“Seal meat tastes strong and is best eaten, we found, with plenty of onions and curry”. You better believe it. For it comes from an even more reliable source than the proverbial horse’s mouth. It’s one of the many conclusions and gems of information that Jarlath Cunnane of Mayo provides in the new extended edition of Northabout, his originally 2006-published tome mostly about the Arctic global circumnavigations of his own-built (with a bit of help from his remarkable range of friends) 15m (49ft) alloy ice-handling cutter Northabout.
Plans of Northabout. When building an Expedition Yacht for the ice, you have to re-think your notions of what a boat should look like. For Northabout’s accommodation layout, they changed the aft double cabin into two singles
They didn’t hunt seals in the far northern waters, but when presented with seal meat by Inuit hunters in icy waters, the best of it was made by these men on the boat from Mayo. From far Mayo. Magic Mayo? Mystical Mayo? Monumental Mayo? If West Cork is a state of mind, and Kerry is a kingdom while Connemara is a personality, then how do we do justice to Mayo?
The new Northabout departs from Westport in 20003, with the distinctive lower slopes of Croagh Patrick beyond
Once you think of the handily alliterative “Magnificent”, nothing else will do. For Magnificent Mayo has colossal scenery with Ireland’s most handsome mountain in Croagh Patrick, even if its most devoted adherents are literally loving it to bits with the eroding effects of their time-honoured but over-crowded annual Reeks Sunday pilgrimage to its peak at the end of July.
And although Kerry can lay claim to the monastic ocean voyaging of St Brendan, almost every other coastal and river-served county in Ireland can look back and claim some sort of voyaging missionary who took the transformingly sacred texts back into Dark Ages Europe.
ONLY MAYO HAS THE PIRATE QUEEN
But when we come to more modern times, only Mayo has Granuaille the Pirate Queen, her continuously vivid presence - and what it means - always there as a fundamental part of the Mayo mindset. So when someone from elsewhere wonders how it came about that the highly-specialised Northabout was created in aluminium in far Mayo from a purposeful design by French naval architect Gilbert Caroff, the simple answer is that it would be much more odd had she been built anywhere else in Ireland.
Paddy Barry and Jarlath Cunnane – longtime shipmates on many epic ventures
While Jarlath was the construction manager and owner-skipper of the boat, his longtime friend Paddy Barry (of Dun Laoghaire and now Connemara) was the Expedition Leader for Northabout’s remarkable achievements. If this sounds like a peculiarly balanced personnel setup and line of command, you’ll have to read this thoughtful book to find how it all worked out.
GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL TO GET STUCK IN
In fact, while most of us go cruising “to get away from it all”, the voyaging and ice-bashing of Northabout and other ventures recounted here are more about getting away from Ireland in order to immerse oneself in very strange and sometimes extremely dangerous situations.
While Northabout carried many crew during her three-season Arctic circumnavigation, these were the seafarers who returned to Westport in the Autumn of 2005 with Paddy Barry and Jarlath Cunnane at centre
And it was in very different times, even if it was only twenty years ago. Not only was the ice in the Arctic showing those signs of thawing which have since accelerated, but there was a distinct mood of melting in relations with Russia.
THAW IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS NOW HISTORY
Indeed, so good was the interaction of Northabout’s crew with their officially-imposed ice pilot Nikolai Letau that in time, after he had continued Arctic voyaging with his own boat in the far north, Captain Letau was awarded the Irish Cruising Club’s international accolade, the Fastnet Trophy, in 2016. It was the same recognition accorded to Jarlath Cunnane and Paddy Barry after the completion of their circuit in 2005.
Visiting dignitary – the Lord of the Arctic comes to call, as seen from Northabout’s deck
Not normally on the menu, but if obliged to eat seal meat as a gift from locals, Northabout’s crew found it tasted best “with plenty of onions and curry”
Early summer on the Khatanga River in Siberia with caribou migrating. It was here that Northabout over-wintered while transitting the Northeast Passage
The Siberian summer isn’t always long hours of sunlight – Mayomen Rory Casey and Jarlath Cunnane may even be talking about the weather
WESTPORT INTERNATIONAL PRESENTATION
The presentation to Nikolai Letau took place eight years ago when the ICC’s moveable feast, its annual dinner, was appropriately in Westport with Northabout’s build-place just up the road. But while mention of this friendly episode emphasizes just how much the world has drifted or marched into Cold Water hostile crisis mode since then, even if the Arctic ice thaw has continued, the new edition doesn’t shirk from other contentious issues. Another Northabout voyage newly recounted here (along with cruises in warmer climes) is how they went outside Norway and northwest Russia, then into the White Sea Canal to gain access to the Baltic in 2012.
Just in case there was any Arctic doubt about Northabout’s home county……
APPALLING STORY OF WHITE SEA CANAL’S CONSTRUCTION
While the White Sea Canal is a remarkable feat of construction from World War II, the fact that it was largely hand-built with Stalinist forced labour and thousands of death was something that Jarlath and his shipmates first became aware of when they were in Siberia eight years earlier, where everywhere there was evidence of Stalin’s attitude that: “One death is a tragedy, 100,000 deaths is a statistic”.
Thus you’ll gather that the book Northabout is not exactly a laugh-a-minute read. But it has its lighter moments nevertheless, and being profusely and well-illustrated in its 340 pages with 31 chapters, it is a snip at €30. So with the country facing the possibility of several days of freeze before the end of January, it will certainly put things into perspective on dealing with real ice by an experienced explorer and seafarer, a great man who likes and admires ice in all its extraordinary manifestations, yet fully respects the stuff.
EXTRA MESSAGE FOR HARRY McNISH
But perhaps most importantly of all, this new edition comes with an extra message. Another venture of this remarkable team had been a 1997 attempt in to replicate Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic rescue-seeking voyage from Elephant Island to South Georgia in the modified 22ft lifeboat James Caird, with the primary purpose of raising the profile of one of Shackleton’s most important shipmates, the ultra-calm but then-little-known Tom Crean from Annascaul in County Kerry.
Harry McNish in cheerful mood, as interpreted by artist Medbh Gillard from sketches made during the Endurance Expedition
Today, there is no doubt that they and others have succeeded brilliantly in this – everybody now knows about Tom Crean. But typically, Jarlath has now gone on to another key player in the Shackleton drama, the ship’s carpenter Harry McNish. He was a Glaswegian who seemed determined to prove the accuracy of P G Wodehouse’s dictum that there is little difficulty in telling the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine, but in McNish’s case with Shackleton there was one very sharp personal grievance in that Shackleton felt obliged to have McNish’s beloved pet cat Mrs Chippy shot when the Endurance was being abandoned and a long ice trek was in prospect.
Harry McNish modifying the James Caird in Antarctic conditions – he started while still on an ice floe, and finished on the foreshore at Elephant Island
But thrawn and all as he was - and even more so in drink - Harry McNish was a brilliant ship’s carpenter. On the ultra-harsh and exposed conditions of an ice floe and then on Elephant Island, he converted the open boat James Caird into a strengthened and fully-decked seagoing sailing vessel, with the imaginative re-purposing of the few materials available, and using only the most basic hand tools.
McNish also sailed as one of the James Caird’s crew on the life-saving crossing to South Georgia, which those who wish to replicate might note took it took place in late April, in the Antarctic’s Autumn when the strong but relatively steady westerlies of the Great Southern Ocean are more prevalent.
Harry McNish is now famed and memorialized in New Zealand with this statuette of his beloved but doomed cat Mrs Chippy on his grave
Be that as it may, when it was all successfully completed with the remaining crew rescued from Elephant Island and brought safely back to England just in time for some of them to be killed in action on service towards the end of the Great War of 1914-18, Shackleton very deliberately excluded McNish from his recommended list for the uniquely special Polar Medal.
EXPEDITIONS’ FATAL PRESSURES
At this distance, it all seems rather petty. But we should remember that the charismatic Shackleton seems to have spent much of his life under so great an expedition-induced pressure that he was to die of a heart attack at age only 47 in South Georgia on a later expedition in January 1922.
Jarlath Cunnane building a replica of James Caird in her ocean-crossing form at his workshop on the shores of Clew Bay. The boat is now completed, and he hopes she will be put on display in the Shackleton Museum in County Kildare
Nevertheless, as someone who has himself done so much in high latitudes, Jarlath Cunnane surely has the moral right to hope for some further redemption and recognition of Harry McNish’s memory, for he is currently only significantly remembered and respected in New Zealand, where he died destitute. And when you’ve read this splendid book with the attention it deserves, you’ll tend to agree with Jarlath Cunnane.
Northabout
340 pp, fully illustrated
First published 2006 Collin Press
Expanded Second Edition December 2023, Northabout Publishing
Available from [email protected] for €30 plus P & P, or from Castle Bookshop, Castlebar, and Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway
Home again. Northabout back in Clew Bay and Croagh Patrick looking well in the Autumn of 2005. Photo: Rory Casey
