From Cape Clear lifeboat baby to Ireland's first female ferry skipper
Niamh Ní Dhrisceoil on her family's lobster boat, off Cape Clear
As a baby, Niamh Ní Dhrisceoil either napped in the bow of her dad’s fishing punt while he hauled in lobster pots – or in her carrycot on the tractor while he fed cattle on their Cape Clear Island farm.
“Mum was principal in the island’s national school so my dad minded me while she was at work,” explains Niamh, a secondary schoolteacher at Coláiste Choilm, Ballincollig, and Ireland’s first female ferry skipper.
“I grew up on boats. As I got older, my dad would give me little jobs to do – baiting the lobster pots, clearing them. He taught me and my two older brothers how to handle a boat, where the rocks were, what routes to take, the various markings. This was when we were five to eight years old – we were at it all our lives growing up.”
Niamh’s one of three people whose unique relationship with the sea is showcased in Mealladh na Mara, a new three-part TV series on RTÉ One, broadcasting from July 11.
In Mayo, we discover the world beneath the ocean with search and rescue diver Conall Ó Domhnaill. GP Dr Eoin McCarthy Deering, an accomplished surfer, talks about balancing his professional career against the constant lure of the big wave.
And on Cape Clear in West Cork – the country’s most southerly island – we meet Niamh, nicknamed ‘the lifeboat baby’ at birth.
“Mum had two rapid labours with my brothers. So when she was due to have me, her doctor wasn’t best pleased she wanted to stay put on the island for Christmas. She agreed she’d go to hospital on St Stephen’s Day but the weather was inclement.
“So the skipper said it was better take the lifeboat and medivac her off the island. I was born the following day but I began my journey into the world on a lifeboat. I was guest of honour at the following summer’s Lifeboat Day.”
Describing herself as “not really a city person”, Niamh, who’s in her 30s, says: “I get the DTs if I’m away from the sea too long. I love getting into the car on Fridays [after teaching] and heading down to get the last ferry home.”
While she loves to travel and spent the first weeks of her summer holidays in Albania, she’s back on the island now for the rest of the summer. “My heart’s always in Cape Clear,” she says recalling her “very homesick” first year at boarding school in Rosscarbery.
“Of course I missed my parents, but I missed island life – the complete freedom of living outdoors, in the boats, on the farm. We were told be back before dark, so you’d spend hours around the island. The routined life of boarding school was very hard.
“It’s hard to describe the pull the sea has. It’s quite innate. If I’m gone from it too long I feel quite unsettled.”
The longest she’s ever been away was for two months during one of the Covid lockdowns. “I missed the settling calming power the sea has, the sense of being home when I’m surrounded by it,” she says, recalling the first lockdown as “pure bliss” when she spent almost 12 uninterrupted weeks there, and her parents’ sunroom overlooking the bay became her online classroom.
“I remember one day stopping what I was doing as a pod of 20 to 25 dolphins swam past.”
The first woman to crew on the Cape Clear ferry – she was 20 – she continued crewing in the summer holidays during her college years. Once she began teaching, she got down to studying for her skipper’s licence.
Part of her final exam in April 2010 involved a 90-minute journey by ferry from Baltimore to Cape Clear. “By the time I got to Cape Clear the exam was officially over and I’d passed with flying colours, but I didn’t feel it was over ‘til I’d returned the surveyor to the mainland!”
Niamh’s family have lived on Cape Clear for seven generations and her grandmother, Nonie, was very community-oriented. “She was curator of the museum, chaplain of the island’s Séipéal Naomh Chiaráin and all-round character. She was one of those I looked up to most.”
Niamh’s following in Nonie’s footsteps. She’s chairperson of Comharchumann Chléire Teo (CCT – Cape Clear Co-operative) and was shortlisted in the Social Entrepreneur category for the IMAGE/pwc Businesswoman of the Year 2023 awards. Her big aim is future-proofing sustainability and safety of island living on Cape Clear, which today has a population of 130, with numbers swelling to about 200 in summer.
A big current CCT project is The Cape Clear Island Gateway Housing Initiative – to provide good quality transition housing to families wishing to return/move to the island.
“In Scotland, where they’ve a similar initiative, it not only stopped population decline but reversed it. We’re confident we’ll have similar success on Cape Clear,” Niamh says.
Like so many coastal families, hers has lost loved ones to the sea. “My Uncle Ciarán was lost at sea when he was only 18. It’s why safety at sea was instilled in all of us from a young age.”
But there’s salt in her veins, she says. “I’m at my happiest when I’m on or in the sea.” And just as our interview winds up, her mum Cecelia is making signs outside the window to get her daughter’s attention. “We swim off the pier. We work around the tides. She’s asking are we going swimming or not?”
- Mealladh na Mara, 7pm, Tuesday July 11, RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
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