A hundred years ago next Tuesday, June 20th, Conor O'Brien (1880-1952) of Foynes took his departure with some fanfare aboard his 42ft Saoirse from the harbour her skipper preferred to call Dunleary, though most of its citizens saw it as Kingstown, and headed south. Saoirse had been designed in a first-time effort by her owner-skipper, and was newly built by Tom Moynihan in the Fisheries School in Baltimore.
When she returned exactly two years later, on Saturday, June 20th 1925, Saoirse had become the first “yacht” to circumnavigate the world south of the Great Capes of Good Hope and Cape Horn, running down her easting in the mighty westerlies of the Southern Ocean through the vast wastes of sea which, until then, had been solely the province of the much more substantial vessels of government-backed explorers, naval commanders, pirates, global traders, and rapacious whalers.
WORKBOAT-STYLE YACHT
To a casual observer, Saoirse’s yacht status would have seemed questionable. This was no glittering toy for the sport of the rich. On the contrary, her archaic rig and very traditional and largely un-decorated hull was loosely based on the lines of an 1860s Arklow fishing boat, whose looks and sea-keeping qualities O'Brien had come to admire.
Saoirse. Conor O’Brien’s sail-plan for his first yacht design was essentially for offwind sailing, and the stunsails…
…………were by no means ornamental, adding real speed in light winds. Photo courtesy O’Brien family
Yet by any commercial definition, she wasn’t a workboat, for in Irish waters, she sailed under the burgee of the 1831-founded Royal Irish Yacht Club. And abroad, her owner used the additional muscle of the 1880-founded London-based Royal Cruising Club in order to smooth the way in foreign ports and also – through its highly-regarded annual RCC Journal – to help in his need for resources-generating publicity which was also supported by articles in Irish newspapers.
ABNORMAL TIMES, WAR-TORN LOCATIONS
In the early 1920s, undertaking such a project in normal circumstances would have been something special. But the Ireland of the early 1920s was anything but normal, and the voyage of the Saoirse emerged from a time of turmoil. The new vessel - O’Brien’s first yacht design - was built shortly after the War of Independence and during the Civil War, in which her birthplace in West Cork was at the heart of one of the most active theatres of conflict.
It was a time of heightened feeling, of lifelong friendships sundered by opposing opinions and the outcomes of irreversible actions. O’Brien may have been a grandson of Young Irelander William Smith O’Brien of the 1848 rising, but his own father Edward, an extensive land-owner of Cahirmoyle near Foynes in County Limerick, had been largely inactive in politics and generally conservative in outlook for much of his life.
O’BRIEN THE GUN-RUNNER
Yet a period of living in Dublin after schooling and university in England saw the young Conor O’Brien’s opinions crystallising strongly in favour of Home Rule, and he became a fellow-gun-runner - sailing his own ketch Kelpie - with Erskine & Molly Childers with their ketch Asgard in the 1914 gun-running on behalf of the Irish Volunteers.
Erskine & Molly Childers’ Asgard of 1905-vintage as conserved by John Kearon in Collins Barracks Museum in Dublin. In all, three yachts were involved in the 1914 gun-running – Asgard, Conor O’Brien’s Kelpie, and Sir Thomas Myles’ Chotah. Photo: W M Nixon
O’Brien’s English schooling and university experience had seen mountaineering as his primary recreational interest, but regular family holidays at Derrynane in Kerry and subsequent experience afloat at Foynes had strengthened a longtime interest in sailing to such an extent that, in his Dublin period in the first dozen or so years of the 20th Century, he took the step in 1910 of selling his house in the fashionable Fitzwilliam area of the city (where he’d been a founder member of the United Arts Club in 1907) in order to buy the 1870-built 48ft Kelpie.
She was a heavily-rigged cutter, but for ease of handling, he reduced the sailplan to ketch rig, and continued to build his seagoing experience with coastal projects such as a round Ireland cruise in 1913, while formalising his knowledge of navigation through enrolment in the Royal Naval Reserve.
“ANGER MANAGEMENT” PROBLEMS
He managed this despite being a notoriously short-tempered individual who could fall out with his sometimes voluntary crews as readily as he could disagree with his naval superiors. For the fact is that in beginning the celebrations of the Centenary of Saoirse’s departure with an Irish Cruising Club/Royal Cruising Club gathering in the Royal Irish YC today hosted by RIYC Commodore Jerome Dowling and ICC Commodore David Beattie, there’ll be a tacit acknowledgement that in any society, Edward Conor Marshall O’Brien would have instantly qualified as a charter member of the Awkward Squad.
But then, amidst the experiences, general maritime knowledge and attitudes of his time, no sensible normal person would have dreamt of setting off in such a small and relatively untested boat with such huge ambitions into what was still largely the Great Unknown.
Yet there was a certain inevitability about it. Two years earlier, while returning from a sailing/mountaineering expedition to The Cuillin Mountains of Skye, O’Brien had found himself obliged to sail single-handed back to Dublin Bay in what was now his floating home, the Kelpie.
THE LOSS OF THE KELPIE
Turning slowly to windward through the North Channel at night aboard Kelpie, O’Brien took off southeastwards from the mouth of Belfast Lough, and set his alarm clock to give himself an off-watch of two hours of sleep in open water. Typically, he furiously blamed the German manufacturers of the clock for the fact that he slept through the alarm. Either way, while Kelpie may have come gently aground on rocks just south of Portpatrick on Scotland’s Galloway coast, she was doomed.
Conor O’Brien aboard Kelpie off the West Coast of Ireland in 1913. Even with her rig reduced to a ketch configuration, Kelpie was a massively heavy challenge for a single-hander. Photo: courtesy O’Brien family
Any salvage of the ship as she began to break up as the tide started to fall was beyond the abilities of O'Brien on his own, and he emerged at Portpatrick out of the morning mist, rowing in the Kelpie’s little dinghy surrounded by his personal possessions, and already thinking of the next chapter in his apparently rather aimless life.
He retreated for mental convalescence to a cottage on the family-owned Foynes Island in the Shannon Estuary, and soon was drawing the lines of his new dreamship. Funds were very limited, so he restricted himself to a chopped-off transom-sterned hull design just 40ft long.
Conor O’Brien’s cottage on Foynes Island, as seen through the rigging of the restored Ilen in 2018. Photo: Gary Mac Mahon
TOM MOYNIHAN, BALTIMORE’S VERY SPECIAL BOATBUILDER
Tom Moynihan in Baltimore seems to have been one of the few people with whom he retained a comfortable working relationship, and thus when Moynihan quietly lengthened the hull with two extra feet of sawn-off counter (reputedly while O’Brien was away from being an almost-constant presence in Baltimore), Tom earned the world sailing community’s eternal gratitude, for at a stroke he gave Saoirse a rather jaunty look that the original O’Brien lines had conspicuously lacked.
There simply isn’t the space here – or perhaps anywhere – to discuss all the ramifications of Saoirse’s design. Sufficient to say that as a late-flowering architect with an enthusiasm for William Morris’s Arts & Crafts movement, in some ways O' Brien aspired to create a comfortable sea-going cottage. And it’s significant that while Erskine & Molly Childer’s Asgard – otherwise one of the finest cruising yachts of her era – had the galley located uncomfortably forward of the mainmast in the “them and us” attitude of the time, Saoirse’s galley – complete with coal-burning stove – was right aft in the position of least sea-going motion.
Saoirse’s accommodation plan clearly indicated the cooking stove beside its coal bunker located in the position of least motion well aft……….
…….and after Conor O’Brien’s marriage to Kitty Clausen in 1928, Saoirse’s potential for cosy comfort could be fully realised. Courtesy O’Brien family
PIONEERING USE OF IRISH TRICOLOUR
It will have come as little surprise that he named his new vessel Saoirse to celebrate the freedom of the new Irish state. But his declaration that he would be flying its tricolour ensign when he reached a foreign port – the first Irish-registered vessel to do so – was tempered by the fact that he left what its citizens generally still thought of as Kingstown with the Royal Irish YC’s British ensign at the top of the mizzen mast.
It was a gesture of unusual diplomacy by the head-strong skipper, but he needed the goodwill of the club and its members. For although in his own mind the voyage had started from Foynes a couple of weeks earlier, where he felt all his voyages began, the Dunleary/Kingstown launching pad was essential to get the publicity machine rolling steadily along.
Saoirse departs from “Dunleary”, June 20th 1923. Although it was intended to fly an Irish tricolour ensign when entering foreign ports, in what most of its citizens still firmly regarded as Kingstown she tactfully flies the Royal Irish YC British blue ensign from the head of her mizzen mast
As it happened, the original Irish ensign on the Saoirse got no further than the first port of call at Funchal in Madeira. The newly appointed Irish Free State consul on that island – with whom O’Brien had a celebratory night of subsequently glossed-over carousal in celebration of the successful completion of both his own and Saoirse’s first ocean passage under sail - was given a present of the flag to fly outside his Consulate, as the new government in Dublin seemed in no haste to issue the trappings of what was an honorary role in such a relatively minor location.
Thus it was some time before a replacement tricolour had been prepared for Saoirse’s entering of foreign harbours – usually to the bewilderment of the port authorities – but meanwhile, the voyage progressed with the usual problems of a new vessel and her archaic rig being solved along the way.
Merrily we roll along. On her first ocean voyage - the 1,300 mile passage from Dublin Bay to Madeira - Saoirse is making excellent and comfortable progress in the Portuguese trades, and Conor O’Brien is at last conspicuously relaxed at the helm. Photo: Courtesy O’Brien family.
A LEAP IN THE DARK
This had been an extraordinary departure in many ways. Although he had voyaged many miles offshore in his naval reserve service in the 1914-1918 World War, O’Brien had at most sailed only a couple of hundred oceanic miles. And Saoirse had sailed even fewer. Yet here he and she were, spreading various tales through various publications and conversations about the real purpose of their voyage, purposes which moved between joining mountaineering expeditions in South Africa and New Zealand to the simple ambition of circling the globe south of Good Hope and Horn.
And all this with a new boat which had experienced only the most rudimentary of shakedown cruises, with the passage round from Foynes to be positioned in Dublin Bay probably the longest.
Thus the 1,300 nautical miles of largely oceanic passage to Madeira was something of leap in the dark. But with particularly good sailing in the Portuguese Trades, Saoirse proved to be everything that O’Brien had hoped for and confidently predicted, even if he admitted to those closest to him that the prospect of it all had made him very nervous.
THE “REAL VOYAGE” BEGAN FROM MADEIRA
The arrival in Madeira was over-celebrated, so they more or less had to move on after three days, leaving their Irish tricolour ensign behind yet being rewarded at sea with strong fair winds through the Canariea that gave Saoirse her best day’s run of the entire voyage, 185 miles.
O’Brien was confident that if he could recruit a helmsman whose talent equalled his own in understanding the little ship’s steering needs, then they could break the magic 200-mile barrier. But in his rapid turnover of crew -18 in all during the voyage – there was just one helmsman who began to show sufficient talent. And when he and O’Brien silently witnessed an absolute Mount Everest of a breaking sea building up and crashing over about a mile away in the cross seas of post-storm conditions while south of the Indian Ocean, although nothing was said, both knew that if Saoirse had been caught in up that rogue wave, she was a goner. So at the next port, that most promising of young helmsmen departed without a word.
The restored Conor O’Brien-designed Ilen will depart today from Dun Laoghaire, bound for Madeira. She is seen here during a cruise to Greenland in 2019. Photo: Gary Mac Mahon
Meanwhile the successful arrival in Madeira had indicated that what had been thought of as a crazy idea by many back home was now being treated with proper seriousness, and as part of the celebrations a flotilla from the Irish Cruising Club, Royal Irish Yacht Club, and Royal Cruising depart from Dun Laoghaire today on a cruise-in-company to Madeira led by the restored 56ft O’Brien ketch Ilen, whose original construction in 1926 - again by Tom Moynihan in Baltimore – was inspired by O’Brien’s successful arrival in the Falklands shortly after his rounding of Cape Horn in December 1924, when the islanders felt a bigger version of Saoirse would provide them with the ideal inter-island service boat.
THE ORIGINS OF ILEN
These days, Ilen is run by the Sailing into Wellness organisation, but in 1997 her retrieval from a retired state in the Falklands in November 1997 was entirely the doing of Gary MacMahon of Limerick, who was becoming more totally involved with each and every passing day into what almost amounted an addiction to seeing that Conor O’Brien’s achievements were properly remembered.
The MacMahon Plan was that his two key boats - Saoirse of 1922, which had been supposedly lost in a hurricane in Jamaica in 1979, and Ilen, which was now back in Ireland and ripe for restoration – would both sail again, whether in a re-built or restored form.
At the time, with the 75th Anniversary of O’Brien’s departure due in 1998, others of us thought some sort of commemorating was appropriate, and at an astonishingly festive gathering in the RIYC – which Gary and many O’Brien relatives attended - a specially commissioned bust of O’Brien, hewn by sculptor Danny Osborne of Beara from the beach-scavenged vertebra of a giant blue whale that would have been of an age to have observed Saoirse sailing past, was presented to the RIYC. And for any normal people, that would have been quite enough until the Centenary came around in 2023.
The Conor O’Brien whalebone bust presented to the Royal Irish Yacht Club in 1998 to mark the 75th Anniversary of the Saoirse voyage. Sculptor Danny Osborne of Beara is best known for his statue of Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square in Dublin
ILEN RESTORED, SAOIRSE RE-BORN
But like Conor O'Brien himself, tedious normality is not the default mode with Gary Mac Mahon. He has given more than a quarter of a Century of his best efforts and energy, and ideas to ensure that Ilen has been restored to continue serving a useful purpose, while all the data has been in place to enable the authentic re-building of Saoirse to take place in Liam Hegarty’s boatyard at Oldcourt on the Ilen River in West Cork, where Ilen had been restored.
Thanks to the resources of Fred Kinmonth, Saoirse has been re-born, and for the first time ever, she and Ilen sailed together at last month’s Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival, with Saoirse now identifying as an icon of West Cork. And Gary Mac Mahon, his 27-year mission magnificently completed, has stood back from day-to-day involvement with either vessel.
Gary Mac Mahon at the helm of Ilen in Greenland in 2019
CENTRAL TO WORLD SAILING HISTORY
The great voyage of the Saoirse is now seen as a cornerstone of world sailing history. In 1923 she was noticed by only a few when she arrived in Madeira, but this time the Ilen – with the initial flotilla expanded to a fleet as Iberian and Mediterranean-based boats of the ICC and the RCC join the trail – will begin an official visit on July 3rd – the Centenary of O’Brien’s arrival – inaugurating a prodigious welcome and round of celebrations organised by the island’s hospitality dynamo, Catia Carvalho Esteves, and the Clube Naval de Funchal.
The projects completed or initiated through the inspiration of Gary Mac Mahon since 1997 are a little short of miraculous. Conor O’Brien is now remembered, and his achievements are appreciated. All we need to hear is that, in some hidden cupboard of the Irish Consulate in Funchal, they’ve discovered a hundred-year-old Irish tricolour.
“A jaunty little ship”. Fred Kinmonth’s new Saoirse – seen here being stern-chased by the Pilot Cutter Marian during the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival in May 2023 – had her appearance vastly improved thanks to shipwright Tom Moynihan’s insistence in 1922 that she be given an extra 2ft in overall length at the stern, with an up-lifting sweep to the sheerline. Photo: Robbie Murphy
