It was a night for be-medalled ice navigators. Don’t think, though, that last Friday (January 30th’s) Inaugural Dinner of the Irish Polar Institute in the National Yacht Club (on top of their best catering form, with optimal numbers) was a matter of weatherbeaten heroes formally wearing all their decorations.
On the contrary, President Maire Breathnach with Paddy Barry as Hon Sec and Rory Casey as MC hosted a charmingly easygoing occasion, albeit with a serious purpose. And in the cheery mood of high latitude camaraderie, you’d to take time out to calculate that the gathering involved four awardees of the Blue Water Medal of the Cruising Club of America, five awards of the Tilman Medal of the Royal Cruising Club, and more former holders of the Irish Cruising Club’s premier trophy, the Faulkner Cup, than could immediately be tabulated.
Inaugural Dinner of the Irish Polar Institute in the National Yacht Club Photo Gallery
THE CALL OF THE BIG WHITE
The Call of the Big White, whether it be north or south, is not for everyone. Yet when they all get together it seems to be the most normal, indeed maybe the only way to go voyaging.
And when it all started way back in the mists of time, the Irish were commanding pioneers, as the Vikings were to find when they started spreading every which way and their “discovery” of the Faroes was no such thing, as Irish monks were there already, and replete with stories of icy lands they’d also discovered to the north and west beyond the far horizon.
But inevitably as the European empires started to flex their high latitude voyaging muscles, any Irish sailors went into the ice as crews or employed commanders, usually on British ships. However, the IPI showed the way it is researching, as tables at the dinner were named in honour of Irish-born explorers such as Bransfield, Crozier, McClure, Crean and the McCarthy brothers.
Happy New Year….Peter Killen’s Amel 54 Pure Magic from Malahide in Paradise Harbour in Antarctica on 1st January 2005. Photo: Joe Phelan
LIMBLESS LANDLORD
Parallel with the official expeditions mounted as national efforts were some noted private ventures, such as the Potts brothers of the Royal St George YC on Dublin Bay taking their 100-ton cutter Caprice to Iceland in 1850, the renowned voyage well north of that by Lord Dufferin from County Down with the schooner Foam in 1856, the “limbless landlord” Arthur MacMurrough-Kavanagh of County Carlow on fierce Arctic hunting expeditions, and Henry Gore-Booth of Lissadell with his Sligo-built Kara getting to Nova Zemlya.
But very quickly, in addition to the impetus for territorial expansion and empire building, the search for rare minerals and the demand for scientific information became prominent, and quite recently one Irish Arctic-voyaging skipper who had better remain nameless found he’d signed on an American crewman who promptly walked off the ship when he found the voyage was basically “for the fun of it, just for the hell of it”, rather then for some serious scientific purpose.
RECENT IRISH BOOKS
Against that, several notable books have emerged, notably Jarlath Cunnane and Paddy Barry’s Northabout with the story of the first cruising circuit of the Arctic in 2003–2005 when there was much more ice than there is now, and Joe Phelan’s Sailing to Antarctica about the gradual high latitude buildup, via various boats owned by Peter Killen of Malahide, until they undertook the full Antarctic expedition with his Amel Super Maramu 54 ketch Pure Magic, a complex cruise of which a highlight was getting into the caldera of Deception Island in appalling conditions of Antarctic weather and non-existent visibility.
WHERE ARE THE NEWER ARCTIC VOYAGERS?
But as Jamie Young of Killary Adventure Centre in Connacht – who has sailed to Greenland six times and also led a kayak expedition around Cape Horn – was to point out, there don’t seem to be many new high latitude sailors coming along, as the emphasis is now on professionally-organised “super-tourism”.
So is it possible that the Irish Polar Institute has come into being just as we reach the closing years of the Golden Age of Amateur and Semi-Amateur polar voyaging?
That’s a thought for another day. Meanwhile, one of the inspirations for founding the IPI was the feeling among many Irish polar enthusiasts that the great Ernest Shackleton was unnecessarily mean in not including his “awkward squad” ship’s carpenter, the very Scottish Harry McNish, in the list of those to be awarded the Polar Medal when all the Endurance’s crew were brought safely home in 1916.
MCNISH’S SAVING SKILL
This was largely due to McNish’s skill in turning the ship’s lifeboat James Caird into an ocean-sailing proposition to get Shackleton and a small crew from Elephant Island down in the Antarctic across the 600 miles of the great Southern Ocean towards the possibility of finding a rescue ship in South Georgia, in order to bring everyone home.
Now there’s no doubting that McNish could be thrawn in the extreme. For instance, he refused to be one of the harness team when the boats were being hauled across the ice after the Endurance went under, insisting his job was to be ship’s carpenter. And indeed – when the time arose – he proved just how good he was at it.
THE TRAGEDY OF MRS CHIPPY
But for his part, after the Endurance went under, McNish never forgave Shackleton for shooting his pet cat, his constant companion Mrs Chippy. “Mrs C” was actually a fine tomcat, but either way Shackleton insisted an expedition in desperate straits could not afford the luxury of feeding a pet animal attached to the ship’s carpenter.
Mrs Chippy on the shoulders of a Welsh crewman, southward bound aboard Endurance from Buenos Aires to Antarctica.
It’s such seemingly minor elements of the story of Shackleton’s success in saving all his people except the cat which have grown in prominence down the years. So much so, in fact, that Jarlath Cunnane in particular – who built the James Caird replica now on display at Tom Crean’s South Pole Inn at Annascaul in County Kerry – felt some way should be found of presenting Harry McNish’s family with a special medal.
It’s a moot point whether the IPI or the medal for Harry McNish came first. But either way, it meant that in the depths of winter in the bright lights of the National YC in Dun Laoghaire, Harry’s great grand nephew John McNish and a group of friends and supporters from Scotland were feted in Ireland as they accepted the very fine IPI medal designed with the assistance of noted maritime-oriented sculptor John Coll.
Harry McNish’s medal – Michael Brogan brought it all together, John Coll designed it, foundry was Bronze Art Dublin, Jarlath Cunnane made the base from iroko, and the inscription in Old Irish by Maire Breathnach translates as Courage, Valour and Great Deeds in the ice.
