Fenit
August 3, 2023
HM 239. Gun running past St Brendan
Tucked deep inside Tralee Bay is an unusual commercial harbour with bags of history. "St Brendan the Navigator" was born here in 484 AD an imposing bronze statue of him towers over the entrance to harbour.
The patron saint of sailors, Brendan is supposed to have sailed to Iceland,Greenland, discovered America before Christopher Columbus and travelled back to Ireland via the Azores. He is celebrated in style in this part of Kerry and in 1976 Tim Severin even re-enacted the voyage to Newfoundland successfully! Rather less celebrated is the gun running into Fenit, both for the 1916 Easter Uprising and later in 1984 for the IRA!
Back to the present day, the wonderfully named Harbour Master, Batt McCarthy, proved to be as full of stories as his harbour. Batt's father had worked in the harbour when every week a ship arrived with timber and coal. In 1930 it took 30 dockers to unload a coal ship, with shovels, by hand and Batt remembers that happening right up until 1965, amazing.
He spent his first 20 years fishing, starting with local oysters. He remembers leaving his first job in a garage, where he earned £13.50 a week and joining a 32ft oyster dredger where he was paid £500 after two weeks work. It was not surprising that by 1970 the oyster beds had seen stripped bare. Now they are strictly controlled with an 80 kg limit, just 78 permits and any that pass through a 4 inch ring have to be returned to the sea. The photo of Fiona shows one of the dredgers. The oysters' destination, as ever, is Spain, France and Holland.
His main job now involves the security of the port. The offshore fishing fleet is long gone and now only 18 cargo ships visit per year - mostly to collect "semi constructed" Liebherr cranes for destinations worldwide. No dockers are required for that, but two pilots are still employed to guide ships into the narrow harbour entrance, brothers Kevin and John Moriarty.
Batt's 3 am phone call came in November 2013 when the 170m, 20,000t MV New York boke its bow line in a gale, setting the ship back and crushing a fishing boat. First on the scene, the HM found the steel mooring ring had been pulled out of the quay. As he said to us, it is a very small harbour for such large ships!
While we were there, two plain clothed customs officers visited Good Dog and asked to see our papers. Seeing as I had never officially "entered" the country I was very polite! The papers were all in order luckily and we ended up having an interesting conversation about drug smuggling - did you know that cocaine floats whereas cannabis sinks?!
Thank you Batt, we won't forget Fenit!
Tucked deep inside Tralee Bay is an unusual commercial harbour with bags of history. "St Brendan the Navigator" was born here in 484 AD an imposing bronze statue of him towers over the entrance to harbour.
The patron saint of sailors, Brendan is supposed to have sailed to Iceland,Greenland, discovered America before Christopher Columbus and travelled back to Ireland via the Azores. He is celebrated in style in this part of Kerry and in 1976 Tim Severin even re-enacted the voyage to Newfoundland successfully! Rather less celebrated is the gun running into Fenit, both for the 1916 Easter Uprising and later in 1984 for the IRA!
Back to the present day, the wonderfully named Harbour Master, Batt McCarthy, proved to be as full of stories as his harbour. Batt's father had worked in the harbour when every week a ship arrived with timber and coal. In 1930 it took 30 dockers to unload a coal ship, with shovels, by hand and Batt remembers that happening right up until 1965, amazing.
He spent his first 20 years fishing, starting with local oysters. He remembers leaving his first job in a garage, where he earned £13.50 a week and joining a 32ft oyster dredger where he was paid £500 after two weeks work. It was not surprising that by 1970 the oyster beds had seen stripped bare. Now they are strictly controlled with an 80 kg limit, just 78 permits and any that pass through a 4 inch ring have to be returned to the sea. The photo of Fiona shows one of the dredgers. The oysters' destination, as ever, is Spain, France and Holland.
His main job now involves the security of the port. The offshore fishing fleet is long gone and now only 18 cargo ships visit per year - mostly to collect "semi constructed" Liebherr cranes for destinations worldwide. No dockers are required for that, but two pilots are still employed to guide ships into the narrow harbour entrance, brothers Kevin and John Moriarty.
Batt's 3 am phone call came in November 2013 when the 170m, 20,000t MV New York boke its bow line in a gale, setting the ship back and crushing a fishing boat. First on the scene, the HM found the steel mooring ring had been pulled out of the quay. As he said to us, it is a very small harbour for such large ships!
While we were there, two plain clothed customs officers visited Good Dog and asked to see our papers. Seeing as I had never officially "entered" the country I was very polite! The papers were all in order luckily and we ended up having an interesting conversation about drug smuggling - did you know that cocaine floats whereas cannabis sinks?!
Thank you Batt, we won't forget Fenit!