Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Historic Boats

#BronzeAgeBoat - Dover's replica Bronze Age boat has been moved to a secure location after being vandalised, according to Kent Online.

It's reported that a tent covering the vessel on the port town's Roman Lawn was damaged, and saw marks were made on one side.

The incident comes just days ahead of the launch of a campaign to fund works on the historic boat - a half-size replica of one built some 3,500 years ago - to make it seaworthy after it sank in the Dover docks last year.

A similar project in Cornwall saw the fruit of its own restoration work this past March, when their 50ft Bronze Age boat was set afloat in Falmouth.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the Cornish boat is crafted from two giant oak logs and using tools similar to what boat builders of the time world have used in the post-Neolithic era.

Published in Historic Boats

#ClassicShip – It won't be all about vessels under sail as the veteran T.S.M.V. Cill Airne, which served as a trans-Atlantic passenger liner tender in Cobh, will be open to the public as part of the inaugural Dublin Port River Festival (1-3 June), writes Jehan Ashmore.

Throughout the three-day festival, the Cill Airne will have an Open Day between 11am to 6pm.

Since 2006, the Cill Airne has been moored as a static restaurant and bar venue along Dublin's North Wall Quay.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie,  last year she celebrated a major milestone, having been built 50 years ago at the nearby old Liffey Dockyard.

To celebrate her half-century, the Irish branch of the World Ship Society (WSS) based in Cobh held a special luncheon on board in the beautiful timber surroundings of the Quay 16 Restaurant.

The 500 tonnes vessel is also unique in that she is the last ship built from the yard.

Research has indicated that she along with her sister Blarna were built with rivetted hulls, this was a political one, designed to ensure employment of the last riveting crews at the dockyard.

This made Cill Airne unique to Dublin's maritime industrial heritage but also significant in that this outdated shipbuilding technique was still in practise in a European shipyard.

Why not come on board during the festival and explore this rare example of a surviving Irish built vessel.

In addition the upper decks will provide an opportunity to gain a higher elevation of the myriad of boating traffic and with Tallships berthed either side along the quays.

On Saturday the Howth 17's, the world's oldest one-design keelboat class still racing will indeed be doing just that!...and on Sunday the Old Gaffers 'Parade of Sail'.

Published in Historic Boats
Page 10 of 10

Ireland's Trading Ketch Ilen

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

Designed by Limerick man Conor O’Brien and built in Baltimore in 1926, she was delivered by Munster men to the Falkland Islands where she served valiantly for seventy years, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties.

Returned now to Ireland and given a new breath of life, Ilen may be described as the last of Ireland’s timber-built ocean-going sailing ships, yet at a mere 56ft, it is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

Wooden Sailing Ship Ilen FAQs

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

The Ilen was designed by Conor O’Brien, the first Irish man to circumnavigate the world.

Ilen is named for the West Cork River which flows to the sea at Baltimore, her home port.

The Ilen was built by Baltimore Sea Fisheries School, West Cork in 1926. Tom Moynihan was foreman.

Ilen's wood construction is of oak ribs and planks of larch.

As-built initially, she is 56 feet in length overall with a beam of 14 feet and a displacement of 45 tonnes.

Conor O’Brien set sail in August 1926 with two Cadogan cousins from Cape Clear in West Cork, arriving at Port Stanley in January 1927 and handed it over to the new owners.

The Ilen was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company, in exchange for £1,500.

Ilen served for over 70 years as a cargo ship and a ferry in the Falkland Islands, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties. She stayed in service until the early 1990s.

Limerick sailor Gary McMahon and his team located Ilen. MacMahon started looking for her in 1996 and went out to the Falklands and struck a deal with the owner to bring her back to Ireland.

After a lifetime of hard work in the Falklands, Ilen required a ground-up rebuild.

A Russian cargo ship transported her back on a 12,000-mile trip from the Southern Oceans to Dublin. The Ilen was discharged at the Port of Dublin 1997, after an absence from Ireland of 70 years.

It was a collaboration between the Ilen Project in Limerick and Hegarty’s Boatyard in Old Court, near Skibbereen. Much of the heavy lifting, of frames, planking, deadwood & backbone, knees, floors, shelves and stringers, deck beams, and carlins, was done in Hegarty’s. The generally lighter work of preparing sole, bulkheads, deck‐houses fixed furniture, fixtures & fittings, deck fittings, machinery, systems, tanks, spar making and rigging is being done at the Ilen boat building school in Limerick.

Ten years. The boat was much the worse for wear when it returned to West Cork in May 1998, and it remained dormant for ten years before the start of a decade-long restoration.

Ilen now serves as a community floating classroom and cargo vessel – visiting 23 ports in 2019 and making a transatlantic crossing to Greenland as part of a relationship-building project to link youth in Limerick City with youth in Nuuk, west Greenland.

At a mere 56ft, Ilen is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

©Afloat 2020