For more than half a century in a modest boatshed at Mount Plunkett on the banks of the Shannon, master boatbuilder Jimmy Furey quietly shaped wood into vessels that carried generations of sailors and fishermen across Irish waters. Working largely alone and guided by instinct, patience and a craftsman’s eye, he created boats of remarkable beauty and balance — and a legacy that continues to inspire long after his passing, writes John Fuery.
"A man builds the best of himself into a boat—builds many of the unconscious memories of his ancestors." John Steinbeck, The Log from The Sea of Cortez
How many boats did Jimmy Furey handcraft during a career that began in the middle of the last century and voyaged far into the second decade of the new millennium?
If Jimmy himself could remember, he wasn’t telling.
Spanning everything from precisely gauged sailing dinghies for ultra-competitive yacht club members, to rowing and fishing boats for farmers, fishermen and friends, there must easily have been a hundred. Maybe even more…
Trying to calculate the years of pleasure and productivity those vessels have given – and in the vast majority of cases are still giving – to their owners would literally boggle the mind. Even more mind-blowing were the paltry amounts Jimmy’s papers reveal he charged for the countless hours, days and weeks of hard graft he put into every boat.
Not that Jimmy was the least bit interested in money or material possessions.
Cottage Life – Jimmy Furey outside the cottage where he was born and lived for almost his entire life, holding one of the finely detailed model boats that reflected his lifelong devotion to craft. Photo: David Shaw-Smith
A man who insisted on zigging where others were content to zag, he single-mindedly marched to the beat of a drum only the truly driven ever get to hear.
Incredibly, Jimmy accomplished all he did in a ramshackle workshop whose tiny 7.2 x 4.3 m (31 sq m) superstructure was barely big enough to contain his Brobdingnagian hands.
Cut, bruised and battered by years of hard work, they may have been, but those deceptively proportioned fists and fingers were as sublimely supple and responsive as those of a concert pianist.
Skilled Hands – Jimmy Furey’s legendary “big bunches of bananas” — the powerful hands that shaped countless wooden boats — still performing miracles well into his 80s. Photo: Courtesy Jimmy Furey Collection / Roscommon County Library
To watch Jimmy feel the weight and weigh the feel of the next piece in the puzzle that would eventually reveal itself as a boat was to marvel at a virtuoso at work.
Like the waterborne masterpieces that emerged from its cramped confines, Jimmy’s shed was an optimal balance of form and function. The nerve centre of the entire operation was a keel block whose side shorings left little wriggle room for occupants to squeeze by as each new vessel took shape.
Occupying most of the structure’s left-hand side as one entered through the shed’s large, double garage-style doors was a scarred and pitted wooden bench. Serried above it with military precision were battalions of worryingly weighty blunt objects and razor-sharp blades. Had he wished to do so, Jimmy could probably have cobbled together sufficient weaponry to mount an armed insurrection.
The oldest of the tools Jimmy could reach out for – and apparently often did – was a hammer his father and grandfather had hefted before him. Within equally easy reach was a family of state-of-the-art chisels whose fiercesome cambers had been precision-honed in high-tech Japanese workshops some 150 years later.
Shannon One Design dinghies under sail on Lough Ree — the elegant class of wooden boats that Jimmy Furey built for generations of river sailors. Jimmy is racing as the middle crew man in no 114 Photo: Courtesy Jimmy Furey Collection / Roscommon County Library
Aside from several high shelves containing his impressively large library of boatbuilding and model-making magazines, the shed’s right side was left free for Jimmy to patrol as he surveyed his work. Never a man to baulk at a challenge, Jimmy was always keen to carve out new avenues for his talents. On one occasion, he was delighted to oblige a satisfied customer who asked if he fancied trying his hand at crafting a replacement stock for his priceless antique Purdey shotgun. Jimmy would have taken quiet satisfaction from learning that the armourers at the gunsmith’s world-famous workshops had marvelled at the quality of his work.
While never the slightest bit conceited or boastful, Jimmy remained well aware and quietly – justifiably – proud of his talents. When I once gauchely remarked that his having a model displayed in the entrance lobby of Greenwich Maritime Museum was a feather in his cap, he quickly put me right. “I don’t know about a feather in my cap…”, he replied with atypical immodesty.
Michelangelo famously believed that rather than sculpting statues, he liberated works of art from the marble in which they were imprisoned. An artist of the floating world, Jimmy’s boatbuilding ethos might be viewed in much the same way.
Over the course of the six weeks or so required to ‘free’ a new boat, the tsunami of wood shavings his hands unleashed would invariably reach several centimetres above the floor of his shed. Stand there long enough, and you’d be rewarded by the unforgettable sight and sound of one of his endless line of lab retrievers rousing themselves from a doze deep within the detritus.
Work done for the day, most men would hit the pub for an early evening pint or two before heading home for dinner and a pre-bed snooze in front of the TV.
Not Jimmy.
Miniature Mastery Jimmy Furey holding one of his exquisitely detailed model boats, works that often took three times longer to complete than their full-sized counterparts. Photo: Courtesy Jimmy Furey Collection / Roscommon County Library
After eating dinner in his cottage’s tiny kitchen-cum-living room, he would turn on the wireless (never radio) and begin finessing exquisitely detailed miniature versions of much larger boats he’d either built or studied. So intricate was the detailing required that Jimmy estimated a model of a Shannon One Dinghy he made took fully three times longer to complete than the vessel itself.
While essentially a very, shy and private man, Jimmy had grown up in an era when ramblers roamed rural Ireland, spreading news and gossip from house to house. The curiosity about people and a wider world he never had any great inclination to physically explore these encounters sparked would illuminate the rest of his life.
As a result, should someone – even a stranger – visit, Jimmy would invariably put down his tools and welcome the newcomer into his home for a “cup of tay” and a chat. Delighted to encourage younger boatbuilders, he was especially generous in his support of the self-styled apprentices who begged him to take them on over the years.
Predictably, the young pretenders who believed themselves worthy of eventually stepping into their master’s shoes fell far short of the vast reserves of single-minded dedication needed to fill them. Jimmy’s other passion – repaying nature for the gifts it had given him – happily proved far more fruitful when he planted thousands of trees in his Mount Plunkett fields.
Having spent all bar the final few months of his life in the cottage where he was born 100 years ago this month, Jimmy passed away at the age of 94 in June 2020. All these years later, the course he set and steered remains not only a hard but thus far an impossible act to follow.
A few words about Roscommon County Library’s Jimmy Furey Centenary Collection
While respectful of Jimmy’s wishes that there be “no books or no museums commemorating [his] life”, Jimmy’s executors were keen to make his expertise available to young talents wishing to follow in his footsteps.
Model Honour – A finely crafted model of a Shannon One Design dinghy built by Jimmy Furey on display at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, reflecting the international recognition of his craftsmanship. Photo: Courtesy Jimmy Furey Collection / Roscommon County Library
To this end, Jimmy’s estate has now donated what papers of his that remained in his cottage and boatshed after his death to Roscommon County Library. To mark the boatbuilder’s centenary in late March, the facility has established a Jimmy Furey Centenary Collection to sustain the boatbuilding tradition Jimmy did so much to foster.
Executive Librarian, Ruairi O hAodha said: “The ultimate aim of this non-profit initiative is to provide an easily accessible and constantly evolving databank of information and inspiration for all those interested in learning more about Jimmy Furey’s life and work.”
Anyone who has any papers or memories they would like to donate or share with the library in the form of scans or photocopies is welcome to email Ruairi at: [email protected] or [email protected] or call (090) 6637312.
