Lullaby in Aran: Schooner Days MCLXVII (1167)

by C. H. J. Snider

Irish Interlude—IV.

IT was grand talking in the Irish we had at Kilronan Quay after supper, though, my grief, much of it, was over my ignorant head. Martin the Master politely translated into English.

Three hookers from Costelloe way or Gorumna in Connemara were in with turf. There is not enough wood in the three Aran Islands now to make one good bonfire, and no peat bogs, and they cook and bake and warm themselves and boil the kettle, with kerosene and what turf they can get from the mainland.

These turfboats were hookers like the Truelight, which brought me, two of them of her size, and one half as big again.

The half-open hooker, decked only forward, is well adapted to the turf trade, but the larger flush-decked ones, of 20 tons or more, now extinct, were handicapped by having to work their two or three hatches to load, stow, and unload their cargoes. It meant long hard labor.

These open ones came in with the turf piled as high above the rail as a pulpwood carrier's cargo on the Great Lakes. They stood up under their sails well because, of their hull form, with the rounded tumble-home sides. They moored with the same silent efficiency the Truelight had shown, and at once proceeded to unload. There was no waiting for stevedores or thought of overtime. Each hooker had a self-unloader ready geared, in the four strong hands of its two-man crew.

MEN OF THEIR HANDS

Fine strong lads, they stood straddle-legged on the cargo, which looked, much like crumbling brick. Stooping rythmically to get a turf in each hand they threw the sods out two at a time, so that there was a continuous flight of sods from the deck to the dock. They worked like wound up mechanical toys, and the cargo piled high sank on board and rose on the wharf.

The turf men unloaded five or six tons each, their whole freight, in the long late May twilight. It may not have been excess industry which made them work so long and so hard. They knew it was easier to toss sods out on to the pier when it was breast high at flood tide than to throw them up twenty feet each time to wharf level with the tide out. There was no portal-to-portal nonsense in their pay sheets. They got so much a ton for their turf, and the sooner they got it on to the pier the sooner they got the few pounds shillings and pence.

The hookers had no visible names under their black paint, and were known only by their masters--O'Malley's or O'Flaherty's or Phelim's or McDonagh's —but somewhere doubtless they were registered as the "Eileen Oge" or "Gortnageapul" (which means Hungry Horse), or the "Pride of Petrovo", from the song. Like the Truelight, all were painted black, for tar is a great preservative. Green, grey, red or blue at the rail was pleasant trim.

The Gorumna men were glad to see the Truelight was still fishing.

Any more out o' Galway?

Divil a wan, though there was one older than the Truelight afloat, but she hadn't fitted out yet. Old Barney had her from his father, and his father, who died an old man, God rest his soul, had her from Old Barney's grandfather. So she must be getting on in years.

And was Pether not fishing now?

Gone these two years.

Or Thady? Gone too. And Tomas? Och, gone this long time. And Malranny, and Eaoghan, and the Kennys, yes, you might say all the old Claddagh crowd was in the graveyard or America.

"But ye won't quit, Martin? Ye've a grand boat."

TRUELIGHT STANDS BY

"Och, she's good, the Truelight. She's stood by me many's the time when nothing else came home."

"Was ye in the great blow that night in '34, Martin, when hundreds drowned on the rocks in Galway Bay?"

"I was, and I was in the Truelight, or I wouldn't be here now. We was riding to our nets, and we tried to save them, but we couldn't lift them, and that's what saved us.

"The net anchors had got fast in rocks, and we couldn't break them out. They drew a long ways, with us riding to them. I had two good new cables to them, that had never been wet before that trip. Grapnails, with four arms apiece, our anchors, were. The grapnail's great holding in foul ground, where the stocked anchor breaks fluke or arm or shank or stock itself, among the rocks.

"Anyway, hundreds were lost that night, for nothing could live in that sea except head to it. That's where the high bow saves you, if your gear holds. Head-to we rode it out. But when I did get our new cables on deck after it was all over, I condemned them both for junk. They had stretched and frayed and wore till it was a pity to see the few threads that was left between us and destruction.

"There'll be water for us at three o'clock in the morning. I'm pulling out then. So good-night now to ye, and sweet dreams."

"Good night, Martin, good man. BAL O DIA AR AN OBER."