Black Wings, Green Waves: Schooner Days MCLXa (1160a)

by C. H. J. Snider

Irish Interlude—I.

DUN LAOGHAIRE, Eire, 1954 (Pronounced Done Leery, and meaning Kingstown, Ireland)

HEARTSCALDED is Schooner Days to interrupt, Captain Cooper Campbell's interesting log of the cruise of the schooner yacht Ripple, R.C.Y.C., to Manitoulin, which we have been enjoying, but here we are in Ireland, with something rich and rare at every turn. We want to tell about some of it, and hope readers and Capt. Campbell will tolerate our turbulence. Resumption of the Ripple's log early is promised.

Erin's green isle first burst on our sight one morning in July, 1915. It shone like a heap of emeralds only partly covered by yellow-green blanket. The background was a fair blue sky, the foreground a dancing green sea, shading to brown and purple over waving fronds of kelp. Never had I seen so much happy greenness, nor shall I ever.

Much is different now, especially the spelling, but the blessed verdancy remains. And the blessed folk. If anything, they are improved; perhaps because mental eyesight, or heart sight, has improved.

My first sight of Dublin Bay this year was a gallant fleet of big jib-and-mainsail dinghies higher sided than ours in Toronto, racing in from the Irish Sea, past the mile-long breakwater which leads in to the long stone walls and quays of the port.

SAILS 40 YEARS AGO

In 1915 these quays were lined two deep with sailing ships from L'Orient and Vannes and Lighorno and Oregon and Greenock and Australia, great three-skysail yarders, neutrals and allies, unloading grain or stripped and laid up, waiting till the British Navy could clear the Irish Sea of subs, and let them spread their wings again. Some never left Dublin till World War I was over. Some towed out towards the Atlantic and were torpedoe[d] before they shook out their topsails.

There were also hundreds of Irish coasters then, green painted barquentines with yellow bulwarks which "coasted" to the West Indies, and black round-sterned schooners with outboard rudders which went across to Liverpool with pigs and potatoes and country produce and came back with coal and drygoods or Baltic timber, spared by the subs because they were too buoyant when filled with wood, to be soon sunk, even if blown up.

There were hundreds of Scotch and English fishing trawlers and netters on the coast of Ireland then, for the Royal Navy did not impose so many restricted areas upon the Irish as they did at home, and the smacks and luggers with their red-tanned sails made a living at the risk of their lives.

SAILS NOW

Now I can find nothing that sails but these dinghies and yachts, though they are plentiful enough in the Irish Sea. The Royal Ulster Yacht Club is world famous for its regattas in the north — and for its America's Cup challenges — and Dublin and Cork are by no means behind.

This though, is pleasuring, and Schooner Days is primarily interested in commercial sail—if there is any of it left, anywhere. How can it be, when canvas that could be bought at sixpence the yard now costs six shillings?

I hied me to the west coast of Ireland, in the Gaeltacht. There is still to be found, in small degree, sail among the little coasters and the fishermen. Many of the latter have, like the Newfoundlanders and Lunenburgers, been converted to "power," their once big rigs cut down to mere auxiliary sail and their once auxiliary engines extended into their principal motive power. Others are straight power craft altogether, using steam or diesels, and towing miles of net astern.

But there are still two sailing types to gladden the heart of C. W. Bourke, the RCYC's eminent sailing designer—and of Schooner Days. Both use dark brown or black sails and nothing else but muscle to drive them.

THE POOKHAUN

Meet first the pookhaun.

I did, in Galway, "Port of the Stranger," She was standing in from the Black Head, a tiny dot of black hull under a tall graceful paring of black sail. The tide was against her and the wind also, but she made good progress for two reasons. She had an efficient sail plan, with plenty of area, and she was pulling a sweep in the lee side, to offset the opposition of the pitiless tide. Galway is a mean harbor, in certain tidal conditions, for three branches of the river Corrib pour into it, setting up three strong adverse currents, emphasized by the ebb.

The dot of black hull became a 20 ft. boat, with good sheer, straight stem and graceful raking stern.

Two men, hunched as fishermen usually get, were sailing (and rowing) her in, against wind and tide and current, and making a good job of it.

When she tacked her whole sail plan was revealed. It was all in one piece, a lofty triangle of black-tanned canvas, round in the foot, very straight in the luff, curved in the leach with a true airfoil.

The straightness of the luff or forward edge was achieved by hooking the tack to the stemhead and extending the upper half of the sai[l] well above the masthead by a yard which crossed the mast at an acute angle. The single sail was a perfect combination of the Mediterranean latine and the northern standing lug.

The pull of the mainsheet, combined with the weight of the yard and sail, kept, the boltrope of the luff bar-hard for beating to windward. The sail could be "dipped" in tacking by easing the foretack and hauling it back past the mast, and then forward again to leeward.

One halliard kept the yard aloft and acted as a stay as-well. Dipping was only done for a long tack.

For short ones the sail was alternately to leeward of the mast and to weather of it. In the latter case she would not sail quite so well, the forward part, corresponding to a sloop's jib, being stretched too flat to draw properly. But she was so nimble on the heel, and so well helped by the lee sweep, that she soon got back to the gaining tack. Or else the sail was dipped.

The two men brought her in neatly on an eddy of the Corrib current and moored her to a grapnel.

Such is the pookhaun, a deepbodied, stone-ballasted open fishing boat which braves the Atlantic along the ragged west coast of Ireland, with its beetling headlands and wildly flung islands. She has a long raking keel and runs up to about 25 feet in length. Two men can make a living with her, by net and line ... catching herring, pollock, plaice, lobster and eels.

Another pure surviving sailing type, much larger, is the hooker (pronounced 'hoker' or 'howker,' as it was spelled 200 years ago) ... It is not, as with us, merely a general term, but a specific appellation. You may be hearing more of it shortly.