Michael Booth, who has died peacefully aged 97, was representative of an approach to boats and sailing which can be found throughout the worldwide sailing community, yet it is a way of sailing which gets little attention, as its whole essence lies in being low key and self-contained.
From his first sailing experiences in boyhood when he was largely self-taught in Dun Laoghaire, to his last sail of all, more than eighty years later when he was 95 and still enjoying enormous pleasure afloat with his daughter Anne and son-in-law Brian Craig during a sail in Dublin Bay aboard their Dufour 455 Concerto, his delight was in being in and around boats, and in simply sailing the sea.
Greater projects such as family cruises or a racing programme could be undertaken in due course. But in the first instance, it was the availability of a boat at her moorings in Dun Laoghaire Harbour, and the freedom to come and go under sail as he pleased, which always gave him fresh delight.
As they lived near Dun Laoghaire, his engineering father had been mildly interested in boats, but not to the point of personal involvement. Yet he was aware that his son’s interest was much greater, and one of Michael’s earliest memories is of his father arranging for him to be allowed out of school one afternoon, as there was a major big boat regatta taking place in Dun Laoghaire.
His father – who ran a civil engineering business specialising in cast concrete – had friends all over the country, and it was through one of these with Lough Derg sailing connections that the schoolboy Michael acquired his first boat, a Shannon One Design. Today, a Shannon One Design would rate very low indeed in any ranking of boats in their suitability for learning to sail, particularly if self-taught. Yet somehow in Dun Laoghaire – where the waterfront congnoscenti treated a freshwater oddity like a Shannon One Design with mistrust bordering on disdain – Michael Booth taught himself to sail with such good effect that for his 21st birthday he was given the present of a special 17ft Mermaid, Oonagh, sail number 11, built by the great Walter Levinge of Athlone in 1937.
By this time he was studying engineering in Trinity College Dublin, but as soon as he’d graduated in 1943 he joined the RAF as an engineer officer. World War II (1939-1945) had become global, and he’d a busy time of it both in Normandy, restoring bombed airfields three weeks after the D-Day landings, and then in the Far East, where he stayed on after the Japanese Surrender to re-build Singapore Airport.
Back in Ireland in the late 1940s, sailing Oonagh provided sweet relaxation with work in the family civil engineering business, while domestic life found him being drawn into a high-powered maritime family, as he married Pat Hollwey, the eldest daughter of the formidable Col. James Hollwey. The Colonel was quite a force in Dublin Bay sailing with his 14-ton ketch Viking-O, and a pioneer in the containerisation of shipping through his company Bell Lines, while a relative, George Hollwey, had been a noted yacht-builder who included several Dublin Bay 21s and 25s in his impressive output.
By the 1950s, Michael had upgraded his personal boat from a Mermaid to an International Dragon, the classic pre-war-built Gypsy which is now 84 years old and the Queen of the Glandore Classics Fleet in the inimitable ownership of Don Street. But as the Dragon Class in Dublin Bay was at its height in the 1950s with Jimmy Mooney winning the Edinburgh Cup in 1953, it was a matter of special celebration if Gypsy ever got into the frame in Booth ownership.
Yet Michael Booth was enjoying his sailing more than ever, and though the arrival of a family meant increased domestic demands as the 1950s went on, he’d found a good sailing friend in Gurth Kimber, the British Ambassador.
In that more easy-going era, the ambassador thought it perfectly normal that he should base his beautiful Robert Clark-designed 11-ton Mystery class cutter Astrophel in Dun Laoghaire Harbour during his several years of tenure. He cruised extensively from Dublin Bay each summer, and Michael Booth was a frequent and valued member of the ship’s company, arguably performing a key civic role on behalf of Ireland’s diplomatic service…..
In fact, Michael Booth was having the best of several worlds, as he had his beautiful Dragon to sail and race in his beloved Dublin Bay, and he had these friends with their lovely cruising yacht with interesting cruise plans each summer. This ability to create pleasant boat situations which were agreeable to everyone was something which he handed on to the next generation, particularly to his daughter Anne and her husband Brian, who seem somehow to maintain multiple boat-oriented lifestyles on both Dublin Bay and on the inland waterways spreading out from a base on Lough Derg.
Michael had always maintained his links with the Shannon, and by the 1970s at least one inland waterways cruise per summer was part of Booth family life. Back in Dun Laoghaire meanwhile, the harbour was changing with increased pressure for berthing space for cross-channel ferries. By this time Michael had changed from the Dragon to a 26ft South Coast One Design. This was a typically intelligent yet non-mainstream choice, for when he arrived with this boat Venetia in 1963 in a harbour which had favoured the designs of Fife and Mylne, the Charles A Nicholson-designed SCOD was a complete novelty, yet with her able performance and excellent accommodation, she suited the Booth family’s needs to perfection.
But as Venetia with her comfortable accommodation was much more of a pleasure simply to be aboard than the austere Dragon, Michael enjoyed nothing more than simply rowing out to her in his little dinghy and pottering around with the boat, knowing he could return to shore as and when it suited him. It was a very pleasant but fast-disappearing style of cruiser ownership, so when the ferries’ re-organisation of the harbour moved the Royal St George YC moorings a long way out to the northeast corner of the harbor, Michael Booth transferred his membership from the Royal St George to the Royal Irish, as their moorings were close off the club, and rowing out to his cruiser-racer in his own time was still an easy option.
Then too, as his daughter Anne had become much involved with the Firefly racing and the Craig brothers and their boisterous young friends in the George, he thought it diplomatic to transfer his own only very occasional socialising to another club to give the young people a freer rein…..
In work, he built his business to such a healthy state that it was taken over by the rapidly expanding Unidare group, and so he was able to plan for early retirement at the age of 60. But when somebody who retires at the age of 60 lives on with evident enjoyment and many interests until the age of 97, clearly retirement for Michael Booth was something very different from that of your average worker.
Although not a committee man, he could give his total and enthusiastic attention to many projects, and as he’d a notably able mathematical brain, he was called upon to work out handicaps for the RIYC regattas, and this in turn to lead to him becoming involved with Ernest Goulding, Chick Brown and Hal Sisk in developing the East Coast Handicap Organisation, which as ECHO is of more relevance than ever today, brought to a high level of sophistication by Kinsale’s Denis Kiely of the Irish Cruiser-Racer Organisation.
But it’s still called ECHO and as Michael recalled, some assumed that meant Ernest, Chic, Hal & Others, with himself being “others….”. As a self-effacing man, that didn’t bother him. It was much more important that it should work well, and he did good work – often by stealth - throughout his life, something which he passed on to his son Philip - who was sadly to pre-decease him – who devoted himself to fund-raising for the RNLI and received the special recognition of the Institution for his selfless work.
As for Michael, he was a trustee or board member of several welfare organisations, and also much involved in the running of Baggot Street Hospital. His sailing meanwhile went through the mutations inevitable with advancing age and changes in yacht construction, and his final period of active cruiser-racer ownership was with the handy Mirage 26 Sula, though he did have a day-sailer for a few years after that.
But the great maritime interest of his latter decades was with the Jubilee Trust and the provision of Tall Ship sailing for the disabled. If the Trust’s Lord Nelson happened to call in Dun Laoghaire or Dublin, she and her crew and ship’s company were assured of a special welcome thanks to Michael’s work behind the scenes as the Jubilee Trust South Dublin Representative, while he put in many voyages as an on-board sailing volunteer/assistant, and even with very advanced age, he still got three winter voyages – with Anne as a shipmate – on Lord Nelson in the Canaries.
Even today, 97 years is an astonishing length of time to contemplate for one life, yet Michael Booth took it all in under-stated style, intellectually bright to the end even if the infirmity of his limbs meant he finished sailing at the age of 95. In his quiet way, he leaves a noble legacy, a special memory of a very viable approach to boats and sailing. Our thoughts are with his family and friends in their shared memories of a quietly special man.
WMN