Warm tributes have been paid to Ruth Heard, highly respected advocate of inland waterways and author of a number of classic guidebooks on the Shannon and Ireland’s canal network.
As The Sunday Independent reports, she was an accomplished offshore sailor and film-maker, who undertook a number of voyages at sea before GPS and Decca became common navigational aids.
As Afloat reported earlier, she served as president of the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland (IWAI) and member of the Heritage Council.
Born Ruth Healy in 1930, she was reared in Monkstown, Dublin and attended Glengara secondary school, then taking modern languages at Trinity College, Dublin (TCD).
Although neither of her parents had any involvement with boats, she became a keen sailor at Trinity College, Dublin.
Her brother, the late Eric Healy, became a master mariner and latterly master of the Asgard II sail training ship, while her sister Jean developed a long connection with the Shannon.
She had been very keen on sport, was captain of the university hockey team, and recalled her first contact with water in the introduction to her book, By Shannon Shores – published in 1987 under her first married name, Delany.
She had travelled as a member of the Dublin University Sailing Club to compete in a team race against the Lough Derg Yacht Club.
Several weeks later, she was invited by Marcus Goodbody on his boat, the Phoenix, to sail Shannon One Designs at the Lough Ree Yacht Club regatta.
“It was my first breathtaking Shannon dawn,”she wrote.
“ Behind the castle the sky was filled with the golden glow of the rising sun. I have witnessed many Shannon dawns since then, each one special and different, but that first trip up Lough Derg was one of those mystical occasions in life when time stands still and, maybe, just for a moment, one has a brief glimpse of eternity… “
Through boats and boating she met her first husband, Vincent Delany, who became Regius professor of laws at TCD and was a founder of the IWAI.
They married and Ruth was pregnant with their daughter, Hilary, when Vincent died in January 1964.
After Hilary was born in July 1964, Ruth took a teaching job in Hillcourt school.
Her first book, published in 1966, was written with her late husband and was entitled The Canals of the South of Ireland.
That same year, she married Douglas Heard, a family friend through sailing and a first and second world war veteran.
The couple sailed his Uffa Fox-designed Jack Tyrrell-built Flying Thirty, Huff of Arklow, to the Azores and to Iceland among many long distance trips. The Irish Film Archive has footage of many films they made.
When the Royal Canal was threatened with closure, she became involved with a campaign to retain it as a public amenity. She had been on board Heard’s motor cruiser, Hark, which undertook the last transit of the waterway in 1955 until its re-opening in 2010.
She continued researching and writing, served as IWAI president and spent two years on the Heritage Council.
Her subsequent publications included The Grand Canal of Ireland, (1973); Ireland's Inland Waterways, (1985); By Shannon Shores, (1987); Ireland's Royal Canal, with Ian Bath (1992); The Shannon Navigation, (2008); and The Shannon One Design Class 1922-1999 with LM Goodbody.
Maritime journalist WM Nixon told The Sunday Independent that she was “a powerful figure in the land of boats, waterways, oceans and heritage” with a “quietly prodigious” work rate.
Former IWAI president Colin Becker has described her as “a pioneer”, who played a key role in bringing the World Canals conference to Ireland in 2001, and describes her book on the Shannon navigation as a “masterpiece”.
Ruth Heard is survived by her daughter Hilary and extended family.
Read The Sunday Independent here
