Ireland's boating heritage - a constant in the Emerald Isle’s thousands of years of history

From the “currachs” to the “hookers” Ireland’s history marked through traditional boats

But length in a traditional boat was never an exact off-the-peg matter. Individual boat-builders used their own measurements and experience and their 'eye' to meet the demands of the buyers who might add or subtract a few feet to or from the standard length depending on how much money they had for materials. This was the case with the Irish boat-building boom of the 19th century, when fishing provided jobs at sea and back on shore. At first fishing fleets were mainly composed of foreign boats sailing from Irish ports to harvest the abundant shoals of herrings and mackerel but soon Irish crews were buying old fishing boats from Cornwall and the Isle of Man, and these in turn became the templates for Irish-made fishing craft.

Irish ship-wrights didn't just produce fishing boats, though. Tyrell's in Arklow built Asgard II, Ireland's sail-training ship until it was lost in the Bay of Biscay in 2008, and Francis Chichester's Gypsy Moth III, in which he won the first single-handed race across the Atlantic in 1960. In West Cork, Baltimore's Fisheries School built both Conor O'Brien's Saoirse in which he circumnavigated the world between 1922 and 1925, and the Ilen taken in 1926 to the Falkland Islands where it was worked almost to wreckage before finally being returned home in 1998, for restoration at Hegarty's boatyard in Baltimore.

Baltimore's more local fishing boats were as varied in design, with some claiming that 17th century pirates' gigs and jolly boats influenced such craft as the Heir Island lobster boat, mackerel yawl and 'towel-sail' yawl. The latter were named for the tent erected for the crew to live under during weeks of coastal fishing, the same scrap of canvas – teabhal – being pressed into service as an extra sail in a following wind.

Like many sea-looking communities around Ireland's 3,000 mile coastline, Baltimore has celebrated its maritime history in recent years by resurrecting traditional boats, some a hundred years old and left to rot decades ago and restoring them to sailing order, or by faithfully replicating extinct craft using only traditional skills and materials.

Unlike static museum exhibits, Ireland's historic craft are still sailed. And hard. Hookers are matched in competition in regattas up and down the west coast, six-oar gig and currachs rowed throughout the summer months, and at Baltimore's Wooden Boat Festival craft of all kinds come together to celebrate Ireland's maritime history in a mix of races, music, seafood and admiration for the skills of the old shipwrights, and the modern craftsmanship that have created and kept alive Ireland's traditional boats.

Ireland's great boating traditions will be on display at Ocean to City 'An Rás Mór' in Cork from 1 to 8 June. View details here.

Source: The Gathering

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Nster.com