Bards on a Barge Event

Film on a Barge

Killaloe or Cairo an Illustrated Talk by Brian Goggin

Our Floating History

The Heritage Boat Association (HBA) was started in 2001 with aspirations to protect, promote and more importantly celebrate the floating heritage on Irelands inland waterways. What's remaining of our Floating Heritage provides us with a direct link to the past and includes both commercial and pleasure craft that plied the inland waterways through the different eras of the canal, lake and river systems. Its membership initially was made up of owners of Irish canal boats, barges, lighters, old wooden boats, steam tugs, steam yachts, sailing barges and other historic boats that have ended up on the Irish inland waterways. Since then that membership has grown to include not just owners of Heritage Vessels but also includes many people that have an interest in our Waterways and its Industrial and cultural past.

So - what is so interesting about Heritage Boats?
A Heritage Boat is described as being consistent with the provisions of the Heritage Act 1995, to mean a boat over 25 years old which is of significance because of its intrinsic construction or because of its association with the commercial, cultural, economic, industrial, military, political, social or other history of the country.

Their direct Link to us :
From a Lough Derg and Mountshannon perspective the main direct link still in abundance is the former Grand Canal Company (GCC) Canal Boats or Barges as they were commonly known. The GCC started to put diesel engines in their Canal boats around 1920. In the beginning they put engines in boats that were built to be towed by Horses on the Canal and by Steamers on the Lakes. In 1926 the GCC started a program to build a new fleet of barges specifically designed to take an engine. Three prototypes with slight variances in design were built 31M, 32M & 33M (the letter M was for Motor). After these were put to work, it was decided that the new fleet should follow the design of 33M. Over the following eleven years, forty nine of these purpose built boats designed to carry 50 Tonnes of Cargo were built in Dublin. These boats then formed the back bone of Canal and river Caro movements through a very important time in our country’s development. In 1955 as part of a Government integrated Transport policy the GCC was taken over by CIE. Canals and Trains had been competing for business since the rail network began, trains quickly won the passenger traffic but found it difficult to compete with Canals for bulkier cargo. In the end, Trains won out when CIE closed commercial traffic on the canals and Shannon in December 1959. The last commercial Cargo boats to call into Mountshannon were in 1960. Soon afterwards a new type of commercialboat, one carrying tourists started calling. Initially it was big passenger tourist boats operated by CIE like the St Brendan, St Kieran and St Patrick but quickly private boats and hire boats started to make Mountshannon a tourist destination. The history doesn’t stop at the boats, there is also lots of connections on the land with the boats and the men that worked them bringing goods to Merchants around the lake. The Holland’s in Whitegate, Waterstone’s and Keane’s in Mountshannon and Sparlings in Scarriff are just a few families with direct connections to our commercial boating history. A number of the boatmen married into Killaloe, Maloney’s, Bowers, Conroy’s are just some of the many families in East Clare who have direct connections to the boats and boatmen that worked on the boats in the first half of the twentieth century.

The History Lives on :
Lough Derg is currently the home to over 30 Heritage Boats, not all of them are Barges. There are a number of Wooden Boats, Steam Launches and various other craft tucked away in harbours all around the lake. The two oldest boats on Lough Derg are around our Waterways since the 1840’s. Another is the 45M which sank in a storm in December 1946 with the loss of three lives, it lay at the bottom of the lake in ninety foot of water at Parkers Point until she was recovered in 1975.

EEach Heritage Boat has its own unique individual history which is something that owners love to share with people that are interested.

For this year’s Arts Festival the HBA are bringing seven or eight of their fleet to the Harbour. Four of them are only travelling from the other side of the parish, one of those boats is 33M the first of the new M boat class, another is 77M known to the Boatmen as “the Big One” it was the third last M boat built. 33M is now owned by Aoife Burke who was featured on Nationwide a couple of years ago after she got it as a rusty hull, its transformation is ongoing but its now a long way from the rusty hull first shown on Nationwide.

These boats will be in the Harbour for the week leading up to the Festival, a number of them including 33M will be used as venues for various events over the weekend so watch the Calendar of events to see what is happening.

More information on individual Heritage boats can be found atwww.heritageboatassociation.ie