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Review of Cool Metal - Clear Water
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Cool Metal – Clear Water
You know you’re getting old when you recognise the people in a history book as your friends and mentors. And such is the case when I read Cool Metal – Clear Water as I celebrate my own 21st season of Shannon Boating since I first arrived in Athlone in 1985.
This superbly produced book produced by the Heritage Boat Association of Ireland with assistance from Waterways Ireland, celebrates and records the Trading Barges of Ireland’s Inland Waterways from their working days from the late 19th century through to the 1950s through wreck and neglect to their renaissance as leisure craft in present days.
The book’s 160 pages are filled with hundreds of beautiful and evocative colour, black and white and sepia photographs of the craft and their crews throughout their working and modern lives. Many of the photographs are credited to the late Robert Shortall of New Ross who dedicated his private life to recording on film, the Sailing Schooners, Canal Boats and Steam trains from 1932 to 1981. Mr Shortall’s life work has preserved a unique history of Transport Ireland in the 20th century.
Each boat gets its own few pages of history and anecdote often lovingly told by a past crew member or present owner. My personal favourites are the stories of Syd Shine’s barge the Fox ( surely Ireland’s first motor training boat ) and the beautiful Phoenix ( 42 years old when the Titanic sunk ) which has been in John Le Froy’s family for generations.
Every single boat has a rich personal history spanning generations and some even span three different centuries of crew and owners. Many sank and several experienced tragedy before being re-floated or restored.
These boats have had a profound effect on our modern marine tourism industry on the Shannon. The harbours that once serviced them along the South Shannon, from Limerick through Shannon harbour to Dublin, along the canal, are now all tourist havens where grain stores and docks have become restaurants, hotels and pubs. North of Athlone, where they rarely ventured in their working lives we still see a Lough Ree completely undeveloped with harbours to this day.
There is a wonderful chapter on the Bolinder engines which powered many of these boats. These engines had no reverse gear. Crews had to almost stall the engine at the top of the cycle and swing the crankshaft in the opposite direction just before it stalled completely.
If I have a suggestion on how to improve future editions it would be to include a few more articles like the Bolinder story to add even further colour and depth to the individual boat histories. Articles on the history of the navigation and some more detailed maps and charts could also be welcome additions to a book that will soon become a classic and a collectors item.
Buy multiple copies now, before they sell out !
Cool Metal - Clear Water is available from the Heritage Boat Association of Ireland
www.heritageboatassociation.ie
The price is a very reasonable €15 and I am told that there is a discount for orders of 5 or more books !.
Link to cover picture at Cool Metal - Clear water
© Stuart McNamara 2006
www.powerboat.ie
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Cool Metal – Clear Water
You know you’re getting old when you recognise the people in a history book as your friends and mentors. And such is the case when I read Cool Metal – Clear Water as I celebrate my own 21st season of Shannon Boating since I first arrived in Athlone in 1985.
This superbly produced book produced by the Heritage Boat Association of Ireland with assistance from Waterways Ireland, celebrates and records the Trading Barges of Ireland’s Inland Waterways from their working days from the late 19th century through to the 1950s through wreck and neglect to their renaissance as leisure craft in present days.
The book’s 160 pages are filled with hundreds of beautiful and evocative colour, black and white and sepia photographs of the craft and their crews throughout their working and modern lives. Many of the photographs are credited to the late Robert Shortall of New Ross who dedicated his private life to recording on film, the Sailing Schooners, Canal Boats and Steam trains from 1932 to 1981. Mr Shortall’s life work has preserved a unique history of Transport Ireland in the 20th century.
Each boat gets its own few pages of history and anecdote often lovingly told by a past crew member or present owner. My personal favourites are the stories of Syd Shine’s barge the Fox ( surely Ireland’s first motor training boat ) and the beautiful Phoenix ( 42 years old when the Titanic sunk ) which has been in John Le Froy’s family for generations.
Every single boat has a rich personal history spanning generations and some even span three different centuries of crew and owners. Many sank and several experienced tragedy before being re-floated or restored.
These boats have had a profound effect on our modern marine tourism industry on the Shannon. The harbours that once serviced them along the South Shannon, from Limerick through Shannon harbour to Dublin, along the canal, are now all tourist havens where grain stores and docks have become restaurants, hotels and pubs. North of Athlone, where they rarely ventured in their working lives we still see a Lough Ree completely undeveloped with harbours to this day.
There is a wonderful chapter on the Bolinder engines which powered many of these boats. These engines had no reverse gear. Crews had to almost stall the engine at the top of the cycle and swing the crankshaft in the opposite direction just before it stalled completely.
If I have a suggestion on how to improve future editions it would be to include a few more articles like the Bolinder story to add even further colour and depth to the individual boat histories. Articles on the history of the navigation and some more detailed maps and charts could also be welcome additions to a book that will soon become a classic and a collectors item.
Buy multiple copies now, before they sell out !
Cool Metal - Clear Water is available from the Heritage Boat Association of Ireland
www.heritageboatassociation.ie
The price is a very reasonable €15 and I am told that there is a discount for orders of 5 or more books !.
Link to cover picture at Cool Metal - Clear water
© Stuart McNamara 2006
www.powerboat.ie