Harbour Life - Page Two

"This is the Pilot Boat, Betty Breen, before her launch in 1952. The picture comes from the Maritime Magazine and Import and Export Gazette, published in the Spring of 1952. Thank you to David Carroll for making this available. The piece below is from the magazine article."

A NEW PILOT BOAT FOR WATERFORD

THE BETTY BREEN

From John Tyrrell & Sons’ Yards.

At the yard of John Tyrrell and Sons, of Arklow, a new pilot boat was recently completed to the order of the Waterford Harbour Commissioners. “Betty Breen” as she is named, is 50 ft. in length overall, with a beam of 14 ft., a draught of 6 ft. and a displacement of 33 tons. It will be noted that she has the distinctive Tyrrell stem.

The boat is planked in larch on grown oak frames, with Oregon pine decks. The wheelhouse, companionways, skylights and hatches are of teak, and mahogany has been largely used in the accommodation.

The engine installation consists of a pair of 3LW Gardner Diesel engines, rated at 36 h.p. each at 1,200 r.p.m. They are equipped with 2-1 reduction gears and drive three-bladed propellers of 26 ins. diameter. The stern gear and propellers are of Bruntons manufacture.

Hydraulic remote control to the engines is arranged in the wheelhouse, where there is a full set of gauges and tachometers. Duplicate oil and water gauges are provided in the engine room. The engines are fitted with electric and hand starting equipment.

A Giljector pump, driven by the port engine is employed for pumping the bilges and for deck washing. The fuel capacity is 300 gallons, and 50 gallons of lubricating oil are carried.

Electric lighting is provided throughout the boat and there is a set of oil lamps for emergency use.

On trial, a mean speed of 9 knots was attained. The vessel was run satisfactorily for 6 hours at full speed and manoeuvring was found to be very satisfactory.

On completion, the boat was named by Miss Betty Breen, daughter of the chairman of Waterford Harbour Commissioners. The vessel made the passage from Arklow to Dunmore East, where she is based, in 8 hours, under very unfavourable weather conditions with a strong southerly wind and heavy sea.

Here is the Betty Breen being trialled in the Irish Sea before setting off for Dunmore East, her new home. She was always thought to be one of the best looking boats in the dock.

This is the pilot boat Betty Breen, moored in the dock at Dunmore in the early 1960s. She was launched from Tyrrell’s boatyard in Arklow in October 1951 and came straight to Dunmore, where she remained on duty until 1993, becoming a familiar and reassuring sight in the harbour for more than forty years.

Named after Betty Breen, daughter of Martin S. Breen, chairman of the Harbour Board at the time, she represented a new chapter for pilotage in Waterford Harbour. With her arrival, the use of the pilot station at Passage was discontinued and the pilots began making the complete journey from Dunmore to Waterford with every ship.

Tucker Burke recalls: "I was coxswain of the Betty Breen for 20 years, she was a great weather boat." 

Over the decades she worked in all kinds of weather, day and night, carrying generations of pilots safely to and from the vessels under their care. For many locally, the steady presence of the Betty Breen at her moorings or heading out past the breakwater was part of the rhythm of daily life, as much a feature of the harbour as the lighthouse or the cliffs themselves.

"The following is based on a passage from David Carroll's book, Dauntless Courage. Thanks to David for the original photo as well."

Fanny Harriet: A Lifeboat and a Moment in Time:

Some lifeboats serve quietly for decades, their names fading gently into station records and annual returns. Others, by circumstance rather than design, are bound forever to a single moment — a few days when the sea demanded everything, and ordinary men answered without hesitation. The lifeboat Fanny Harriet, stationed at Dunmore East in the early years of the twentieth century, belongs firmly to the latter.

When she arrived in Dunmore East on 21 September 1911, Fanny Harriet was a modern boat by the standards of her time. Built by the Thames Ironworks Company, she was a self-righting vessel, thirty-seven feet in length with a beam of nine feet three inches, fitted with water ballast tanks and drop-keels to steady her in heavy seas. She replaced the Henry Dodd, which had served the station since 1884, and her arrival was part of the steady evolution of lifeboat provision along the Irish coast rather than a local event of any great ceremony.

Her name came not from the sea, nor from Dunmore East, but from Bath in England. Miss F. H. Roe, whose bequest funded the provision of a lifeboat, requested that it bear the name Fanny Harriet. It was an act of quiet philanthropy, one of many that sustained the Royal National Lifeboat Institution at the time. By 1911, the RNLI managed 283 lifeboats, thirty-five of them stationed along the Irish coast, where they were already rendering invaluable service in saving life from shipwreck.

For the men of Dunmore East, however, Fanny Harriet was not a symbol or a statistic. She was a working boat, crewed by neighbours, relatives and friends — men whose lives were shaped by tide, weather and seasonal labour. Her reported cost of £1,107 placed her among the more substantial investments of the Institution, but her true value would only become clear under conditions no one would have wished for.

In fact, Fanny Harriet would be stationed at Dunmore East for less than three years and would be launched on active service only once. Yet that single service, carried out in February 1914, would ensure that her name lived on not only in RNLI annals, but in the memory of coastal communities far beyond Waterford.

The story begins on Friday, 20 February 1914, when the Norwegian schooner Mexico ran into trouble in Bannow Bay, off the Wexford coast. The Mexico was a three-masted, steel-hulled vessel, bound for Liverpool from Laguna in Mexico, carrying a crew of ten. Caught in a fierce gale, she was driven ashore on the Keeragh Islands, a mile off the coast — a remote, exposed reef where even in calm weather landing was hazardous.

News of the grounding reached the lifeboat station at Fethard-on-Sea, and within a short time the lifeboat Helen Blake was launched. What followed remains one of the most tragic episodes in Irish maritime rescue history. As Helen Blake neared the stricken schooner, she was struck by a heavy and unexpected sea which filled her completely. Driven ashore, she struck the rocks and broke apart. Of the fourteen men aboard, nine were swept to their deaths. Five survived with great difficulty, reaching the South Keeragh Island, while one other was hauled aboard the Mexico itself.

Lines were eventually secured between the schooner and the rocks, allowing the surviving sailors and one lifeboatman to reach a place of relative safety. But safety was a fragile concept. For three days, the survivors remained exposed to freezing cold, sleet, hail and rain, clinging to the rocks as the storm continued unabated.

As news of the disaster spread, lifeboats from neighbouring stations were called upon. From Dunmore East came Fanny Harriet; from Kilmore Quay, The Sisters; and from Wexford, James Stevens. A tug from Wexford also joined the effort. What followed was not a single dramatic rescue, but a prolonged ordeal marked by frustration, danger and persistence.

At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, word reached Dunmore East that assistance was required. Half an hour later, Fanny Harriet was launched under Coxswain Walter Power, with a crew of twelve men. By early afternoon she had reached the Keeragh Islands. Approaching cautiously, the crew backed into shallow water, but the wash on the shore was severe. It was impossible to communicate with the survivors, let alone attempt a landing. For three hours the lifeboat remained at anchor, her crew watching helplessly as waves broke against the rocks where men clung for their lives. Eventually, with nothing more that could safely be done, Fanny Harriet proceeded to Fethard, there to await another opportunity.

Two of the Mexico’s crew, Paulsen and Smith, attempted escape in the ship’s own lifeboat and were swept by the gale onto Cullenstown Strand, where they were hauled ashore in an exhausted condition. For the others, the wait continued.

As the seriousness of the situation became clear, the RNLI’s Chief Inspector of Lifeboats, Commander Thomas Holmes RN, was dispatched from London. He travelled through the night, arriving at Fethard on Sunday afternoon. Earlier that day, at four o’clock, Fanny Harriet again put to sea, this time with Commander Holmes on board. Conditions had moderated slightly, but not enough. Once again, the lifeboat was unable to reach the survivors and was forced to return.

It was only on Monday morning that a breakthrough came. An attempt was made to send an unmanned dinghy towards the island, but it was smashed by the sea. Eventually, a connection was made using a rocket and line. Two men from the Fethard crew, John Kelly and John McNamara, were hauled through the water by line and lifebuoy, a perilous passage that demanded enormous strength and resolve. The Dunmore East lifeboat Fanny Harriet succeeded in rescuing these two stranded lifeboatmen.

Tragically, not all survived the ordeal. Antonio Luis da Cunha, a twenty-two-year-old Portuguese sailor from the Mexico, died on the island from exposure before rescue could reach him.

Later that morning, the Wexford lifeboat returned, towed by the tug, bringing with it a strong punt. Two of the Wexford crew, William Duggan and James Wickham, volunteered to man it. Time and again, they worked the small craft close to the rocks, hauling men aboard and being pulled back to the lifeboat. During the second trip, the punt was stove in on the rocks. With remarkable ingenuity, the hole was stuffed with a loaf of bread and packing, and the rescue continued. In five trips, all remaining survivors — ten men in total — were brought safely off the rocks.

When the work was finally done, the tug took the lifeboats in tow. The five surviving Fethard men and Commander Holmes were landed at Fethard. Fanny Harriet rejoined the tug and was dropped back at Dunmore East, while the Wexford lifeboat continued to Waterford with seven of the Mexico’s crew. Thousands lined the quays to welcome them — a rare public moment in a service more often defined by anonymity.

Today, the name Fanny Harriet endures not because of the length of her service, but because of the weight of that one moment. She stands as a reminder that history is sometimes shaped not by years of activity, but by a few decisive days, and by men who answered the call because it was theirs to answer.

Crew of the Lifeboat Fanny Harriet

(as listed in the Return of Service for the rescue)

Walter Power (Coxswain)

William Power (Second Coxswain)

Patrick Power (Bowman)

Pat Brown

Michael Power

Thomas Power

William Bond

Philip Myler

Patrick Myler

George Cunningham

William Burke

Patrick Power

James Donovan 

There are some vessels that pass through a harbour and are forgotten as soon as their wash settles. Others linger in the mind, returning again and again, slow and inevitable, until they become part of the furniture of childhood itself. The dredger Sisyphus belonged firmly to the second category.

Built in 1905 and operated by the Office of Public Works, she was already an old lady by the time the children of the 1950s first began to measure their summers by her arrival. Yet age seemed only to suit her. She did not hurry. She came and went with a patience that suggested she had all the time in the world, which, to a boy looking down on the pier with a day to fill, felt about right.

You might hear her before you properly saw her: the steady clank and grind of machinery, the bucket ladder rising and falling with the solemn rhythm of work that could not be rushed. Then she would edge into view beyond the harbour mouth, practical, purposeful, utterly indifferent to whether anyone admired her or not.

But admire her we did.

To young eyes she was magnificent — not in the way of a liner or a naval vessel, but in the complicated, mechanical way that invited study. There were gears to puzzle over, wires and gantries, crewmen moving about with the quiet assurance of men who knew their business. She seemed less like a ship and more like a floating factory, intent on chewing up the seabed and spitting it somewhere else.

Older residents understood her importance better than the village children did. Dunmore East has always been a harbour that demanded attention. Left to itself, the sea would patiently rearrange things, nudging sand and silt back into the very channels that men had cleared. Without the dredger’s regular visits, boats would sit where they ought to float, and trade would falter. Sisyphus was, in her unglamorous way, a guardian of the place.

She made regular visits to Dunmore through the 1950s and well into the 1960s. There is even a sketch made in July 1960 showing her at work, which proves that memory has not embroidered the story too wildly. By 1969 she was still busy, deepening approaches for the newer harbour works, carrying on the same endless battle between engineering and tide.

Of course I rarely thought about silt or tonnage. What stayed with me was the scale of her, the noise, the sense of industry. A visit from the dredger meant something was happening. You might cycle down for a look in the morning and come back after tea to find she had shifted position like a grazing animal, methodically working her patch.

Even when she lay quiet, tied up between spells of labour, she held the eye. There was a dignity about her, a tired competence. She had done this yesterday, and would do it tomorrow, and had likely been doing it since before any of us were born.

In time she went the way of such vessels, as all working ships must. But mention her name today and watch what happens. Faces soften. Someone will recall the sound. Another will remember the crew. A third will be certain he can still picture the buckets rising, dripping, in the sun.

And for a moment, the old dredger steams back into the harbour once more, faithful as ever, ready to begin again.

Here we see a group of children playing on what was known as the Plot, which overlooked the harbour. It was taken during the summer holidays, possibly in the early to mid-1960s.

The photo features Dave, Geoff, Jane, Karen and Ivan Harris, along with their cousins, the Woodleys, who were visiting from England on holidays. Geoff also thought that some of the Davis children may be in the picture as well — Andrew, Nelson and Sarah.

The quay wasn't all about fishermen and yachtsmen, sometimes people with other talents went down on the pier too, possibly for inspiration. Here we see Pat Cooksey, Eamon Power and Gerry Power standing there, being inspired, during the early 1980s. Pat Cooksey was living in the village at the time, one of the many talented musicians to have passed through or settled in Dunmore over the years. It is quite possible that Gerry was the main attraction, as word of his legendary guitar playing would have travelled far beyond the harbour walls.

Pat Cooksey was also a gifted songwriter. One of his best-known songs, “The Reason I Left Mullingar,” has been recorded by many artists over the years. Pat wrote the song in 1980 for The Fureys, and it is dedicated to the thousands of Irish building workers who migrated to London during the mid-1970s in search of employment. The song perfectly captures the homesickness, uncertainty and emotional struggles faced by those who left their towns and families behind, hoping for a better future.

This photograph captures the harbour in Dunmore East as it appeared many years ago, possibly during the 1930s. The calm waters, moored boats, and surrounding landscape offer a quiet glimpse of the village at the time. The image has been restored from an old print, it may have originally been a postcard. While the exact date of the photograph is unknown to me, it remains a valuable visual record of the old harbour.