Our scuttled ship heritage

THE words shipbuilding and Dublin are not often seen together – Harland and Wolfe in Belfast and the Verolme dockyard in Cork fit much better.

However, some of the most interesting vessels of the past were built in the Liffey shipyards.

There was a vibrant shipbuilding industry in Dublin for nearly two centuries and the story of the shipyards, the ships they built and the people who worked on them is told here for the first time.

The author, Pat Sweeney, was the editor of the Maritime Institute of Ireland’s journal for 22 years and was also the only Dublin-based photographer for Lloyds List, London’s premier shipping journal.

Reading about the ships built in the Liffey shipyards is fascinating, and Pat Sweeney’s account is thorough, revealing how ships built in Dublin took centre stage in Irish history.

One such vessel was the ship used by the British to shell Dublin city from the Liffey during the 1916 Rising.

The Helga, a small steam cruiser, was built by the Liffey shipyards in 1908, and went on to be the first vessel of the newly formed Irish Naval Service after independence.

The Helga’s story encompasses several eras of Irish history. One of the recommendations of the Congested Districts Board, set up by the British government to counter the effects of the Great Famine, was the development of Irish fisheries, seen as a way of providing an alternative to an over-dependence on the potato.

The predecessor of the modern-day Department of Agriculture, replacing the Congested Districts Board, was the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, set up by the British authorities here in 1899. In that year a steam yacht, named Helga, built in 1891, was purchased and become Ireland’s first fishery research vessel.

The ship was successful, but not entirely suited to its purpose so, in 1907, the Dublin Dockyard Company constructed a purpose-built ship of the same name, and launched it in 1908.

The Helga’s work – very much like the work done by modern-day fishery protection vessels, continued until the outbreak of the First World War.

The Helga then took on a role similar to today’s Naval Service ships and had a gun fitted on the forecastle, together with a searchlight so that trawlers engaged in illegal fishing could be apprehended.

As the war developed, the Helga was requisitioned by the Royal Navy, commissioned as His Majesty’s Armed Yacht, and had a larger gun installed, as well as a radio cabin and other naval equipment.

But the Helga’s moment of fame came a year later, in 1916, when the vessel responded to a military request for help during the Easter Rising. Contradicting accounts by some historians, author Pat Sweeney believes the Helga could not have shelled the GPO, as the ship’s naval gun was not able to elevate high enough to fire over the Loop Line Bridge. However, he believes that shells fired from the Helga damaged Liberty Hall and other buildings nearby.

When the First World War ended the Helga returned to her fishery protection role. In 1923 the Irish Free State acquired the ship, which became the Muirchú, the first vessel of the fledgling Irish Naval Service.

If the ship had lasted a few more years it could have made a fine exhibit in a maritime museum, but sank off the Wexford coast after it was disposed of by the state in 1947.

The last vessel to be built at the Liffey Dockyard was a dredger, handed over to the OPW in 1969 for work on the inland waterways. The yard then struggled on into the mid-1990s doing occasional ship repair work.

Few vessels built on the Liffey have survived into the 21st century. One, though, is the Cill Airne, the tender vessel built for the Cork Harbour Commissioners to serve the Atlantic liners at Cobh. The Cill Airne, together with identical vessel, the Blarna, were launched from the Liffey Dockyard in 1961 and 1962.

They brought passengers from the quayside in Cobh to the liners which, at that time, had to anchor off the harbour because of insufficient depth of water at the Cobh quays.

The Cill Airne carried many famous people from those liners into Cobh, including Laurel and Hardy and US president Dwight Eisenhower.

The role of the two vessels, which were built in the style of paddle steamers, ended in the 1970s as the Atlantic liner services dwindled.

The Blarna was then sold to a Canadian ferry operator and the Cill Airne became a training vessel for the maritime section of Cork Institute of Technology.

When the National Maritime College was founded in Cork the ship was surplus to requirements and was initially sold to some Cork businessmen who intended to convert the ship into a floating restaurant in Cork harbour.

The plan fell through and a fully restored Cill Airne is now a floating restaurant in the Dublin docklands, the closest a ship built in the Liffey Dockyard can get to its birthplace.

While Ireland has no museum to honour the vessels built on the Liffey, perhaps this is the nearest we can get to paying tribute to an almost forgotten chapter of maritime history.