A short, well written, and lively account of the voyages of Conor O'Brien (Winchester, TCD, Oxford), architect, writer, Irish speaker, and sailor, who, at the age of 43, sailed his two masted ketch, Saoirse, around the world, leaving Dun Laoghaire pier on June 20th, 1923, and returning there to a hero's welcome on June 20th, 1925.
Noted for his short temper, O'Brien was a garrulous but competent, seaman. Adventurous and independent, he used his yacht, Kelpie, to smuggle guns for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, before joining the Royal Nave when war was declared three days later. In 1926 he designed and had built another yacht Kelpie, for the Falkland Islands Company, and sailed her to the islands himself with the Cousins Con and Donncha O Ceadagain from Cape Clear as crew. The book has some good pieces of seafaring prose with the author steering a smooth course through fast flowing terminology but, unfortunately, it lacks bibliography and references and is slightly repetitious.