A remarkable centenary has just slipped by under the radar, apart from a small gathering in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin last month and a few posts on social media. But maritime historians are hoping that the 100th anniversary of a special nautical event will shine a spotlight once again on this story, and Ireland might finally celebrate a record-setting achievement that drew 10,000 onlookers to Dún Laoghaire seafront on June 20th, 1925, to raise a cheer as a small Irish boat sailed into history.
Saoirse had just become the first boat to carry the Tricolour around the world, sailing up the Irish Sea two years to the day since embarking on an epic circumnavigation. The 42ft ketch was also the first known small craft to sail the globe via the Three Great Capes, crossing oceans and surviving storms with neither an engine nor a radio on board.
Limerickman Conor O’Brien, owner, designer and skipper of Saoirse, made headlines around the world. This was seen as our nation’s first international sporting achievement, and the voyage would herald a new era of ocean-going sailing aboard smaller craft.
[ A dispatch from Conor O'Brien for The Irish Times in June 1925Opens in new window ]
The Irish Times was there to record the hero’s welcome, describing O’Brien as an ambassador, proudly flying the newly-minted flag of the Irish Free State. Many years later O’Brien’s biographer, Judith Hill, would come across contemporary descriptions of the scenes in Dún Laoghaire, where bands played on the East Pier, and an aeroplane flew low over the crowd: “O’Brien emerged [on deck] in dark glasses. He was cheered and carried shoulder-high as people pressed around ... and then driven into Dublin in a procession of 100 motorcars led by one carrying a model of Saoirse, with his young godson, Conor Cruise O’Brien, dressed in a white sailor suit posing as Conor.”
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The purpose of O’Brien’s sea voyage isn’t entirely clear. According to his great grandnephew, Dermod O’Brien, he was an avid reader of the epic challenges that were making headlines at the time. Amundsen’s and Scott’s expeditions had reached the South Pole a decade earlier; George Mallory, with whom O’Brien had climbed Mount Brandon in Co Kerry, had made summit attempts on Everest. But Dermod says O’Brien hadn’t thought much past getting to New Zealand: “He’d wanted to go mountaineering with friends and this was the easiest way to get there”.
Fortunately, we can read O’Brien’s own accounts of his voyage around the world. A prolific writer as well as a reader, he partly financed the trip writing dispatches for The Irish Times. He was the author of 15 books, including Across Three Oceans recording his adventures aboard Saoirse: here we can read of trouble with his drunken crew in Brazil, hitting a submerged whale in the Indian Ocean, running out of supplies days out from Australia and nearly resorting to putting Saoirse up for sale in Fiji.
We also have first-hand accounts of O’Brien’s earlier adventures, most notably his gun-running operation for the Irish Volunteers along with Erskine Childers. O’Brien landed 600 rifles at Kilcoole in Co Wicklow in July 1914. Dermod O’Brien says the Childers’ landing is much better known because Asgard’s cargo was unloaded in broad daylight whereas O’Brien, on the Kelpie, worked under the cover of darkness. To give the impression they were on a pleasure sail, neither boar carried an engine, and O’Brien’s crew of four included his sister Kitty; among Childers’s crew were his wife Molly and Conor O’Brien’s cousin, Mary Spring Rice.
Despite being an Oxford-educated architect who’d grown up in Cahermoyle House, a landed estate in Co Limerick, and who had served with the Royal Navy in the first World War, O’Brien was an outspoken nationalist. He was a grandson of the 19th-century nationalist MP for Mallow, William Smith O’Brien, leader of the Young Ireland rebellion of 1848 who had been transported to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). O’Brien would later campaign unsuccessfully for a Seanad seat for Sinn Féin in 1925 (an adventure that didn’t end quite so well. Asked for a publicity photo, O’Brien gave the party a portrait of himself in his British naval uniform).
The O’Briens spent their summers at their house on Foynes Island in the Shannon Estuary, and at Derrynane in Co Kerry (the home of Daniel O’Connell), where young Conor learned to sail. Cruises along the coast of west Cork meant he was familiar with the local mackerel boats, which would ultimately influence his design of Saoirse. Comfort aboard during long voyages was to be more important than speed. And so Saoirse, modelled on these traditional working boats, was built in Baltimore.
It was the beginning of a long association between O’Brien and boatbuilding in Baltimore, which continues to this day. O’Brien died on Foynes Island in 1952, predeceased by his wife Kitty. Saoirse was eventually destroyed during a hurricane in Jamaica in 1979, but in the past decade a replica has been built at Hegarty’s Boatyard, the last remaining boatyard in Ireland building these traditional boats.
Today Saoirse sails again side by side with another Conor O’Brien-designed boat, AK Ilen (Auxiliary ketch, Ilen). So impressed were authorities in the Falkland Islands with Saoirse, they commissioned O’Brien to build them a trading vessel. AK Ilen was delivered across the Atlantic in 1926 by O’Brien and two experienced mariners Denis and Con Cadogan from Cape Clear. After 70 years transporting sheep AK Ilen was repatriated by Limerickman Gary McMahon in 1997, and reconstruction began, again at Hegarty’s Boatyard.
Quietly observing the work in Hegarty’s were two local artists, including documentary photographer Kevin O’Farrell. He says these boats are part of our heritage and the skills to construct them should be celebrated. Paula Brown Marten’s paintings beautifully capture the reconstructions, the huge whale-like hulls gradually taking shape.
Both Saoirse and AK Ilen can be seen this summer sailing the waters off west Cork.
Dermot Kennedy, who’s taught sailing in Baltimore for decades and is an authority on Conor O’Brien, says that if he’d been “a Frenchman, a German or an American the world would know his name”. He points out that Saoirse is remembered in other parts of the world, “for example on the island of Madeira, her first port of call in 1923”. Kennedy says at the very least the story of Saoirse should be on our school curriculum, “we’re a small maritime nation, we should be celebrating our achievements rather than writing them out of the history books”.
