Remembering our West of Ireland Boats

Passengers on their way to the Naomh Éanna ferry by curragh from West Village, Inishere, Aran Islands, Co. Galway, June, 1968. © National Museum of Ireland

Did you grow up in a fishing community, was your family involved in boat building or have you a memory of boats from the west coast? If you do, we would like to invite you to contribute your memories to inform the development of a new gallery at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life. The new gallery will be a permanent display of boats from the Irish Folklife collection focusing on the traditional boats of Ireland’s Atlantic coast.

You can contribute your memories here or read the submitted memories here.

‘Remembering our West of Ireland Boats’ is a Bealtaine Festival event.

Author

Noel Campbell

Keywords

Coastal Communtities (1)

Fishing (6)

Marine heritage (21)

Memories (1)

Museums (1)

Traditional Boats (26)

Time period

20th century

Page added

27/04/2021

Comments about this page

Thanks for your suggestion Deirdre. We certainly aim to have the larger boatyards represented in the finished gallery. I recently visited Kilrush boatyard, Co. Clare and an upcoming blog post will be on Hegarty’s boatyard in Skibbereen, Co. Cork.
By Noel Campbell (20/06/2023)
I realise that securing artefacts might be a challenge, but perhaps the story of large timber vessels built in Ireland could feature? I’m thinking of the Meevagh boatyard in Donegal, the story of which is told by Frank Carr in the book Boatyard Days (2002 I think). The largest boat they built was a 84ft trawler, which was lowered into the water by the whole village!
By Deirdre (19/06/2021)