TRUELIGHT of Galway: Schooner Days MCLXVI (1166)

by C. H. J. Snider

Irish Interlude—III.

THE TRUELIGHT, this Galway fishing hooker, Schooner Days has found, might have sailed with the Golden Hind.

Indeed, she suggests just such a vessel as the Golden Hind's consort, the pinnace Squirrel, in which Sir Humphrey Gilbert "westward from Portobello sailed away" in 1583, hailing "Be of good cheer, my masters, we are as near Heaven by sea as by land." Like the Squirrel, the Truelight could cross the ocean if need be.

The Truelight's prow rises high, and curls back until the head of the stem is abaft, if you please, the "touch" or forward end of the keel. She is only 33 feet long, perhaps 10 ft. beam at the broadest, but only 8 feet at the widest across the rail, because her sides round in like a bulb's.

This gives a beautifully moulded transom stem. It has two earlike projections, or horns at the corners. These are the bollards or timberheads on which the mainsheet is belayed. It has worn deep grooves in the hard oak through years of strain and friction.

The dark, high-peaked mainsail is the largest of the three sails in the ship. It is strongly sewn, much patched, and laced to the mast with plenty of drift. It has a boom, but is loose-footed, so that it may lift like a parachute. The other sails are the 3-cornered foresail and the jib, set on a long pole bowsprit, which is run in and out, on one side of the stemhead. All three sails are almost black, so much tar is used in the tanning of them. Two long sweeps are laid along the gunwales for use in calms.

HEAVY ON THE HELM

The Truelight's rudder is outboard. It rakes at a sharp angle and has a very long rudderpost perhaps 12 feet. The raked post makes her quicker in turning but heavy to steer. When moving the tiller you are raising in the water an oaken rudder heavier than the water with which it wrestles. You have to put your back into it.

The hooker has a 10-ft. deck forward, pinched in by the tumblehome of the bow. The deck ends at the mast. It covers the cuddy, in which is the cooking hearth, and just enough room for four men to sleep dry if properly packed into the corners.

The remaining two thirds of her, right to the stern, is open, deckless. It is subdivided by stout oaken thwarts, braced by strong oak lodging knees which virtually girdle her. The midship "room" is filled and floored with hard blue beachstone ballast, carefully packed and laid as level as a pavement. At the after end the stone forms a deep well. Into this all the- water runs—it is scooped out with a big dipper with a 4-ft. wooden handle—a fast efficient pump.

Abaft the next thwart is another "room," floored with loose boards, at the level of the ballast stone. From this standing-room the crew fish, throwing the catch forward into the stone-floored room. The skipper steers and trims the mainsheet and works two trolling lines from a little thwart or bench right in the narrow stern.

TWO DAYS' WORK

NOT to spread this butter too thick, we lay snug in the comfort, of peat ashes until 3 a.m. Then, without watch or alarm clock, Martin-the-master said it was time to be stirring, and we turned out into the greater and colder blackness of a May morning. We cast off our lines, and floated off from the Aran Islands on the last of the ebb.

Flash of Kilronan Lighthouse was the only guide. All else was darkness. It concealed alike the Twelve Pins of faraway Connemara and the nearby loom of those antediluvian fortresses Doocaher, The Black Fort, and Dun Oghil with its stone stairways, and Dun Eoghanacht and Dun Aengus, and all the stars, and all the sea, even the water alongside. The earth, as at creation, was without form, and void. We had neither chart nor compass. Only Martin's 50 years of fishing experience to steer us.

There being little wind, a brisk pull on the long sweeps, one to a side, worked the stiffness out of our joints and pumped the blood through our veins. Stand-up, breast-high, two-fisted rowing, the sweeps pushed and pulled as convenient. Soda bread and butter and turf-brewed tea made a grand breakfast.

We were "on the fish" by sun up, and baited and set and hauled with very moderate success all day.

"That's the way of it," said Martin. "Sometimes we come in with the Truelight scupper deep in fish, and nobody wanting so many, and sometimes we work all day for enough for our own supper. That's as the Man Above sends, but I'll never give up fishing while I have my health, please God!"

We lay that night in Spiddal, a pretty little grey port with a large grey stone church, and very ancient, as are most things in Galway. The story is that the name means hospital, and that some of the early saints or kings founded a lazar-house or lepers asylum there long, long ago. There were leper houses in England in the time of the Normans, so why not earlier in Ireland?

The lie-over was to catch the tide right for Galway, and before the sun was up the Truelight was unloading her modest haul for the Friday market. Prices weren't so bad; but 40 shillings was what the three men had to share out for two days' work.

Better luck next time.