So many people were affected by the sinking of the Asgard it's easy to understand how so many feel much more than a vessel was lost last month. Following reader requests Afloat.ie is compiling Asgard memories for the website. Here Margaret Stokes, a former Asgard trainee and watchleader writes about what the boat meant to her."It has taken me all these weeks to be able to read a report on her sinking. I was born and brought up in Arklow and my father worked frequently on a sub contract basis for Tyrrells. He worked on Chichester's Gypsy Moth and remembered an Arklow where the favourite sport for the boys was to move from river bank to bank without touching a deck, a world full of tall ships and tall tales.
He had always wanted to go to sea, my mother said that he sailed around the kitchen table for an entire life. On his 65th bithday he was off the Grand Banks, in a fog, as one of the two adults who were not professional sailors, on the vessel's return journey from her trip to the States in the mid eighties. I had been on the Vigo to Bermuda leg...we met the vessel in Cork as she sailed into Hawlboline..he was standing on the t'gallant yard making sure it was in position in the chocks. A lifetime of memories flooded back.
I saw her keel being laid, the traditional pice of silver coinage put in, we heard the stories of how Jack had chosen the tree in Avondale. We saw her planking being moulded, we witnessd the sea trials, when her mast bent so badly under sail that we thought it would break....it was like a banana...The crew made up of the lads from Tyrrells Yard kept urging Jack to shorten sail. His edited response was that he had "to see what she would do", The mast did not break but she was taken back to the yard and the additional backstays on the mainmast were fitted.
As I wept I remembered sailing with Eric Healy, with Frank Traynor, with Tom Mc Carthy, Liam Keating, Barry Martin and a host of funny, wise and honourable people. It was an education in interpersonal skills, hard work and the value of perseverance and determination. At a time when Ireland was on its knees it gave us youngsters a sense of belonging and a sense of nothing that is worthwile being easy. It is an Ireland I have watched fade, like the the shipwrights of Arklow. If there is an ounce of common sense or decency left in a country which managed to build one thing of consummate beauty in a time when there was little I would urge that they get their fingers out and raise her.
I can hear the hum of the wind in the rigging as I type...." Margaret Stokes
Send your Asgard memory to [email protected]
