The Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy, today performed the annual ‘Casting of the Spear’ into Dublin Bay, one the most important symbolic occasions on the Dublin Port calendar. In the process, she confirmed her title as Honorary Admiral of Dublin Port, upholding the memory of a 535-year-old tale.

In 1488, Lord Mayor of Dublin Thomas Mayler rode on horseback out to the city’s boundaries, facing bitter rain and fierce winds. Braving these elements, Lord Mayor Mayler brandished a spear, which he vaulted out into the sea as he went. Each casting of his spear marked a point on Dublin’s eastward boundary, the distance of which into the Irish Sea was determined by the Lord Mayor’s aim and strength.

More than half a millennium later, the face of Dublin Port has changed considerably. Today, it carries nearly two-thirds of all port traffic on the island of Ireland. Beneath all this activity lie the marks of Thomas Mayler cast out when Ireland’s trading relationship with the rest of the world was still in relative infancy.

To commemorate this event, Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy cast a spear of her own into Dublin Bay, her first official act as Honorary Admiral of the Port. Modern times have seen successive Lord Mayors take to the water at Dublin Port to earn their honorary title, which they retain for their period in office.

“It is my great pleasure to be confirmed as Honorary Admiral of the Port of Dublin,” Lord Mayor of Dublin Caroline Conroy said, “This ritual has fascinated me for several years. A connection to these colourful aspects of our past remains of great cultural value to all Dubliners. Dublin Port remains ever more vital to our commercial and cultural life in the city and beyond, and I wish it every success in its Masterplan projects over the coming years.”

Dublin Port CEO Barry O’Connell commented at the ceremony: “I would like to thank Lord Mayor Conroy for her participation in this ceremony and for her continued support of Dublin Port. This is a tradition I’m very proud to continue, one which emphasises the strong links between port and city and the importance of history and culture to our local community. It’s astounding to think, with all our advancements in engineering today, that the original boundary of the city was set by one person casting a spear into the sea. We’re currently in the process of developing a range of paths for cyclists and pedestrians running 5.5km across the Poolbeg Peninsula and 16km across the north side of the Liffey. These should allow Dubliners to look out over the full scope of this boundary set by a previous Lord Mayor over 500 years ago.”

Dublin Port Company (DPC) has announced that P&O Ferries and Seatruck will move locations within Dublin Port from January 23rd 2023.

The move will see P&O Ferries relocate from existing Terminal 3 (East Wall Road) to Terminal 5 (T5), at the eastern end of the port, replacing Seatruck. Seatruck will relocate its operations from Terminal 5 to a new Terminal 4 (T4), at the western end of the port. The new T4 will be accessed via a new check-in facility on Tolka Quay Road.

This change sees the former Terminal 3 entrance along East Wall Road (opposite the 3Arena) close to HGVs from January 23rd. All HGV traffic for Seatruck (T4) will access the port via Promenade Road, then onto T4 via Tolka Quay Road, and cross over the new Alexandra Road Bridge (the Red Bridge).

All traffic to P&O Ferries (T5) will enter the port via Promenade Road and travel east on New Promenade Road before turning right on to Terminal Road and then left on Alexandra Road Extension. P&O Car Ferry traffic will access T5 via Terminal Road South. 

P&O Ferries is moving to Terminal 5

To help all port users with the changeover, temporary digital signage will be in place along key routes within the port estate to direct drivers. The team from DPC will also be on the ground to assist drivers over the coming weeks.

The relocation of P&O Ferries and Seatruck facilitates ongoing development works associated with the Alexander Basin Redevelopment (ABR) Project, and the commencement of works on the MP2 Project; two major strategic infrastructure development projects consented and underway to increase port capacity as planned in DPC Masterplan 2040.

Seatruck is moving to Terminal 4

DPC acknowledges the ongoing support of both P&O Ferries and Seatruck in preparation for the move on January 23rd and is committed to working with both terminal operators to ensure a smooth transition for their customers and all port users.

P&O Ferries and Seatruck will be advising customers of their final sailing times from their original locations, and the first sailing times from their new locations in due course.

Port users can continue to keep up to date on all road and traffic developments at Dublin Port via Twitter. This includes recent changes to the speed limits throughout the north port estate road network which limit speeds to 40Km/h in the port estate and 20Km/h within the terminals as part of Dublin SafePort.

Dublin Port Company (DPC) is celebrating 21 years of its Scholarship Programme. In this anniversary year, 24 new recipients from the port’s local communities have been awarded scholarships for 2022.

The Dublin Port Scholarship Programme is the longest-running education bursary of its kind in the city’s Docklands area. It was set up by Dublin Port Company (DPC) in 2001 to contribute to the community by providing financial support for people to fulfil their potential through education.

Since 2001, the programme has awarded more than €1.2 million to applicants living in the port area, enabling them to progress to third-level education.

With 24 new bursaries granted for 2022, Dublin Port Company has now awarded scholarships to more than 1,250 local recipients, including school leavers and mature learners.

Dublin Port Scholarship 21st Anniversary - Sibheal Toner, Former Scholarship Recipient, Mary Lou McDonald, TD, Ben Greene, Scholarship Recipient. Photo: Shane O'Neill

Recipients who might not otherwise have pursued higher education owing to financial difficulty in undertaking further study have since gone on to complete a range of third level courses, including Business Studies, Law, Physiotherapy, Nursing, Chemistry, Architecture, Music, and Sociology. Many of the scholars have completed their studies at leading Irish universities, including Trinity College, UCD and DCU, as well as at colleges in England and Wales.

Applicants to the Scholarship Programme are assessed by an independent panel based on several criteria, including candidates’ motivation and commitment, and not solely on academic achievement.

Milestone Celebration

The 21st anniversary was recognised at an event held in The Pumphouse in Dublin Port last evening. The occasion brought together scholarship recipients and alumni, and was attended by local community leaders, school and third-level representatives, as well as those working in youth outreach.

The occasion also marked the first time for a community event to be held at The Pumphouse. The Pumphouse heritage area in Dublin Port represents a continuation of Dublin Port Company’s Masterplan commitment to integrate with the city and the community, providing new civic amenities and space for a range of arts, cultural and educational programmes to be announced in the year ahead.

Michael Sheary, Acting Chief Executive, Dublin Port Company, said:

“Dublin Port’s Scholarship Programme has made a lasting and positive contribution to the port’s communities over the past 21 years. By giving people the added encouragement and means to reach their potential through education, each scholarship has not only opened up access to further study, but also the opportunities in life that follow. This is therefore not just a milestone year, but a celebration of the community that has made the Scholarship Programme such an enduring success. I am confident that this year’s recipients will flourish in their chosen paths in the years ahead.”

Cecile Ndeley, Scholarship Recipient, and Edel Currie, Community Engagement Manager, Dublin Port. Photo: Shane O'Neill

Edel Currie, Community Engagement Manager, Dublin Port Company, said:

“We have seen first-hand how the Scholarship Programme has opened both doors and minds to educational opportunities that might otherwise have remained shut. It’s hugely rewarding when we learn of the success stories that stem from this small, but important springboard that started with a decision by Dublin Port Company to give back to the community 21 years ago. Today, it is the individual scholarship recipients who give back to their community. By bringing home their experiences and success, they are inspiring a new generation to realise their ambition through further learning.”

DPC’s Longstanding Support for Education in the Community

At the event, attendees also learned more about Dublin Port Company’s longstanding support for education and lifelong learning in the port community ‘from cradle to grave’. This includes the Early Learning Initiative for pre-school children from the inner city at the National College of Ireland, educational materials and tech supports for local primary schools, an art engagement programme for secondary students at Ringsend College, homework club and grinds for English, Irish and Maths in East Wall, Drawing Clubs for both senior citizens and school-going children in Ringsend and East Wall, and a Maritime Skills Training Course and Construction and Retrofitting Skills Training course for people from the port, including the long-term unemployed.

When the multi-talented John B Kearney (1879-1967) retired from a distinguished career in Dublin Port in 1944, he re-focused most of his attention on his parallel interest as a yacht designer and builder. It was an enduring passion that went right back to his first own-designed sailing boat, which he’d built in his father’s boatyard in Ringsend in 1897. Yet by the time of his retirement, he was living in Monkstown on the south shore of Dublin Bay, where one of the rooms in his house was re-purposed to be his design office. And above its door, he affixed a small but conspicuous brass plate, inscribed on which it clearly said: “God Chooses Our Relatives. Thank God We Can Choose Our Friends”.

For as Cormac Lowth so clearly reveals in his recent very comprehensive and copiously-illustrated book Ringsend Sailing Trawlers – published by Hal Sisk’s Peggy Bawn Press, with the support of Dublin Port Company – not only was Ringsend for a hundred years and more a hotbed of trawler development and technological innovations in fishing, but its increasingly vigorous maritime community – enlivened by positive interaction between the established Dublin fishermen and the incoming Brixham fleet from Devon – was producing remarkable sea-minded families such as the Murphys, the Bissetts, the Scallans and the Kearneys.

The Dodder “waterfront” at the back of Ringsend’s Thorncastle Street in the 1920s as captured by Harry Kernoff RHA, when the boatyards of families like the Murphys and Kearneys were cheek-by-jowl with rowing cubs 

The Kearneys in particular seemed to specialise in strong characters who might have been sent directly from Central Casting to become the Awkward Squad on both sides of the seaward city reaches of the River Liffey. Playwright Brendan Behan was a cousin. Another cousin, Peadar Kearney, was the propagandist and poet who wrote the National Anthem, “The Soldier’s Song”. And John B Kearney himself could be a prickly individual, for in 1923-25 when he and his brother Tom were beavering away together each evening after work at the day job to build one of John’s design masterpieces - the 39ft yawl Mavis - in a corner of Murphy’s Boatyard in Ringsend, they discovered one night that there was no sugar for their ritual 9.30 pm mug of strong tea. Neither would accept the blame. And thereafter each brought his own sugar. But the building of the Mavis was successfully completed without the two Kearney brothers exchanging a further single word.

Despite the expansion of the Ringsend fishing fleet in the late 1800s, their waterfront facilities remained very primitive, and they usually had to lie to moorings off what is now the location of PY&BC Marina. In a time of loosely-defined channels, it was not unknown for fishing boats moored like this to be run down at night by steamships.

Another brother – Jem – was likewise a very talented shipwright, but he sought to build a miniature conglomerate of marine-related businesses, in which profitable night-time salmon fishing in the Liffey was regarded as a Kearney birth-right, regardless of what the regulatory authorities might think. Thus he was known in some circles as “Bad” Kearney, with stories of how he and his team were regularly apprehended in the dark at Islandbridge and Chapelizod - supposedly in search of a stolen net - becoming a staple of the District Court. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that John B Kearney in retirement wanted to put some physical distance between himself and the many Kearneys and the other colourful clans who dominated community life on both sides of the Liffey.

YOU MAY TAKE THE MAN OUT OF RINGSEND, BUT…..

But while you may take the man out of Ringsend, you can never take Ringsend out of the man. And though the houses backing onto the Dodder waterfront in Thorncastle Street in Ringsend, where Kearneys and Murphys and others had first seen the light of day, were all to disappear in the redevelopments of the early 1950s, many of the families stayed on in the new houses and apartments, with the community remaining largely intact and quietly aware of its special maritime heritage. And as for John B Kearney, he remained so closely in contact with his birthplace that it was he who designed the last sailing yacht to be built in Ringsend, the 35ft Gannet for the Somerville-Large family in 1954.

John B Kearney at work on his drawing board, aged 83 in 1962. Photo: Tom Hutson

By this time he’d a quiet but definite national reputation as a yacht designer of some international note, and was still happily beavering away at his chosen course in life at the age of 75, with many productive years of yacht design still ahead of him. This was despite having “retired” ten years earlier as Dublin Port’s Superintendent of Engineering.

THE “REAL” HARBOUR ENGINEER

He had started with the port authorities in 1886 as an apprentice shipwright in their highly-regarded boat-building workshop, before going on to fill many key roles in the port’s development. But the fact that he had no university degree meant that he could never be officially acknowledged as the Harbour Engineer. So the position of Superintendent of Engineering may well have been created specifically for him in order to acknowledge his enormous contribution to Dublin Port’s innovation and development.

Yet apart from his boatbuilding tradesman’s accreditations, he did have an official qualification of sorts. Ever since childhood, his core ambition had been to achieve recognition as a yacht designer, and while still very young he had taken and passed a correspondence course in yacht design, with a certificate – duly framed and displayed– to accompany it. This gave him an added perspective to the experience he gained by working in his family’s boatyard on the banks of the River Dodder where it flowed into the River Liffey in the heart of Dublin port.

He also worked while very young in Murphy’s Boatyard nearby on that crazy little waterfront where aspirational rowing clubs rubbed shoulders with make-do-and-mend boatyards out the back of the houses of Thorncastle Street, where John Kearney and many others had been born into a community where maritime awareness and seamanlike instincts were absorbed with your mother’s milk.

This meant that although John B Kearney’s growing selection of yacht designs gradually demonstrated his own signature style, the basis of the hull shapes were still rooted in the Brixham-Ringsend trawler types, vessels so seamanlike in concept and practical in rig that they could continue trawling in heavy weather when other types had long since headed for port.

The “classic Kearney type” of the 1920s: his 39ft yawl Mavis – built in 1923-1925 and now restored in Maine - seen here winning Skerries Regatta 1928. Yet if specifically asked………

….John Kearney could create a yacht based directly on the Brixham-Ringsend trawler type, as seen here in the 1924-built Dolphin.

So although he had already produced several yacht designs of an evolving “Kearney type” by 1924, when a Ringsend sailing enthusiast asked him that year to create a yacht of miniature trawler type, he produced the 28ft clinker-built Dolphin, which exactly fitted the bill.

And this linking of the hard-working seaworthy trawlers of Ringsend with the recreational sailing scene was reinforced by the Ringsend boats frequently using Dun Laoghaire as a harbour of refuge, while they also were keen competitors in regattas specially staged for them by what was then Kingstown Royal Harbour.

RINGSEND/BRIXHAM TRAWLER YACHT AND THE ASGARD GUN-RUNNING

One noted yachtsman who was particularly taken by the trawler type was the Dublin surgeon Sir Thomas Myles, who for several years owned the Chotah, a 48-ton 60ft cutter-rigged Brixham trawler type yacht built in Devon in 1891 by Dewdney. In 1913, Myles followed growing trawler practice by having Chotah fitted with an auxiliary engine – in this case a 4 cyl. Bergius Paraffin Motor made in Glasgow - and thus equipped, he was better suited, in the 1914 Erskine Childers-led gun-running, to transfer Conor O’Brien’s consignment of Mausers from O’Brien’s own engineless Kelpie to the Chotah, and then onwards to their planned landing place at Kilcoole on the Wicklow coast.

“The Sailing Surgeon and Gun-Runner”. Sir Thomas Myles’ 60ft Chotah was a trawler-style cutter-rigged cruising yacht built 1891, and fitted with an auxiliary engine in 1913. This helped significantly in her landing of the Mauser rifles in the 1914 gun-running at the beach in Kilcoole in County Wicklow

RINGSEND’S PEAK BOAT-BUILDING YEARS

In his endlessly-fascinating book, Cormac Lowth reckons the peak period of trawler-building in Ringsend itself was from 1860 to 1880, even if the greatest of them all, the mighty St Patrick, was not built by the Murphy family in their yard for their own operation until 1887. But from 1860 to 1880, the pace-setter was Michael Scallan, who somehow found the time to be a master shipwright, trawler operator, active yachtsman, and publican with the ownership of the still-extent Ferryman Inn.

As Cormac drily observes, it was surprising how many of the Ringsend boatbuilders also ran busy taverns. We couldn’t possibly comment on that. But one of the joys of the new book is the insight it gives into the characters who were drawn to the commercial possibilities of the expanding Ringsend fishing industry. And for sheer exoticism, few could match John Robert Barklie, who seems to have been one of those Scotsmen who rose without trace and arrived in 19th Century Dublin as fully-fledged entepreneurs.

“He rose without trace and was identified by his bright spats”. John Barklie (right) was one of several businessmen who tried – with varying levels of success – to cash in on the Ringsend trawler boom. Photo: Courtesy Cormac Lowth

Barklie’s primary notion was literally a dead cert. He quickly grasped that, in an era of high mortality even among the wealthiest and healthiest families, death and mourning made for big business. And nowhere was it bigger than in Dublin in the Victorian era, a time when rich yacht-owners ordered that all the varnished brightwork of their elegant craft be painted matt black for a period of three months when a member of the immediate family passed away.

“THE MOURNING WAREHOUSE”

At a more prosaic level, Barklie made mourning wholesale in Dublin. He either had a wicked sense of humour, or else had no sense of the absurd at all, as he was an undertaker whose most prominent outlet was “Barklie’s Family and General Mourning Warehouse”. Despite being called a warehouse, it was in a prime retail site at 99 Grafton Street in the heart of fashionable Dublin city, and claimed to be “Established for the Exclusive Sale of Every Article Suitable for Family Mourning”.

For those seeking some level of privacy and dignity, he also provided what would now be called a Funeral Home down past a few shop-fronts further along Grafton Street. But as he himself favoured day wear which featured spectacular spats, and hats which verged on the frivolous, the entire enterprise seemed to lack a certain solemnity and seriousness, and thus he may have turned to trawler ownership as an additional enterprise to give him more credibility in the commercial world, and maybe with it some access to the world of Dublin Bay yachting.

When “watching the yachting at Kingstown” was quite the done thing – John Barklie and his wife (left foreground) on a regatta day in Dun Laoghaire. In the days before cosmetic dentistry, very few smiled for the camera. Photo courtesy Cormac Lowth

But the only photo we have of John Robert Barklie in anything approaching a yachting setting is of himself in that unmistakable hat sitting with his wife on the East Pier summer crowd watching the yachts go out at some regatta or other. And as for becoming a trawler-owning magnate, the Ringsend fishermen quietly put paid to that in their own way, but you’ll have to read Cormac’s book to find out how.

JOYCEAN SITUATIONS

In reading about the adventures of Barklie and others who came to Dublin on the make in that interesting era, we end up with leading figures who find themselves in situations which could have come straight out of the writings of James Joyce.

And Bryan Dobson of RTE – whose family’s connections with the area give him a direct personal interest in the story – rightly remarked, in his lively and enthusiastic launching of the book in Ringsend’s Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club, that if you could re-build the Dublin of 1904 from Joyce’s Ulysses, then you could re-build the Ringsend of 1885 from Cormac’s book.

At the launching of Cormac Lowth’s “Ringsend Sailing Trawlers” in the Poolbeg Y&BC were (left to right) Lar Joye (Port Heritage Director of Dublin Port Company), Bryan Dobson of RTE, Cormac Lowth, and Hal Sisk (Chairman of the Association of Yachting Historians and Director of Peggy Bawn Press).

But in the end, while the people and their social and working situations are fascinating and at times heart-breaking, the true stars of the book are the wonderful fishing boats, the people who sailed them, and the versatility of both.

THE DUBLIN BAY PILOT BOATS

For instance, there’s the matter of the Dublin Bay Pilot Boats. As the port’s trade increased, and the size of the ships serving it grew rapidly, it had been generally reckoned by historians that all the guidance needs of the incoming larger ships could not have been met by the crews of hobblers rowing out in their relatively small skiffs to meet the pilot-seeking vessels.

Yet why are we not aware of the Dublin Bay Pilot Cutters as we are aware of the distinctive Bristol Channel Pilot Cutters, or the even more splendid Le Havre Pilot Cutters as represented by the sublime Jolie Brise? The answer is simple. The best Dublin Bay Pilot Cutters were re-purposed cutter-rigged Ringsend Sailing Trawlers, or new trawler-style cutters built to be Pilot Boats in the first place.

The Dublin Bay Pilot Boat Sophia in Dun Laoghaire Harbiur. As the demand grew for all-weather pilot boats for Dublin Bay and Port, it was soon found that the Ringsend trawler type could be readily adapted for the role. Photo courtesy Hal Sisk/Cormac Lowth

They were fast, they could keep the sea in almost all weathers, and in order to make them a pilot cutter even if they had been used as a fishing boat, all you had to do was clean the fish hold, put in rudimentary accommodation for pilots, and add a distinctive number or name on the mainsail, which would be kept white instead of the usual tan bark of the fishing boats.

Another question is that surely, with the expansionary nature of recreational sailing in the Golden Era of yachting from 1880 to 1914, the demands of racing big boats at close quarters would have sought to draw on the highly-regarded sailing skills of the Ringsend trawler men?

OWEN BISSETT, RINGSEND’S TOP YACHT RACING ACE

The answer is of course yes. But as they were regarded as paid hands in the very stratified social world of the time, only the top skippers achieved general name recognition. And of Ringsend’s galaxy of successful racing stars, the superstar was Owen Bissett.

The trawler Greyhound was owned and worked in winter by Owen Bissett of Ringsend, but often in summer he was away in the more lucrative position as a leading big yacht racing skipper, and it may well be that because of this, Greyhound is settimg a high quality white jib instead of the usual tanned sail. Photo: Courtesy Cormac Lowth

In the summer, he was the man to have on board if you wished to win in your big yacht. And in the winter he was owner-skipper of the handsome trawler ketch Greyhound, which in Cormac’s book is shown – unusually – as setting a white jib while all the other sails are tanned. The likely explanation is that the quality jib came off one of the yachts that Bissett raced, where the sails would be changed annually, an extravagant approach which would definitely not be replicated in the tightly-financed trawler business.

WHAT HAPPENED?

The hugely-significant Ringsend sailing trawler industry declined very quickly after 1914. Its demise was speeded by World War I, the rapid expansion of steam trawler fleets at larger purpose-built fishing ports, and the weakening of commercial cross-channel links with the establishment of the Irish Free State.

Thus we all owe a debt of gratitude to Cormac Lowth for his comprehensive book – in truth, there’s the makings of three books here – and to Peggy Bawn Press who, with the talents of Gary Mac Mahon of Copper Reed Studio in Limerick to draw on for the production challenge, and the support of Dublin Port to keep the show on the road, have given us all something attractively tangible to study. It helps us to grasp why it is so important to encourage Ringsend’s continuing sense of its maritime self, a cherished part of the greater project of maintaining Dublin’s role as a living, breathing, working city-port, with all the natural dignity which that brings with it.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

The great sailing trawlers may have gone as working boats, but some – such as the Leader in Carlingford Lough - live on as sail training ships. And meanwhile, the talents of the best sailing families come down through the generations.

Ross McDonald of Howth, for instance, current Champion of Champions in the International 1720s and other classes, is a direct descendant of Owen Bissett. The apple does not fall far from the tree.

International 1720 European Champions (and Boat of the Week) with Atara at Cork Week are (left to right) Aoife English, Paddy Good, Killian Collins, Robbie English and Ross McDonald. Ross McDonald is a direct descendant of Ringsend sailing superstar Oen Bissett. Photo: Rick Tomlinson

As for the great Ringsend maritime names of Murphy and Kearney, they did not go gently into the night of anonymity. The great days of fishing may have been over, but as Dublin port’s ship berthing development progressed, the innovative Joe Murphy – who somehow still managed to look like a film star even when jammed into the brutal confines of a heavy diving suit – was there in the front line of development. And when the famous Diving Bell was threatened with scrapping, he played a key role in ensuring it was preserved as something of exceptional interest.

It takes real style to continue to look like a matinee idol when jammed into a traditional diving outfit, but Joe Murphy of the famous Ringsend boatbuilding and fishing family could carry it off. He was also instrumental in preserving Dublin Port’s historic Diving Bell, and he drew the lines and construction plans for the Clondalkin-built Galway Hooker Naomh Cronan.

And Joe Murphy’s boat-creation talents stayed with him to the end. When it was decided by the Clondalkin Community Group more than twenty years to build the big Galway Hooker Naomh Cronan as an Irish language project, it was to Joe Murphy that they turned for line and constructional drawings, and the skill and success of his efforts can be seen in the authenticity of the Naomh Cronan, now based in Galway City.

As for the Kearneys, well, boat-builder Jem Kearney – now with his yard at the East Wall - continued on his merry way as someone who availed of every opportunity for enjoyment, his way and style of life totally at variance with the popular conception of the 1950s as a drab time of economic gloom and inevitable emigration.

A family thing. Playboy boatbuilder and salmon fisherman Jem Kearney testing the limits of the bona fide traveller regulations at the Boot Inn with Cormac Lowth’s Granny Nora (left) and Great Aunt Eileen (right). Photo: Courtesy Cormac Lowth

And his brother John quietly got on with designing, with his yachts now built in Malahide Shipyard, while the 17ft Mermaid - which he’d originally designed in 1932 – became the largest class in Ireland in the 1950s and early ’60s.

Yet it was after he’d turned 80 that the greatest challenge arrived on his design board in Monkstown. Perry Greer, an engineering polymath who headed up the large Unidare industrial conglomerate, had for several years been the owner of the successful 16-ton Kearney-designed yawl Ann Gail. But his dream was of something larger, and somehow in the early 1960s he brought together the special but highly individual and sometimes spiky talents of designer John Kearney of Ringsend and boatbuilder Jack Tyrrell of Arklow to create the 54ft 29-ton yawl Helen of Howth, which was launched in 1963 when John B Kearney was 84.

The sparks might fly – Jack Tyrrell and John Kearney at one of their weekly Saturday morning meetings in Arklow during the construction of Helen of Howth in 1962. Photo: Perry Greer

Helen of Howth – as created by a Ringsend boy at the age of 83. Not shown in these plans is a centreboard for improved windward performance, but she could make to windward without using it.

The quality of the plans of Helen as drawn by this very focused octogenarian tell us much of the man. And with her sea kindliness and effortless yet comfortable speed, she had all the most attractive characteristics of the best Ringsend sailing trawlers. She was one of the most comfortable boats I’ve ever sailed on, though over the years her racing competitiveness was blunted by the fact that Perry Greer could never resist adding items – sometime heavy ones – which augmented this comfort, such that she became a home-from-home of so much welcoming warmth that on one round Ireland cruise with many stops, her owner-skipper never went ashore at all, as he could enjoy all the scenery from the comfort of his beloved boat, while the food was better than anything else available in the neighbourhood, as he was an ace cook.

Helen of Howth was renowned for her seakindliness and easy speed, but her racing competitiveness was blunted by owner Perry Greer’s tendency to add new creature comforts each year – so much so, in fact that the boot-top had to be raised every few years.

Yet while Helen of Howth is believed to be no longer with us, the spirit of Ringsend lives on with vigour. And Cormac Lowth’s Ringsend Sailing Trawlers gives us a new insight into a very special community, and an area which provides a living accessibility to times past, adding extra meaning to the widely-shared determination to make the very best of Dublin as a true city port.

Ringsend Sailing Trawlers

By Cormac Lowth
Published by Peggy Bawn Press
€27
[email protected]

Dublin Port Company is changing the speed limits throughout its north port road network from 50km/h to 40km/h as part of the Dublin SafePort initiative. The initiative also announces the alignment of the speed limits within the seven unitised terminals to 20km/h.

Dublin SafePort is a port-wide safety initiative launched in July with the support of all seven unitised terminal operators. The founding partners of this initiative are Dublin Ferryport Terminals, Doyle Shipping Group, Dublin Port Company, Irish Ferries, Peel Ports, Seatruck Ferries, Stena Line and P&O Ferries. The purpose of the initiative is to support and foster an enhanced safety culture among port workers which will see Dublin Port Company and the seven terminal operators increase their collaboration and alignment on safety practices across the 260-hectare estate.

Following completion of the main phase of Dublin Port’s internal roads project to upgrade and reconfigure the Port’s internal road network the current phase of the Dublin SafePort initiative focuses on roads and terminal speed limit safety. The investment in roads, in active travel and the launch of the Dublin SafePort initiative are important steps in the safe development of Dublin Port in line with Masterplan 2040.

The announcement comes as Dublin Port once again hosts Irish Port Safety Week following its successful launch last year. The dates for Irish Port Safety Week this year were selected to follow European Safety Week, as port authorities across the country have come together to highlight and enhance collective safety responsibility with events planned for each day of the week.

The events of Irish Port Safety Week are an opportunity to work collaboratively, to share knowledge and experience towards improving safety culture. The calendar of events includes a HGV Driving Simulator, the RSA’s road safety interactive unit, known as the Shuttle, fire awareness training, first aid training, and a mental health talk from former New Zealand rugby star and pundit Brent Pope on Wednesday. Wednesday will also see the judging of a colouring competition amongst local schools with the prizes being awarded in the afternoon.

Dublin Port is delighted to have the assistance and support of the Road Safety Authority, An Garda Síochána, Dublin Fire Brigade, the Irish Coast Guard, the RNLI and other services who interact frequently across the port area.

Irish Ports Safety Week Calendar of Events - Dublin Port

Irish Ports Safety Week Calendar of Events - Dublin Port

Commenting on the changes, Dublin Port Harbour Master Captain Michael McKenna said, “The health and safety of all port users is the highest priority. I am delighted that the Dublin SafePort partners are showing such commitment with the changes and alignment of our speed limits and our hosting of Irish Port Safety Week. There is a calendar of fantastic events throughout the week which are open to all port users and tenants and we are inviting and encouraging as many people as possible to get involved. We are grateful for the support of key stakeholders including An Garda Síochána, the Road Safety Authority, the HSA and the unitised terminal operators as we look forward to working together to continue to develop the Dublin SafePort initiative.”

Dublin Port Harbour Master Captain Michael McKenna

Christine Hegarty, Road Safety and Education Manager at the RSA said, “Our collaborative work with Dublin Port on this change has been a rewarding experience. Speed reduction is a key factor in reducing the number of accidents on our roads and the Port’s road network is no different, so it is heartening to see them take such a proactive approach to managing that situation.”

A Dutch marine contractor are about to begin work on a Capital Dredging campaign at Dublin Port in order to create two new riverside berths.

As disclosed by Dublin Port Company, the contractor Van Oord, reports DredgingToday, intends to carry out loading and dumping at sea of dredged material arising from capital dredging as part of the MP2 Project over the period October to December 2022.

The MP2 Project (website) is as Afloat reported is the second Strategic Infrastructure Development Project to be brought forward for planning from Dublin Port’s Masterplan 2040, reviewed 2018. An Bord Pleanála granted Planning Permission for the MP2 Project on 1st July 2020 (ABP-304888-19).

The areas to be dredged during the 2022 campaign all lie within Dublin Port and comprise the creation of the new Berth 52 and Berth 53, and localised widening of the navigation channel in the vicinity of the Poolbeg Oil Jetty.

The dredged material – consists of a mixture of clay, silt, sand, gravel and cobbles – will be disposed of at the existing licensed offshore disposal site located at the entrance to Dublin Bay to the west of the Burford Bank, (6.75 km from the lighthouse at the end of the Great South Wall).

Dredging will be carried out using a combination of a backhoe dredger and a trailer suction hopper dredger together with support vessels.

Part of Dublin’s original sea wall dating back to the late 1720s has been discovered during excavations beneath a former electricity substation at Dublin Port.

Announcing the find today (Wednesday 5 October), Dublin Port Company also revealed the discovery of dockworker artefacts including clay pipes, leather shoe parts and pottery fragments from the 19th century.

The “historic” unearthing was made during works being carried out on the former redbrick electricity substation located near the junction of East Wall Road and Alexandra Road in the grounds of Port Centre.    

“The original sea wall once enclosed the eastern and northern sides of newly reclaimed land that would become known as the North Lotts – acting as a polder,” the port company explains.

“As the port extended eastwards away from the city, the sea wall’s original purpose became obsolete, and the facing stones of the wall were removed.

“It is likely that the stones were re-used to construct the three-metre-high boundary wall that defines the port’s perimeter today, visible from East Wall Road. It is from this original sea wall that the area known as East Wall derives its name today.”   

Jim Kelleher, head of special projects with the port’s heritage and communications team, said: “We have long suspected that part of the original sea wall may have lain beneath the old redbrick substation, which itself is a protected structure.

“But it has been incredibly exciting to have those suspicions confirmed, and to see this part of the original ‘East Wall’ for the first time.” 

The port company promises that the sea wall — visible through a glass floor — and related items will on permanent display within the restored substation at Port Centre. Dublin Port has more on the story HERE.

Places are still available for this Sunday’s heritage walking tour of Dublin Port with Anthony Finnegan as part of Dublin Port Company’s events for Heritage Week

Dublin Port’s history dates back to 1707 and while the company has always looked forward, the port has never lost sight of its substantial heritage.

Much of the evolution of communities in the North and East Wall areas is inextricably linked either to the port itself, or the numerous industries which developed around it.

Railways, shipbuilding, car assembly, timber importers, and coal are some of the many businesses that flourished and evolved throughout the port’s history.

The early housing stock built in the vicinity of the port was developed to accommodate the workers and from those communities came significant artists, musicians, writers and poets.

Anthony Finnegan, a registered tour guide, served as a shore engineer at Dublin Port for nearly 30 years. Join him on a 45-minute walking tour this Sunday afternoon 14 August which starts at ‘the Sphere’ in Port Centre on Alexandra Road and concludes in Dublin Port’s new graving dock Heritage Zone.

The tour is free, with starting times at noon and 1pm, but booking is essential via the Eventbrite page.

Dublin Port Company advises the following: Parking is available at Dublin Port Centre. Access both on foot and by car via the gates on Alexandra Road. The tour will include the maritime garden which has a small number of steps. Port Centre will be closed so there is no access to toilet facilities on site.

The histories, life and culture of five port towns in Ireland and Wales as Afloat previously reported, will feature in a film and exhibition in Dublin during Heritage Week 2022.

These events have been produced by Aberystwyth University and the University of Wales Trinity Saint Davids as part of Ports, Past and Present, an international project led by University College Cork (UCC) which explores the history and cultural heritage of the ports.

Project leader Professor Claire Connolly from University College Cork said: “The Ports, Past and Present project frames voices, images and stories from across the five ports, enabling new forms of engagement with a shared past.”

The film, 'At the Water’s Edge: Stories of the Irish Sea’, showcases stunning views of the landscapes and wildlife of the Irish Sea coast. Through stories told by local people, it explores the interconnected history of the ports of Dublin and Rosslare Harbour in Ireland, and of Fishguard, Holyhead and Pembroke Dock in Wales, as well as the three ferry routes connecting them. Stories include those of dock workers and kayakers, local historians, and wildlife lovers.

Dublin residents Gary Brown, Shane O’Doherty, Audrey Mac Cready, Jenny Kilbride, John Hawkins, Séan Potts, Mick Foran, and Kay Foran are among those who feature in the film, sharing their stories of living and working in the area. Shane O’Doherty describes the links between the landscape and history in Dublin Bay, while Kay Foran shares her memorable stories of signing up as a rare female dockworker.

The film screens at the Port Centre, Dublin Port, at 5 pm on Saturday, August 13. Email Rita Singer to request a free ticket to the screening: [email protected].

With thanks to Dublin Port Company for their support of this event.

Meanwhile, the ‘Creative Connections’ exhibition showcases inspiring works by 12 creative practitioners who have worked with communities across the five ferry ports to present their unique heritage stories through storytelling, community art, photography, film and a radio play. This work is led by the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

The exhibition will be launched at a special reception at 6 pm on Tuesday, August 16 in EPIC’s Liffey Corner gallery space, at the CHQ building. Tuesday’s reception will include readings and a short film showing. The exhibition runs from August 13 to August 21, with further events scheduled throughout the week.

To sign up for the Creative Connections exhibition launch reception and related events, visit here

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Ireland Wales Co-operation Programme. The project is led by UCC in partnership with Aberystwyth University, the University of Wales Trinity Saint David, and Wexford County Council.

Dublin Port’s chief executive Eamonn O’Reilly is moving on after 12 years at the helm.

He does so at a time when the port reports a return to almost pre-pandemic and pre-Brexit trading levels, with overall volumes growing by 10.1 per cent to 18.6 million gross tonnes and an increase in ship arrivals in the first half of this year.

O’Reilly spoke to Afloat's Wavelengths about the port’s performance and its strategic infrastructure projects – including the Poolbeg peninsula plan, which is at pre-planning stage with An Bord Pleanála.

This will include moving the container terminal eastwards, converting the existing container terminal into a roll-on/roll-off terminal, and a new bridge, taking heavy traffic off the Tom Clarke bridge and linking directly into the port tunnel. This will help the port reaches the targets in its master plan, he says.

It will include “softening” the boundary between the port and the city, he says, with East Wall Road – which he has described as one of the most hostile roads in the country - transforming into a “boulevard” as it loses all those heavy goods vehicles.

The port is currently working with Grafton Architects on the Liffey/Tolka project, and he says it is going to transform the eastern edge of the city.

He also spoke about Ireland’s population increase, why it makes no sense to move the port – but we should be making plans for an additional east coast port, as Dublin Port is due to reach capacity by 2040.

And he spoke about his own future plans as an electrical engineer. He expressed frustration at the amount of time it is taking Ireland to develop the infrastructure we need to decarbonise.

“Worldwide, we’ve known for 30 years what is coming,” he says.

Listen to Eamonn O’Reilly below.