Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Banagher Harbour is the venue chosen by the Heritage Boat Association to celebrate their tenth anniversary.

Moored in this historic site, from Saturday May 28th to Sunday June 6th 2011, will be the largest gathering of heritage boats in a harbour, since the end of commercial traffic on the Irish inland waterways. On offer throughout the week are events to appeal to everyone in the community.

Over twenty of the Grand Canal Company (GCC) barges together with many other regenerated heritage barges and boats will be on display in the Harbour. Many of these are the old commercial boats that moved large and heavy goods along the canals, rivers and lakes, the motorways of their day. Also in the harbour will be rejuvenated wooden boats, steam tugs, steam yachts, sailing barges and other historic boats.

Each evening in the Crank House starting at 19:30, there will be a different talk on various aspects of the Shannon, her heritage and her historic boats. Entry is free and the public are most welcome.

During the week there will be daily boat trips by Silverline Cruisers with a Birdwatch Ireland Guide on board, to explore the flora and fauna of the River. Newgrange Currach will demonstrate how to build a currach and local teams will compete to build the best one. There are fishing and photographic competitions.

Shannonside Sub Aqua Club's sponsored Fin Swim will be followed by a BBQ open to the public with fun for all the family.

This year the River Barrow and her sisters, the Nore and the Suir, will greet again some old inland waterways friends, the barges of the Heritage Boat Association (HBA). These barges, or canal boats as they are more accurately known, are the same boats that in their earlier working lives carried the cargos that were the commercial lifeline of the country. And in turn these old boats will meet with some of the skippers and crew that worked them when they were cargo boats on the inland waterways.

This year we celebrate the 220th anniversary of the opening of the Barrow Navigation. This linked the Grand Canal with the rivers Barrow, Nore and Suir, and opened up a large area of the hinterland to the great ports of Dublin and Waterford. When the canals closed to commercial traffic in the 1960s it was feared that all use of the navigation would soon cease. Indeed, non-commercial traffic did become very light, but for the vision of a few people and now, following excellent remedial work by Waterways Ireland on the Barrow Line and Barrow River, we welcome a new era for this navigation, one which will bring life and vitality once again to the waterway and the towns and villages along the system.

A hundred years ago, 1200 boatmen were engaged in the business of transporting cargo, connecting people in inland towns with those in Irish ports and in turn linking them to the great sea ports of the world. Today, many of their descendants live along our inland navigations.

Three of these great canal boats, numbers 72M, 68M and 107B, escorted by a flotilla of other HBA boats will, over the next few months, travel the entire navigation including Carlow, Waterford, Carrick on Suir, Inistioge and all points in between. The crews are anxious to meet with those whose families had connections with the commercial trade along the waterway, and perhaps even re-unite some long retired boatmen with their old boat. In particular, a gathering of the retired boatmen will take place in Graiguenamanagh on Saturday 21st May. Waterways Ireland together with the Heritage Boat Association will make a presentation to each of the boatmen to mark Barrow 2011, the celebration of the 220th anniversary of the opening of the Barrow Navigation.

The following are the expected arrival times:

Goresbridge: Saturday 30th April from 14:00
Graiguenamanagh: Sunday 8th May from 14:00

The Heritage Boat Association’s aspiration is to protect, promote and celebrate the floating heritage on the inland waterways of Ireland. What's remaining of our Floating Heritage provides us with a direct link to the past and includes both commercial and pleasure craft that plied the inland waterways through the different eras of the canal, lake and river systems.

If you are interested in Irish barges, canal boats, lighters, old wooden boats, steam tugs, steam yachts, sailing barges, historic boats that have ended up on the Irish inland waterways or our work, do contact us.
 
So - what is so interesting about Heritage Boats?

A Heritage Boat is described as being consistent with the provisions of the Heritage Act 1995, to mean a boat over 25 years old which is of significance because of it’s intrinsic construction or because of it’s association with the commercial, cultural, economic, industrial, military, political, social or other history of the country. 

'Celebrating Ireland's Floating Heritage'

Heritage Boat Association