If you were trying to think of the most utterly rural town in all Ireland, Longford would certainly be among the top ten - maybe tops of all. And our rustic view of it is emphasised by the fact that we access it almost totally by road or rail. Yet when the Vikings arrived among us, they regarded Longford as a seaport which happened to be a long way inland.
They left the evidence of this behind in their now-garbled original name of Longport, which has several translations, but “longships harbour” seems the most likely here. And we find it again at that lovely yet strategically-located inlet of Ballylongford on the south shore of the Shannon Estuary.
How rural can you get? Longford seems the very image of a country town, yet in their day the Vikings regarded it as a seaport which happened to be far inland
THE VIKINGS WERE GOOD FOR US
In the long run, the Viking raids that began in 795AD were apparently a Good Thing. For it was to become a fully population-modifying invasion of sorts by 840AD, at a time when apparently the all-island population had fallen below a million - possibly by a considerable amount. There’d been no significant incursion or full-blown invasions to bring new blood for around a thousand years or more. And it seems the native gene pool was in a very soggy state, perhaps because of the social domination of the great monasteries, even if many of the monks and prelates weren’t determinedly celibate.
The 100ft Sea Stallion – on display here in Collins Barracks in 2007 - was a Danish replica of a Viking ship originally built in Dublin of timber from Glendalough in 1042. At the time of her visit in 2007, she received a mixed reception, but recent research suggests that the addition of Viking genes was – in the long run – of great benefit to the declining Irish population
Adopting such a coldly analytical look at the state of the national human bloodstock may seem a bit extreme. But in Cheltenham Week of all weeks, the significance of strong bloodlines and healthy breeding choices is not questioned in the equine world, so why not with people?
A WHIFF OF EUGENICS
We may be reluctant to do so, as there’s more than a whiff of eugenics about it, and that tends to get a bad press. But while the monasteries – the heart of mini-university states in their larger examples - had huge significance locally, that was about it. For though their power within their local communities was if anything greater than ever, their peak years of intellectual industry, exploration and internationally significant missionary achievement were long gone. And the people living around them, looking to the monasteries as the ultimate centre of much in their way of life, were arguably a population whose general physical and intellectual quality was degenerating.
Be that as it may, the Vikings – admittedly using rather crude methods – reversed this genetic decline, such that if you’re called Doyle, McLaughlin, MacManus, O’Rourke, Cotter, Sweetman, Harford, McBirney and many other now respected names notably associated with success, you’ll be glad the Vikings came to call.
You want something done? Get a Viking to do it. The late Denis Doyle brought many very welcome developments to Irish sailing
MURPHY WAS ALWAYS COMING TO CALL
That said, our most frequent surname of Murphy may mean “sea warrior” or more accurately “Warrior from the Sea”, yet it lacks solely Viking connections. This surely suggests that throughout Irish history, all the time from overseas there arrived on our coasts energetic people - either as sole traders or small groups - who charmed their way into coastal communities, and in time into the top slot in the numbers game in Irish surnames.
Which makes it ironic that though our top surnames numerically speaking will include the originally very nautical Murphy and Doyle, these days you’d say we were more of a significantly aviation nation than a maritime one. Perhaps you could argue we’re now tops at organising the sailing of the skies.
Denis Doyle’s new Frers 51 Moonduster in 1981. Built in his own Crosshaven Boatyard, she became a splendid flagship for the Irish offshore racing fleet for twenty years.
SEEING THE SEA AND INLAND WATERWAYS SEPARATELY
Either way, these days we tend – unlike the Vikings - to regard sea sailing and our myriad inland waterways as having become discernibly different areas of interest. Though there are many overlaps and the wonderful Shannon One Designs are in a world of their own, it’s not pushing it too much to suggest that sea sailors and the inland waterways meanderers are now two separate tribes.
Tribal inter-mixing? Denis Doyle, Joe Fitzgerald and Douglas Heard at an ICC rally on Lough Ree. Photo: W M Nixon
These weird ramblings into the mists of Viking times and on the current situation ’twixt land and sea have been occasioned by the arrival in the post of the Spring 2024 issue of IWN, otherwise Inland Waterway News, the quarterly journal of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland.
It’s a magazine I enjoy reading very much, not just for its varied and informative contents, but also for the very good reason that I have absolutely no responsibility for creating any of those contents. For even in this era of 24/7 rolling news, a boats-and-water-oriented wordsmith can have more deadlines than is good for either writer or reader.
BOYHOOD CRUISING UNDER SAIL ON THE INLAND WATERWAYS
That isn’t to say that your columnist hasn’t done quite a bit of inland waterways cruising. In fact, the first cruising venture of any kind, with a 14ft Ballyholme Insect class sailing dinghy and a tiny tent, was in 1957 from Portadown downriver along the Upper Bann to cross the very large and seemingly boat-less Lough Neagh eastabout, and then on via the Lower Bann to salt water at Coleraine.
Our mini teach-yourself sail training ship – the Ballyholme Insect Class 14ft dinghy Grasshopper, recently restored on Sketrick Island in Strangford Lough, sailed the navigable length of the River Bann and across Lough Neagh in 1957
There, we were able to comply with parental instructions not to try sailing home to Belfast Lough via the Atlantic and Rathlin Sound by somehow getting a lorry to bring us back to Bangor, for road trailers for the heavy Insects were virtually unknown.
That was in a world now gone. Indeed, it started to change the following year, when the government of Northern Ireland lowered Lough Neagh by nearly six feet, which meant that many of the delightful little harbours we’d visited were soon disappearing beneath undergrowth at some distance from the lake waters. Those lake waters were clear at the time, but are now algae-plagued in summer, for when they use fancy chemicals in northern farming, they seek rapid results and don’t mess about.
THE LOUGH NEAGH CLUB SAILING SCENE
While there’d been a small sailing scene on Lough Neagh before the Great War of 1914-1918, that Armageddon halted most significance inter-war development. But after World War II by 1948, Lough Neagh Sailing Club at Kinnego near Lurgan – originally founded in 1897 – was becoming more lively.
Yet by the time we were sailing the lough in 1957, the removal of petrol rationing and the greater available of cars meant the keener sailors were finding more worthwhile competition for their racing at salt water venues, particularly on Strangford Lough where the late great George Bloch of Lurgan - formerly noted for sailing the old Belfast Lough No 3 Shulah on Lough Neagh – made his move tangible by buying a new Glen OD in 1951 to race with the growing Whiterock fleet of Strangford Lough YC Glens.
The late George Bloch’s former Belfast Lough Number III class Shulah on Lough Neagh in 1950
LAST TRANSIT OF LOUGH NEAGH’S NEWRY CANAL
As to Lough Neagh sailors’ interaction with the commercially declining inland waterways which had served their great lake, they’d left their mark in that architect Philip Bell of LNSC, with his own-designed 7-ton cruising sloop Owen Roe, was recorded in 1936 as the last boat of any kind to transit the Newry Canal which connected Lough Neagh to the sea at Carlingford Lough.
But in time he too moved to Strangford Lough YC at Whiterock, with the result that his son Adrian Bell and life-partner Maeve McKeown were moved along a sailing trajectory whose emphasis moved from Lough Neagh to Strangford Lough through several boat classes, of which the most notable was the International Fireball in which they were world standard for several years. And now Adrian and Maeve have become pillars of the Irish Cruising Club with a particularly interest in exploring the Baltic Sea.
STRONGER SOUTHERN INTERACTION BETWEEN LAKES AND SEA
Thus there was a small interaction between northern lake sailing the inland waters, and sea sailing, which was also seen further west in the more active sailing activity on Lough Erne. But further south, with the new 1922-vintage Shannon One Designs making an impressive sea sailing debut on Dublin Bay in the sailing events of the 1924 Tailteann Games where they won the Gold Medal against the Dublin Bay Water Wags, the interaction between sea, canal, river and lake was much more active, as the numbers involved were considerable.
Shannon One Designs racing on Lough Derg. It was the first boats from Lough Derg YC in 1924 that came home with the Gold Medal from the Tailteann Games Sailing Events in Dublin Bay.
Typical of them was the young Dr Alf Delaney of Longford, who was a leading figure in the Shannon One Design Class while his family kept a “mother ship motor yacht” on the North Shannon. But as the SODs only came fully to life for their regatta weeks on Lough Ree and Lough Deg in August, his enthusiasm was such that every Saturday morning in other summer months he’d drive his little car to the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire in order to race-prepare the Water Wag of Dr Harry Murphy, for whom he crewed.
THE MURPHY RACE PREPARATION TECHNIQUE
You might like to think Dr Murphy was busy making special visits to ailing patients. But in fact he was almost invariably to be found in a bar called the Bodega in the fashionable heart of Dublin, sampling sherries with some old cronies while knowing that even if he arrived in Dun Laoghaire at the last minute on the rather relaxed commuter trains of the day, young Alf would have the boat ready and out they’d go, quite often to a win.
Weird as it was, this setup reflected a close and comfortable relationship between sea sailors and their inland waterways counterparts. It was well reflected in a key event of 1954, an achievement by Irish Dinghy Racing Association President Douglas Heard. His breadth of interests is reflected in the fact that he was to become Royal St George YC Commodore for 1960 to 1965, but meanwhile in 1954 he set out to transit the almost moribund Royal Canal from Dublin to the North Shannon with his cleverly converted former ship’s lifeboat Hark, so called because he enjoyed cruising the inland waterways with such an eclectic collection of friends that Hark was an abbreviation of Heard’s Ark.
HEARD’S ARK HEADS NORTHWEST
The friends for what was rightly assumed would be the last transit of the neglected Royal Canal were in keeping with the best Hark traditions, as they included noted offshore sailor Dr Rory O’Hanlon (who was later to take his Dragon Firedrake through the Grand Canal for Lough Derg cruising) and Alf Delaney’s brother Vincent, a top sailor on lake and sea whose wife Ruth (nee Healy, later she was Mrs Douglas Heard) was to become a leading authority and writer on the convoluted history of Ireland’s inland waterways.
Men of many interests. Douglas Heard (left) and Rory O’Hanlon aboard the latter’s Peter Brett 37 Tjaldur at a Cruising Club of America meet in Nova Scotia in 1967. Photo: Des Barrington
ROYAL CLOSURE IN 1961, MIRACULOUS RE-OPENING IN 2010
They were right in assuming this would be the last transit of the old-style Royal Canal even if it did not officially close until 1961, and they were right in assuming that for many years the attractive waterway (it was much more scenic than the rival Grand Canal) would gradually fade from much of the national consciousness.
Yet in 2010 the Royal Canal – with many modern improvements, yet still retaining its basic character – was re-opened all the way from Dublin to Richmond Harbour at the Shannon near Longford.
We make a point that it’s “near Longford”, for today’s perception of Longford town as being uttterly rural is reinforced by the fact that its old harbour – reached by a short canal from the Shannon - has become a car park, whereas Richmond Harbour is a gem of a place, complete with its own antique dry dock.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IRISH YACHTING ASSOCIATION AND INLAND WATERWAYS ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
Though there were many factors involved in this remarkable re-birth of the Royal Canal in 2010, there’s no doubt that the foundation of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland in 1954 – 70 years ago this year - had seeded a thriving organisation that has gone from strength to strength to become a national force in maintaining and improving our myriad waterways.
Thus it made for a fascinating organisational difference from another body with which Douglas Heard was closely involved, the Irish Dinghy Racing Association. Founded in 1946 – just eight years before the IWAI came into being - the IDRA was seen as subservient to the powerful clubs, and when the late Clayton Love Jnr headed up its re-development to become the Irish Yachting Association in 1962, he found he’d a challenge persuading some of the more ancient clubs that the new IYA could provide the same services as the British authority, which had further enhanced its attraction by morphing smoothly from being the Yacht Racing Association into the grand new classy-sounding Royal Yachting Association.
POWERFUL CLUBS
And even when the IYA did gain traction, it was a fact that more than a dozen Irish yacht clubs were larger and wealthier organisations than this new “national authority”. This was so much the case that I wrote more than one analysis, pointing out that the President of the IYA, whosoever he or she might be, was for all the world like the monarch of a rather weak mediaeval state who struggled on as best they could, while being troublingly surrounded by restless warlords who were only nominally under their control.
The IWAI headquarters at Dunrovin on Lough Ree – opened in 2022 – is essentially functional and incorporates the Lough Ree Lifeboat Station
But the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland, by contrast, stated out with an enthusiastic central committee and officer board that gradually expanded the Association through accredited local branches such that now, thanks to Inland Waterways News receiving updates from appointed correspondents with every branch, this quarterly magazine provides one of out best available resources for getting a sense of what’s going in all over the country, albeit through the narrow lens of inland waterways interest.
It works so well that even local waterways which have no chance of ever being connected to the main all-Ireland system, such as the Slaney and the Boyne, have their IWAI branches providing enthusiastic updates of what’s going on in their own little world.
ALL IRELAND WATERWAYS IRELAND
This sense of an all-island spread is helped by the maintenance and development of all the waterways being under the control of Waterways Ireland, one of the few all-island bodies proposed in the Good Friday agreement that actually came into being, with its headquarters in Enniskillen and service yards – some laden in history, others more recent additions – in every main waterway centre.
This natural spread is reflected in the “consumer association”, the IWAI, as the current President Kay Baxter of Boyle in Roscommon would count Lough Key as her home water, while IWN is put together by Alison Alderton in Galway, and other officers are found nationwide.
IWAI HQ HONOURS FOUNDER MEMBER
Nevertheless they do have a purpose-built HQ on Lough Ree at Dunrovin which is shared wit the local lifeboat. The building’s existence goes back to the foundation years when a key figure in the IWAI was a retired Indian Army Colonel, Harry Rice, who’d settled with his wife Cynthia in a little lakeside dwelling they determinedly called Dunrovin whatever snooty folk might say.
They left Dunrovin to the IWAI, and after much thought as to how best to rebuild it, although the very functional building now on the site is very different from the old Rice home, it would be absolute sacrilege to call it anything else.
CHANGE IN EMPHASIS OF WATERWAYS?
And as the designated HQ of the IWAI, this is a place of importance, for today the true purpose of the inland waterways is sometimes being lost through people discovering that the towpaths provide ideal facilities for walking, cycling, running or whatever.
At first, Waterways Ireland tried to adapt to this by referring to “Blueways”. But now events and re-namings have overtaken them, and we learn that the up-graded Royal Canal Greenway has been so lauded and awarded that boats are barely getting a look in.
DISTURBING DEVELOPMENT PRIORITIES
Thus this new issue of Inland Waterways News has a disturbing item about Rhode Quay on the Grand Canal between Ticknevin and Ballycommon, at a rural spot that would be completely unknown in the middle of nowhere were it not for the fact that the Grand Canal brought boats to it and through it.
It seems that while “a huge amount of work and money” has gone into improving the greenway facilities even unto a car park, all that boats wishing to berth at the quay can avail of is one bollard, “a rotting stump”, while the quay wall urgently needs maintenance, and there are no other boat-help facilities, not even a water tap.
Waterway Ireland’s official response to the local IWAI branch was that “Rhode Quay is included in Waterway Ireland yearly Annual Maintenance plan and works will be carried out there this year including grass cutting, vegetation maintenance, and general quay wall maintenance”.
Now admittedly the waterways Ireland “estate” is a huge and complex thing, and the allocation of resources in terms of staff, equipment and so forth can become very thin spread. But nevertheless it’s a bit thought-provoking to reflect that the boat people, the enthusiasts who managed to save these priceless waterways, are now feeling somewhat shunted aside as the global mania for easy exercise takes over their canals for other purposes.
HIDDEN MESSAGE OF IWN COVER?
But before we start to throw blame around, it’s worthwhile considering the evocative cover of this new issue of IWN. It was taken in the off-season along the Royal Canal, at the place where it almost reaches Lough Ree at Ballymahon before peeling away northwards towards distant Richmond Harbour.
It’s so atmospheric and all-accessible that the initial inclination is simply to accept the healthy image it projects. But what’s this? The admirable towpath cyclist is actually taking a photo with the mobile as they pedal along – indeed, they may even be using the video option. Yet despite the nearness of deep cold water, that’s a backpack they’re wearing, not a lifejacket. And finally, while the Royal Canal may be one of the most romantically crazy waterways projects ever undertaken in Ireland - which is saying a lot – there’s simply not a boat to be seen, not one.
Mixed messages? As the IWAI starts to celebrate its 70th anniversary, the latest cover of its excellent quarterly journal seems to accept that, for many people, boating is only one function of Ireland’s myriad canal system
Could it be that we’re all unconsciously coming round to the view that our canals and canalised rivers are now most useful for the much-needed project of easily improving the national condition of health and wellbeing, while sending boats along them has become secondary?
