Sir, - Sixty years ago this summer a small handful of citizens of this State was urging the government of the day to remember the policy ardently put forward by Griffith, one of the State's founders, to build a strong national maritime economy. Europe was on the brink of war and we had no deep-sea merchant fleet, an inadequate fishing fleet and too little marine scientific research being done. We were likely to pay dearly for this neglect. We did when war came.
The original isolated crusaders for an official Irish maritime economic policy banded together in the Maritime Institute of Ireland under outstanding leaders such as Tony Lawlor, Seamus O Muiris (who became head of our improvised navy), An Seabhac and Captain O'Dowd of the Nautical College. Sheer necessity forced the government to establish not only a navy but a merchant fleet, largely of antiquated ships that owed their success in bringing in vital supplies to the qualities of their Irish crews.
We have survived. The atmosphere has changed. A few far-seeing journalists such as Seamus Kelly of The Irish Times and Phil Walsh of the Irish Independent kept the public aware of developments in the maritime world and their importance for Ireland. The Maritime Institute, through lectures, exhibitions and creating a national maritime museum, kept Griffith's vision alive. Eventually we won, first a Department of the Marine, then a Marine Institute to co-ordinate and develop marine scientific research (but seemingly not even a penny from the £33 billion National Development Plan to develop our tiny merchant fleet). Citizens began to study our country's rich maritime history, long before our educational leaders realised there was such a thing.
In 1955 another Irish Times journalist, Arthur Reynolds, gave the Maritime Institute three volumes of newspaper cuttings from British newspapers of the mid-1930s. The institute council was so impressed that it instructed its research officer to keep, classify and index maritime newspaper cuttings every day. This has been going on now for 40 years and 500 scrapbooks of maritime newspaper cuttings are available at the Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire for any research worker who is interested. Local historians and post-graduate university students use these sources. If inevitably somewhat ephemeral and superficial, they do capture the event described, fixing date and setting. Would that we had press cuttings of the arrival of the Normans in Bannow Bay or the exploits of Wexford's fleet of corsairs in the 1640s!
We would be grateful if by this letter we could inform the many people we believe would be interested in our collection of cuttings but do not know of them, that they are welcome to come and use them. - Yours, etc.,
John De Courcy Ireland, Honorary Research Officer, The Maritime Institute of Ireland, Haigh Terrace, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin.