán Murphy rightly challenged me about my question, I did ask myself why I had just said: "It's unusual, isn't it, for a boat for Norway to be built…
