Commemorating Centenaries is a blunt instrument. In recent years, there have been many significant hundred year markers ashore and afloat. They've been of international, national, local and specialist significance. An almost inevitable Centenary fatigue may well have set in.
Yet how else are we to persuade people, whose main interests may be more in the present and future than the past, that something in history deserves acknowledgement and commemoration, if not celebration? Centenaries may be gross simplifications of continuing stories. But at least they're an acknowledgement that such narratives are alive and important.
THE VERY DIFFERENT WORLD OF 1925
In 2025 of all years, we in the boat world need to shake ourselves up, and try to realise again the full meaning of what is being honoured in sailing. And perhaps the best way to do it is through attempting to imagine what a very different place the world was in 1925 and the years around it, both in sailing and in the situations in which, for the most dedicated, sailing may have been the primary interest even if they had other interests as well.
Saoirse was to return to Dun Laoghaire on June 20th 1925 after rounding Cape Horn. She had departed (as seen here) on her global circumnavigation on June 20th 1923
In Ireland in 2025, the primary Centenary surely falls on Friday June 20th in Dun Laoghaire, when the hundredth anniversary is celebrated of Conor O'Brien's return from his pioneering voyage around the world south of the great Capes in the 42ft Baltimore-built ketch Saoirse.
Constructed to O'Brien's own "Arts & Craft Maritime" design, Saoirse was - like her owner - a mixture of old and new features. As a qualified architect, he created a design that was all of a piece, yet much of Saoirse's hull and rig was of a much earlier era in concept.
Conor O'Brien in comfort cruising mode in Saoirse's saloon
ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE WORLD
The world of sailing in Ireland was ultra-conservative by the 1920s. Although the first Bermudan-rigged racing yacht for an Irish owner was the 1913 International 8 Metre Ierne by Fife for Arthur Sharman Crawford, Commodore of the Royal Munster YC, he kept her in the Solent, and at home in Cork Harbour he raced a gaff-riggd Cork Harbour OD, and in all Ireland there was only one Bermudan-rigged class by the 1920s.
Arthur Sharman Crawford's International 8 Metre Ierne was one of the very few Bermuda-rigged Irish-owned boats pre-1920.
The new Mylne-designed 28ft 6ins River Class was appearing in Belfast Lough and eventually at its current base, Strangford Lough, from the 1921 onwards The pre-design discussion had included a request that the boat be of a type "that could be sailed by a man and his daughters". Far from being a welcome early sign of female empowerment, this was the sad acknowledgement that so many able young men had been killed in World War I from 1914 to 1918 that a simple Bermudan-rigged sloop was the only option.
The Strangford Lough River Class of 1921 has claims to be the world's first Bermudan-rigged One-Design. Photo: W M Nixon
The complexities of war situations is underlined by the fact that World War I brought every aspect of recreational boating to a halt, but in Ireland the extreme but limited violence of the Civil War from June 28th 1922 to May 24th 1923 saw sports sailing determinedly continued.
SAOIRSE BUILT IN MIDST OF CIVIL WAR
Thus Saoirse was built by Tom Moynihan and his men in Baltimore precisely at a time when West Cork was reputedly one of the most active theatres of this Civil War. And there was even sailing involvement in the war, as the anti-treaty rebels had broken all lines of communication. This meant that the only way dispatches could be carried, from Emmet Dalton leading the Government forces re-taking Cork to supreme commander Michael Collins in Dublin, was via the yacht Gull owned by Cork Harbour's Harry Donegan, who had been Chairman of the Redmondite Home Rule Party in Cork.
WAR DISPATCHES CARRIER BECOMES FASTNET PIONEER
Just three years later, Gull was the means whereby cross-channel goodwill was much improved through Harry Donegan's participation in the first Fastnet Race in 1925. What is now the Rolex Fastnet Race will probably be the supreme international Centenary event of 2025 as it starts on July 26th, even if its course today is different from the original in 1925, which saw the start eastward out of the Solent from Ryde, and finishing at Plymouth after rounding the Fastnet.
The start of the first Fastnet Race in 1925, Harry Donegan's Gull on the right.
At the start, there was more opposition to the new and adventurous event by sailing opinion makers than there was support, but seven boats eventually got going. A hundred years ago, it was without today's urgency, which will see 400-plus entries go westward through the Royal Yacht Squadron starting line and finish at Cherbourg.
The start of just one class in a modern Fastnet Race
ANOTHER IRISH ANGLE TO CENTENARY FASTNET RACE
But our own Fastnet Rock is the great unchangeable in the course, and there's a quirky Irish angle to the finish. One of the dominant features of the Cherbourg waterfront area is the magnificent equestrian statue of Napoleon atop his legendary horse Marengo. And Marengo was of course originally sourced at Ballinasloe Horse Fair by two of his discerning young cavalry officers.
All these things we know now in looking back over the hundred years of the Fastnet Race. Yet at the time it was thought by some to be a crazy notion, unworthy of interest or encouragement from mainstream yachting. So it says much for the discernment of Frank Beken, the international yacht photographer supreme of Cowes, that he sensed something special was happening in the eastern Solent, and made his way there to record the first Fastnet Race start.
Frank Beken at work. He made his own plate cameras, and activated the shutter by squeezing a bulb in his mouth
ONLY "YACHT" IN FIRST FASTNET FLEET
Thus we have the photos of Gull a hundred years ago, when it emerged that she was the only total yacht in the entire first Fastnet fleet. All the others were former sailing workboats, including the winner Jolie Brise, a former Le Havre pilot cutter.
It is thanks to the log and letters written by Harry Donegan – so redolent of their time – that we get the best impression of what it was like to take on the then-enormous challenge of the Fastnet Race. But even then, the presence of something tangible puts it all on a new level, and the participation of the original Jolie Brise on July 26th 2025 really will be something very special.
The Star of the Show. The winner of the first Fastnet Race, the former Le Havre pilot cutter Jolie Brise, will be a formidable presence at the Centenary. Photo: W M Nixon
NOTED IRISH-BUILT YACHTS
It is also the Centenary in 2025 of two noted Irish-built cruising yachts that somehow seem more real than anything else. By the 1920s, John B Kearney of Ringsend in Dublin was gaining renown as a designer and builder of able yachts, even as he rose in the ranks of the engineering staff in Dublin Port.
Without today's multiple entertainment distractions of domestic and public life, he devoted himself to boat and yacht-building, spending his working days in the Port's workshops north of the river, and his evenings and weekends in a corner of Murphy's Boatyard in Ringsend, building boats to his own design.
OIL LAMPS AND HUMAN EFFORT
In 1910-12, working entirely by himself by the light of oil lamps and purely by man-power, he created the 9-ton yawl Ainmara, with which his many successes were to include the overall win of the 1921 Lambay Race at Howth. In today's world of multiple conveniences and work-aids, it is scarcely possible to imagine such an all-consuming project, but his efforts endure, as Ainmara still sails the seas, now in Swiss ownership.
The 1912 J B Kearney-designed-and-built Ainmara was restored and cruised for many years by Dickie Gomes of Strangford Lough. She now voyages under Swiss ownership. Photo: Pete Adams
By the 1920s, there were limited sources of power, but physical labour was still pre-eminent when, in 1924, John Kearney started in with the assistance of his brother Tom to build the 38ft yawl Mavis. They were a great team, and their disciplined nightly routine included a stop at precisely 9.30pm for a well-sweetened cup of tea and snack.
But one night, they discovered neither had brought the essential sugar. Each blamed the other. All conversation ceased. Yet the work continued without a word being exchanged, and thereafter they each brought their own tea, sugar and milk, while Mavis was completed in total silence to a successful launching a hundred years ago. It's a Centenary we hope will not be celebrated in silence in Maine, where Mavis is now based in the care of her owner-restorer Ron Hawkins.
The 1925-built Mavis (John B Kearney) winning Skerries Regatta in 1928. She celebrates her Centenary this year in Maine in the ownership of restorer Ron Hawkins.
The restored Mavis on her way to victory in a regatta in Maine
JACK TYRRELL MAKES THE SCENE
In 1925, the young Jack Tyrell had been in charge of the 1864-established family shipyard in Arklow for just one year when a young Dublin dentist, Billy Mooney of Howth, commissioned him to build a 36ft yawl to an unused set of designs he had acquired from the estate of artist and yacht designer Albert Strange (1855-1917).
Billy Mooney in the 1950s, many years after he'd commissioned the building of Nirvana of Arklow
Mooney was so involved in the project that he chartered an Arklow schooner to sail aboard to Liverpool and bring back their personal selection from a renowned timber yard of all of the wood to be used in the new Nirvana's construction. She sailed for the first time in 1925, and now – in her centenary year – she is for sale in Suffolk in England, as Peter Clay, for whom she was restored by the meticulous Jamie Clay, is sadly no longer among us in Nirvana of Arklow's keenly-anticipated Centenary year.
Another Centenarian in 2025 – the Tyrrell-built classic Nirvana of Arklow.
So there we have it. This year's extraordinary Centenaries of Saoirse's circumnavigation, the Rolex Fastnet Race, and the birth of the exceptional yachts Mavis and Nirvana show that, however 1925 may be vaguely looked back on by many (or most) as a time of total turbulence, productive and creative life was very much going on.
