The superb sailing waters of southwest Ireland are busy these days. Things have barely settled down after the fleet in the Volvo Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race speeded past Baltimore on Thursday, yet today (Saturday), Baltimore sees the beginnings of a sailing programme commemorating the Centenary of Conor O'Brien's pioneering global circumnavigation south of the great Capes from Ireland, sailing his 42ft own-designed Baltimore-built ketch Saoirse.
For promotional purposes, the voyage began from the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire on the 20th June 1923, and finished back at the RIYC on June 20th, 1925. But Conor O Brien (1880-1952) was very much a Shannon Estuary sailing man whose home thoughts would be of Foynes Island, part of his family's formerly extensive land-holding on the south shore of the Shannon Estuary.
BALTIMORE-BUILT BOATS
Despite this Limerick loyalty, he preferred his boats to be built by Tom Moynihan and his team in the boatyard at the Fisheries School in Baltimore. But in the early years of the 20th Century, he had a house in Dublin's Georgian district, and was a founder-member in 1909 of Dublin's United Arts Club Thus his life-centres were the points of a triangle across Ireland, and the sailing people who are celebrating the Centenary of what is perhaps Ireland's greatest seafaring achievement have tried to ensure that Saoirse's birthplace gets the credit it so richly deserves.
It was nearly twenty years ago that much of the heavy lifting for the recognition of O Brien's achievements was done by Gary Mac Mahon of Limerick, who arranged that the retired 56ft trading ketch Ilen – designed by O'Brien and built in Baltimore in 1926 – be brought back to Ireland from her working area of the Falkland Islands for restoration, a major project which was brought to completion at Liam Hegarty's boatyard at Oldcourt on the Ilen River near Baltimore.
The restored Ilen in Greenland under Gary Mac Mahon's command in July 2019. Photo: Gary Mac Mahon
ILEN VOYAGES TO GREENLAND
Finally finished and in commission again by 2011, Ilen voyaged extensively for a few years, including a 2019 expedition to West Greenland under Gary's command. Thereafter, she was taken over by the Sailing into Wellness organization, and is now a familiar sight at Irish ports.
Gary meanwhile had traced down every scrap of authentic information and technical drawings that could be found about Saoirse herself. She had been lost in the aftermath of a hurricane in Jamaica in 1979, but enough material was available for an exact replica to be created, and Liam Hegarty built the new Saoirse for Fred Kinmonth, a Hong Kong corporate lawyer with close connections to West Cork.
A year or so earlier, as the Centenary approached of Saoirse's departure on June 20th 1923 for her circumnavigation approached, the Ilen was available to come to Dun Laoghaire to depart on June 20th 2025 to lead an Irish Cruising Club flotilla to Madeira – Saoirse's first port of call on her great voyage – where Madeiran hospitality and the camaraderie of seafarers ensured that the great deeds of a hundred years previously were well remembered.
Ilen at the Royal Irish YC on June 20th 2023, preparing to depart for Madeira. Photo: Afloat.ie
FORTUITOUS CELEBRATION
The next commemoration event was fortuitous. The Irish Cruising Club Christmas Lunch in the RIYC on December 6th 2024 was the exact Centenary of the day when Saoirse finally berthed in Port Stanley in the Falklands with Cape Horn successfully put astern. December 6th 1924 was therefore the first time the world became aware that O'Brien and his crew had made it, and it deserved to be given special memory.
CENTENARY COMPLETION
Next week, we face the Centenary of Saoirse's return to Dublin Bay. June 20th 1925 was a Saturday, so the racing enthusiasts of Dublin Bay Sailing Club gave up their day's racing – an unprecedented and unrepeated event – in order to provide Saoirse with a Guard of Honour as she made her way up the harbour between the ranks of racers to the welcome at the Royal Irish Yacht Club.
Thanks to the re-build programme run by Hal Sisk and Fionan de Barra, the Dublin Bay 21s will be among those celebrating the Saoirse Centenary one hundred years after they welcomed her home in style on June 20th 1925. Photo: Jonathan O'Rourke
A hundred years later, a more relaxed approach is preferred. Sally Cudmore of Crosshaven, Vice Commodore (South) of the Irish Cruising Club, is organising a Centenary Cruise-in-Company from Baltimore to Dun Laoghaire, and it begins today (Saturday) with a Parade of Sail in Baltimore Harbour.
SAOIRSE THE FLAGSHIP IN BALTIMORE
The flagship for this day will be the restored Saoirse under the command of Liam Hegarty, as Fred Kinmonth is unwell, which means that Saoirse will not be coming along up the coast to Dun Laoghaire.
But her flagship role will be ably filled by the Ilen, chartered by a group led by former Irish Sailing Association President John Crebbin, a longtime Irish Cruising Club member. And when the flotilla reaches Kinsale, it will be augmented by the addition of former ICC Commodore David Beattie's cutter Reespray, a steel-built re-creation of Joshua Slocum's world-girdling Spray, so between the Beattie boat and Saoirse back in Baltimore, this Cruise-in-Company will have covered many aspects of global circumnavigation before it has even got east of Cork.
Former ICC Commodore David Beattie's steel-built Reespray has a hull based on Slocum's world-girdling Spray.
DUBLIN BAY 21s LEAD HISTORIC WELCOME
When they reach Dublin Bay towards next Friday (June 20th) arrangements are being out in place for a properly festive progress toward an arrival at the Royal Irish YC at 17:00hrs. The fleet of restored Dublin Bay 21s master-minded by Fionan de Barra and Hal Sisk will be there at Dalkey to lead the welcoming flotilla, as they did in 1925, and further up the bay and into the harbour, so too will be the similarly historically-connected Dublin Bay Water Wags.
The festivities ashore will culminate in an ICC/RIYC dinner on Friday night, where the guests will include relatives of Conor O'Brien, people who have helped keep the flame of his achievement alive even as other highly-publicised more commercially-minded and heavily-sponsored circumnavigation events have tended to obscure the magnificent uniqueness of his achievement one hundred years ago.
This portrait of a thoughtful Conor O'Brien by his wife Kitty Clausen suggests a complex personality and an occasionally volcanic temperament.
Happily, during the past three years and more, there have been many people in Ireland who have been determined that Conor O'Brien's pinnacle place in world voyaging returns to the recognition he received at the time. That universal recognition faded as others made more publicised circuits, and Irish achievements generally were ignored during the stand-off years of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
Happy in his work. Conor O'Brien well pleased with his little ship's performance as she reels off the knots sailing south in the Portuguese Trades.
But even so, no matter how many events are organised to honour the O Brien/Cape Horn Centenary, it is still difficult for ordinary sailing enthusiasts to fully grasp the real meaning of this little Baltimore-built ketch coming in from the west on the rolling restless Great Southern Ocean, and rounding Cape Horn without a soul to witness a remarkable breakthrough. Its Centenary deserves to be sincerely honoured
After the satisfactory fulfillment of the Ilen contract for the Falkland Islands transport vessel, and the success of Across Three Oceans, his book of Saoirse's voyage, O Brien felt sufficiently funded to modify Saoirse's rig with this brigantine setup, which he used in the 1927 Fastnet Race. The first Fastnet Race was sailed in 1925, the year of Saoirse's return, but in its hundred years it has only once had a boat with a rig like this.
