A group of unemployed men in Waterford are relaunching themselves by building a replica Viking longboat
‘I JOINED THE Viking Longboat Project last year,” says Leo Carparelli, an Italian-Canadian married to a Waterford woman. “It’s been inspiring. Each day is different. Apart from learning how to build a boat, we get a history class every Friday given by a local historian. We have to do our own projects and mine is on the source of the Suir. I have to present a video on it and I’ve never made a video before. If I were still working as a plumber, I wouldn’t have done any of this.”
Carparelli, now unemployed, has worked as a plumber in Waterford for the past 18 years. “I’ve learned a lot on this course. Of course being a plumber means I’m used to handling tools, though not with the precision needed on this job. Still, when it comes to boats and plumbing, there’s one thing you don’t need and that’s a leak, so that’s the connection.”
The Viking Longboat Project Waterford came about because the Waterford Museum of Treasures wanted some replica boats to display and the only way to get them was to have them built locally. Funding has come from Fás, Waterford Chamber of Commerce and the Museum; the budget, apart from the weekly allowance of €188 the participants receive, is €60,000.
“We invited applications for the project,” says Richard Grant of Fás, “and then we looked for people with a good interest in the project and what skills they had.”
The 18 participants are all unemployed but include a cabinet maker, a carpenter, a plumber, an architect, an electrician, a welder, a coastguard and a joiner, all aged from their mid-20s to their mid-50s.
The co-ordinator is Michael Power and the instructor is shipwright Michael Kennedy who comes with a formidable back story. Born in Dunmore East, he left for Australia to work as a commercial fisherman before moving to the US where he worked on a number of replica projects – which is why he knows just about everything there is to know about boats, from classic yachts to longboats. When he returned to Ireland in the 1990s, Kennedy built himself a hooker and if you want to know anything about woollen sails or treenails (pronounced trunnels), he’s your man.
The 33ft keel and planks of the longboat are of Irish oak, mostly sourced from a mill in Carlow, and the sailcloth is a canvas weave with polyester threaded through it. “A sailmaking apprenticeship is seven years,” says Kennedy, “and we don’t have that time so we plotted the shape of the sail ourselves on the computer and built in the camber.”
“And we didn’t have a plan to work from either,” says Leo Carparelli, “but anyone who wants to build a boat like ours will now have one.”
The team has received lots of support from people in Scandinavia. You only have to look at their Facebook page to see that. Last month the group visited the Viking Museum in Roskilde, Denmark to view the great longboat, Sea Stallion – Glendalough, the original of which was built in Ireland 1,000 years ago.
Right now, the pressure is on the team to get the boat ready to move to a site in Blackfriars in Waterford in May, where people can actually watch history being made. “We’re bound by health and safety regulations,” says Kennedy, “ so when we move we’ll be working on things like the rigging, the oars and water buckets.”
Documenting the whole project is the youngest member of the team, photographer Keith Currams.
“I was doing bar work, and when I heard about this project I applied,” he says. “No one was documenting it, so that’s what I do.” When I enquire what a keelson is, he explains: “It’s an oblong lump with another lump in the middle of it.” This is a landlubber’s description if ever there was one, though he did e-mail me images showing clearly what a keelson is.
That’s why the documentation is important: Vikings and Viking lovers both in Ireland and abroad want to access reliable information about the project. (A keelson, by the way, is the device into which the huge mast is put.)
The Waterford longboat can be seen in Blackfriars, Waterford in May and also during the Tall Ships Race weekend (Jun 30 – Jul 3)
To learn more about the project, go to Facebook and search for “Viking Longboat Project Waterford”
