Traditional Boats

The Picarooner

Question: what’s the connection between these rather lovely donkeys in a little North Devon (UK) village, and our own beautiful Roaringwater Bay (below)?

Answer: a Picarooner! And here is one . . .

Selkie belongs to our friends and neighbours, Oliver and Susie Nares. It has a mooring at Audley Cove – just over the hill from us. It has been out of the water during the winter receiving some refurbishment and a new colour scheme (it’s shown above in last year’s livery). I was pleased to get an invitation to the launch this week, down at Rossbrin Cove.

Oliver and Selkie, getting ready for the launch

A Picarooner is a small fishing boat which has a long history. The name is reportedly the corruption of a Spanish word and means ‘sea chaser’ or ‘sea robber’. These boats are now associated with the North Devon coast and, specifically, the fishing village of Clovelly, where they still bring in catches – mainly of herring – using sustainable methods. But there is a fascinating etiology legend – which they will tell you in the West Country – that they were originally the ‘cockboats’ or shore tenders carried on board the galleons of the Spanish Armada which foundered on the west coast of Ireland and the southwest coast of England in the summer of 1588 while trying to return to Spain by circumnavigating the British Isles and Ireland. These endeavours were confounded by exceptional storms and lack of local knowledge of treacherous coastlines together with the effects of a strong gulf stream pushing them off course. There were many attempted landfalls in Ireland – in County Clare, Kerry, the Blasket Islands and Valentia Island – resulting in numerous wrecks. It is logical that their cockboats, which were stored on deck, would have survived the destructions and taken on lives of their own, wandering the lonely seas until they landed up on strange shores. One such landing was at Clovelly – or so the story goes – and the local fishermen and boatbuilders there were so impressed with the construction of the craft – its size, shape and manoeuvrability – that they established their own fleet of them to seek out the enormous shoals of herring which had arrived off that coastline due to a medieval climate change bringing warmer waters. That same climate change also brought a similar influx of fish to the south west of Ireland and – particularly – to Roaringwater Bay, allowing the Gaelic chiefs here to prosper.

Photo above by Franzfoto, Wiki Commons; header photo  by Adrian Pingstone, Wiki Commons

This is the fishing village of Clovelly, probably little changed from the times of the Armada and the herring bonanza. It is built into the side of a cliff and the one cobbled main street is so narrow and steep that only donkeys and pedestrians can negotiate it. I know it well, as I spent numerous years of my architectural career working on projects in the village, restoring scores of cottages, boating facilities and the two village inns. The village is owned to this day by a descendant of Zachary Hamlyn who, born to a farming family in Higher Clovelly, made his fortune as a lawyer in London and returned to purchase the whole estate for around £9,000 in 1738.

Old Clovelly – romantic views from Alfred William Hunt (upper) and an engraving (lower), both mid nineteenth century

It’s very fitting that the Nares should launch their Picarooner herring boat under the shadow of Rossbrin Castle, as Finnin O’Mahony, who occupied it in the fifteenth century, became fabulously wealthy through the medieval herring and pilchard fishing industry. The O’Mahonys and their fellow Gaelic overlords levied dues on visiting fishermen from Spain, Portugal, France and England and provided victuals, barrels, salt, liquor – and fish palaces for processing the catch.

The Nares family getting their feet wet, and preparing to run back to Audley Cove. Interesting to note that the Picarooner has a ‘cockboat’ of its own!

It’s worth going back to Clovelly before finishing off this post. Here is a gem: the village Harbourmaster, Stephen Perham, giving us a first-hand account of using a Picarooner for its traditional purpose – fishing for herrings. I remember Stephen well from my Devon days.

Oliver and Susie’s boat was built by Martin Heard of Tregatreath, Mylor Bridge in Cornwall. Martin sadly passed away in 2009, but the yard still builds and maintains traditional boats. This is another connection for me as I had cousins living in nearby Perranarworthal, and spent idyllic summer holidays there in my youthful days.

Many thanks to the Nares for inspiring this post and providing some of the material, including the view of Selkie under sail (above)

Cruinniú na mBád – the Boat Gathering

It only happens once a year! During Ballydehob’s Summer Festival traditional sailing boats gather in Roaringwater Bay and when the tide is right they sail up the shallow waters of Ballydehob Bay to the quay.*

This is a tidal estuary and normally not deep enough to be a reliable port of call for boats, especially those with keels. But during the high summer tides the waters become navigable, provided you time it right, and Ballydehob breaks out the band, fires up the barbecue and invites all sailors to the quay for a gathering like no other.

The Cruinniú na mBád (pronounced krinoo nuh mawd) is part of the village Summer Festival so from year to year it’s a real community affair. The vintage cars and tractors (my goodness there’s a lot of them in West Cork) parade behind a marching band to kick off the week of festivities. The week is filled with music in the pubs, guided walks around the village, charade competitions, and an evening of street sports where we cheer on the youngsters in the madcap turnip race and a completely socially irresponsible event involving chugging beer and pushing a wheelbarrow with an occupant (only in Ireland!).

Turnip races down the main street and crab fishing at the quay

On the weekend the whole village takes to the Pier. The kids compete for medals in crab fishing, there’s a “world famous duck race” (I have no photographs as it’s been cancelled due to bad weather so often), there are fireworks (when it’s dry enough) from the Twelve Arch Bridge, and we await the arrival of the Old Boats.

This year’s entertainment was the fabulous East coast Jazz Band. We catch up on the chat, and look out for one of our popular locals sailing in

It’s an oddly emotional experience to see the boats appear, one by one, and round the bend into the last stretch to the quay. Emotional because this is essentially a re-enactment of what was commonplace in former days, when the quay at Ballydehob was a bustling hive of commerce. Bigger boats would anchor at the entrance to the Bay and lighters would haul the cargo to the quay.

Not all the boats are old – some have come just to be part of this unique gathering – but most are traditional and many of them have been lovingly restored. Some, like the Ette, have been rescued from extinction and reconstructed from crumbling derelicts by master boatbuilders Anke Eckardt and Rui Ferreira – check out their site for an illustrated guide to the slow and skilful processes involved.

Anke and Rui arrive in their Ette-class boat

At this year’s gathering Anke’s parent, Dietrich and Hildegard, our neighbours and friends, were there with their classic fishing boat, the Barracuda.

The whole Levis family sailed in on their beautiful Saoirse Muireann (seer-shuh mirren, Freedom of the Seas), a traditional Heir Island Lobster Boat. Cormac has written the book, literally, on these boats: Towelsail Yawls: The Lobsterboats of Heir Island and Roaringwater Bay. He started this gathering way back in 2004 and it’s been going strong ever since.

Saoirse Muireann coming in to dock. The term towel sail comes from the Irish word teabhal (pronounced towel) meaning shelter, as the sail could double as a kind of tent in wet weather.

Another traditional boat was An tIascaire (on tee-skirruh, The Fisherman), a traditional mackerel yawl. Like many boats in these parts, this one has benefitted from the extraordinary knowledge of the boatbuilders at Hegarty’s Boatyard at Oldcourt – regular readers will remember Robert’s post about this wonderful place.

It’s also lovely to see a Galway Hooker, An Faoileán (on fwale-awn, the Seagull), participating – their black hulls and red sails are instantly recognisable. This one has quite a history – and reading it educated me as to the difference between sails that are gaffe-rigged, versus a traditional Irish rigging known as pucán-rigged (puck-awn). Of course all you sailors know this already, right?

Our friend Jack O’Keefe organises a rally every couple of years for Drascombe Luggers and they joined the gathering en masse in 2014. Unlike 2013 it wasn’t the best of weather, but that did nothing to dampen the spirits of the sailors. It was lovely to be there on the dock to cheer them in.

The Drascombes raft up alongside. Jack O’Keefe and  keen sailor Sheena Jolley

It takes lots of sailing know-how to get up the Bay, but even more to manoeuvre into the tight spaces along the quay, or raft up alongside. By the time everyone’s there, they are rafted up four and five boats deep. 

Then it’s up on shore to partake of the music, the food and the friendly camaraderie that is so typical of both the boating community and the village of Ballydehob, until finally the word goes around that the ebb tide has started and it’s time to carefully push out and take to the seas again – until next year.

 I’ll finish with a video. Sit back and enjoy it, and think about the hundreds, no thousands, of years of history that is evoked by the sight of boats sailing up Ballydehob Bay.

*The photographs in this post are not all mine. Barney Whelan (friend and follower of Roaringwater Journal) was in one of the boats and sent me some taken on the water. Thank you, Barney! Some were shamelessly stolen from the Fastnet Trails Facebook Page, and are the work of the indefatigable Margaret McSweeney (great people shots – thank you, Margaret!). The video is by Tom Vaughan of Oakwood Aerial Photography – he makes West Cork look even more beautiful than it is (and that’s saying something) in his amazing drone footage. The rest of the photos are mine and were taken in 2013, ’14, ’16 and this year.