Jeanie Johnston repays her dues and now she’s Riverdance on water

BEFORE Denis Reen took over the Jeanie Johnston project the whole thing was virtually dead in the water.

What was projected to cost around £4 million ended up costing around €15 million. Maybe the plug should have been pulled once the project ran over budget, but it would have been sheer lunacy to scupper the whole thing when the ship was finished and ready to sail last year.

It was largely built as a training programme, with young apprentices from the Republic and both sides of the political divide in Northern Ireland being brought together. The young people got on well.

David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, one of the project's most vocal backers, noted that it may not have been a positive experience for everyone, but it was for most of them.

The Jeanie Johnston has sailed to America and returned successfully. It set out with 11 young people from the North on board, and they got a rough baptism at sea as they ran into virtual hurricane bursts on their first night and had to ride out the storm for three days in Dingle Bay. Tom Kinder, the oldest man on board at 81, wrote a book about his experiences.

Jeanie Johnston: A Voyage Against the All Odds provides some great insights into the difficulties of such a trip. It also gives a frightening perspective of what it must have been like in the aftermath of the Great Famine.

The Jeanie Johnston was built to commemorate one of the emigrant ships of that time. They were usually called coffin ships, but the original Jeanie Johnston had the distinction of never losing a passenger at sea. It used to carry up to 254 passengers, but the new boat had only a total complement of 39.

Modern safety requirements called for a desalination plant and an engine to be used in case of need. Thus there was no room for passengers on the lower deck. They also had modern toilets, unlike the original ship on which the passengers had to use buckets that were then dumped over the side.

All but three got seasick on the first leg of the trip.

Anyone who has ever been seasick will know how the trainees felt.

"On the mess deck, at breakfast, dishes flew from the table, then some of the food," Kinder wrote. "In no time, the floor was slick with grease and porridge, feet flew out from under legs and bodies crashed."

Young Darren was particularly miserable one day. He "was retching in his bunk, while water from a deck leak dripped on his head, when Carmel, thrown off balance by a sudden roll, fell into his bunk, spilling her plateful of hot curry and rice over him. 'This is the worst day of my entire life'," Darren lamented.

The ship is not just a sailing vessel; it also has two other modes. It can be converted into a floating museum, with life-size figures placed in the bunks and around below deck to give an idea of living conditions on the original ship, in which there was as many as six people in a bunk, sleeping head to foot. The ships other mode is for corporate entrainment, for which the bunks can be readjusted into seating for a reception.

The ship's first visit on the mainland was to West Palm Beach, Florida. The other 22 stops included Savannah, Charleston, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Providence, Boston and eight different Canadian cities.

At many of the stops Irish festivals had been arranged and some 90,000 people paid to tour the ship in museum mode. Major receptions were held on board in Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Boston and Montreal. As a result the ship covered all the costs of the actual trip.

In the process it received enormous television and newspaper coverage. It was the kind of publicity that would be prohibitive for the Irish Tourist Board to purchase in North America.

In the USA alone the venture received over 80 slots of television coverage, with the local stations of each of the networks covering the visit.

A great crowd was on hand to witness the arrival at New York on July 3. It was a remarkable sight, as the ship arrived under full sail, and the whole thing was featured extensively not only on television but in the newspapers next day, Independence Day.

The ship, which docked beside the impressive Famine memorial at Battery Park, was open to visitors for the next ten days.

It became a magnificent addition to the memorial, which is one of the most impressive monuments to be found anywhere in the world.

In the heart of New York City one suddenly walks into a vista of green fields with stone walls just like the west of Ireland. They could be the deserted fields of Athenry.

THE ship's visit to Canada was the most televised Irish visit ever to Canada. Quebec Premier Jean Charest was on hand for the arrival in Montreal. The hiccup over extra pilot fees that were extracted before leaving Montreal received extensive media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, but not the fact that the embarrassed Canadians quickly reimbursed the money. Many valuable lessons were learned from the experience of what was an unprecedented venture. Had the whole thing gone off on time, as originally planned, it would have been an even bigger success.

One of Denis Reen's greatest difficulties was persuading people that the ship would ever make it, as they were disillusioned by all the delays.

But he had the drive and perseverance to get it done. When the ship arrived, the interest that it generated was proof of the merit of John Griffin's visionary ideas.

There are millions of people around the world who have strong sentimental attachments to Ireland as the home of their ancestors. Hence we have a tremendous tourist potential. But promoting that potential requires more than Riverdance, the Irish Tenors, travel documentaries, or the Taoiseach presenting shamrock at the White House on St Patrick's Day and sending ministers abroad for the occasion.

The Jeanie Johnson affords tangible connection with the thing that most people know about Ireland the emigration that followed the potato famine. The ship provides an opportunity to exploit not only tourism, but also trade, especially in those centres that retain strong sentimental attachments with this country.

Former Taoiseach John Bruton suggested last week, for instance, that the ship should be used to visit other centres like Latin America, especially Argentina and Uruguay. There are also many other places that it could profitably visit, such as Chile and the west coast of the United States and Canada, and even the Great Lakes, as well as Australia and New Zealand, not to mention our EU partners.

Some outrageous costs were incurred in building the ship and money was wasted on the project before it was ready. Lessons should certainly be learned so that nothing similar happens again, but once the ship was ready, it would have been crazy not to sail to North America. It would be an even greater lunacy not to exploit its real potential now that it has so successfully demonstrated its possibilities.