THE years around 1800 were without doubt the heydays of the sea-going tradition in Baldoyle. This era was immediately prior to the construction of the new Howth Harbour and the subsequent large-scale shifting of sands in the area. The Baldoyle fleet was to go into a decline, which reached its inevitable conclusion around the turn of the twentieth century.
In the 1780s fishing boats received a bounty of £1 per ton for fish landed, from the Irish House of Commons. The Journal of the House lists the following vessels as being at Baldoyle in 1784.
“Friends Endeavour
? (Bartle Barrett),
“Mary & Rose
? (Richard Kane),
“Peter & Mary
? (Nicholas Doyle),
“Mary Anne
? (Pat Tallon),
“Fame
? (Patrick Kane),
“Joseph & Anne
? (Joseph Rickard),
“Peter & Mary
? (Patrick Archbold),
“Industry
? (Joseph Kelly),
“James
? (Thomas Rickard),
“Mayflower
? (Pat Sharkey),
“Prosperous Mary
? (Richard Walsh),
“Joan & Mary
? (William Walsh).
To the total of 78 men employed on the boats in 1784 can be added the ancillary and related trades of ships carpenter, blacksmiths, net makers, sail makers, etc. and we can see the extent to which the village depended on the sea.
Nicholas Weldon of Weldon’s Lane (now Seaview Terrace) owned the schooner “Concord” which was the vessel involved with the escape of the great Fenian James Stephens to France. The Captain said: – In March 1866 I made arrangements to take Stephens to a port in the north of France…The taking of his body alive out of Ireland was a task of no small magnitude, as the whole line of quays, north and south, was placarded with the tempting fortune of £2,000 to any person who would give such information as would lead to his capture.
Having dodged the revenue cutters in the River Liffey they entered the open sea and headed south past The Mugglins and on past Bray Head “which showed remarkably beautiful in the bright moonlight”. Two days later after much storm hazard and sheltering in Strangford Lough they landed at Ardrossan port in Scotland and put the exile safely ashore there.
Captain Weldon was in his thirtieth year at the time of his famous exploit. The love of daring adventures in the cause of fatherland seems to have been a hereditary instinct with him for it was his grandfather who smuggled Hamilton Rowan, a prominent member of the United Irishmen who escaped from Newgate prison in 1792, away to France.
Rowan later wrote of
“the generous, disinterested conduct of the two brothers Sheridan, farmers and boatmen and another named Murphy, of Baldoyle, who upon being introduced to me by Mr. Sweetman, of Sutton, and in the possession of the proclamation offering £3,000 for my capture, and in knowing me only by name, not only concealed me while sheltering at Mr Sweetman’s house, but consented to carry me in their small half-decked fishing boat across the Channel to the coast of France
?. This they accomplished in two days, although driven back once from near Wexford to take shelter under Howth.
We also know that Baldoyle was a place of coal importation and that in 1805 a man named Barnaby Barrett owned a coal importation and selling business here.
Mary Fitzsimons of Baldoyle, described as ‘Vintner and Farmeress’ inherited the sailing smack
“Mary Jane
? from her husband, John, who died in 1857.
“Mary Jane
? was a cross-channel sailing vessel of 35 tons built at Balbriggan in 1846. Her official number was 8823. She was 44 feet long, carvel built with one deck and a single mast; she carried no figurehead. Mary passed away on 7th. May 1864 and in her will bequeathed the vessel to her son John.
“The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland
? for 1845 gives us the following description of Baldoyle: “It has a neat and comparatively comfortable appearance; and is much visited in summer as a marine watering-place. Little trade exists. Its harbour is nearly dry; admits boats only before last quarter flood; and experiences an average tidal rise of about twelve feet. Yet there are good landing places, with conveniences for drying nets, and a few wherries and smacks employ about 100 men in the fisheries”. This is undoubtedly why Baldoyle suffered little starvation during the famine years.
With the transfer of the fishing to Howth the sea-faring life-style of Baldoyle slowly ground to a halt. The last boat to commercially fish from Baldoyle was Christopher Farran’s
“Heather Belle
?, before it too found its way into the Howth fleet.
The boats became old and some rotted on the foreshore north of the church and their remains may be seen on the Valentine postcard of the 1920s. In recent decades a few small pleasure-boats have anchored here and in the mid 1960s a fishing boat named
“Braccan Lass
? was refurbished as a pleasure craft on the beach behind the racecourse grandstand. She had run aground on the notorious sandbank on her way in and was refloated on the next tide. In 1996 a small fishing vessel named
“Leonora
? which was anchored in the estuary was maliciously set on fire and badly damaged.
This was the last vessel to do any fishing from here and the crew comprised the late Dermot Campbell and Peter Brown. Thus ended a proud fishing tradition which had stemmed from earliest times, through the Viking age and just limped into the twentieth century. Many Baldoyle men served as mariners, and lost their lives in the merchant service of Ireland and Britain.
Michael Hurley’s latest book,
‘The Light of Other Days, in aid of St Francis Hospice, is available at
?¬12 per copy, plus postage. Details from 087-2540474, or email mjhurley48@eircom.net