Category Archives: Extant waterways

New header pic 1 June 2020

Posted on Monday 1 June 2020 | Leave a comment

Granny, on the Suir above Waterford, at dusk

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Posted in Ashore, Extant waterways, Ireland, Suir, waterways

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New header pic 16 May 2020

Posted on Saturday 16 May 2020 | Leave a comment

Early steamer in Dublin 1820s

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Historical matters, Ireland, Passenger traffic, Sea, Steamers

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Barges …

Posted on Sunday 10 May 2020 | Leave a comment

… in Bangladesh. And passenger boats too.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Foreign parts

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Killaloe eels

Posted on Saturday 4 April 2020 | Leave a comment

A new export from Ireland

The banks of the Shannon, says the Limerick Chronicle, are inexhaustible in providing sustenance, not only for the natives, but our constant customer, John Bull. Salmon has for some time been an article of profitable export to the English market; but what will the public think of that cheaper and more abundant dainty — eels?

There are 10 tons of this prolific fish now in tanks at Killaloe, awaiting a conveyance to London; and a vessel adapted for the trade will take on board from this port in the ensuing week 40 tons of eels for the London Market.

Ipswich Journal 26 October 1844

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Posted in Ashore, Economic activities, Extant waterways, Historical matters, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Natural heritage, Operations, Shannon, The fishing trade, Waterways management

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While you’ve nothing else to do …

Posted on Friday 20 March 2020 | 1 comment

I came across a quiz I compiled in 2004 for the Athy Water Festival. Q6 no longer applies and I can’t guarantee that all of the others are still true, but here is it anyway.

  1. What is the taste of the town where a doleful damsel laments her armless boneless chickenless egg?
  2. What armless legless Barrow man did not have to be put out with a bowl to beg but was an enlightened landlord, “a Member of Parliament, Lord Lieutenant of the County Carlow, Member of the Privy Council of Ireland, magistrate, world traveller, yachtsman, sometime dispatch rider in the East India service, crack shot, keen fisherman” and  “a terror with the ladies”?
  3. What are the names of the aqueducts immediately above and below Vicarstown?
  4. What is the only Barrow lock with no corresponding weir?
  5. Where did the now-derelict canal branch from Monasterevan go to?
  6. What beer is named after a Barrow saint? [Carlow Brewing Company used to have a red ale named St Moling’s]
  7. How many bollards are there on each side of Lock 28 on the Barrow Line? [Maybe the number has changed since 2004]
  8. What is the name of the double lock on the Barrow?
  9. “A swan goes by head low with many apologies
    Fantastic light looks through the eyes of bridges
    And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
    And other far-flung towns mythologies.” Said who?
  10. What two rivers enter the Barrow between Maganey and Bestfield Locks?

Tie-breaker: (a) Who composed “Five Locks on the Barrow”? (b) What are the five locks?

Leave your answers in the Comments below (if you like).

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Posted in Built heritage, Canals, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways

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New header photo March 2020

Posted on Tuesday 3 March 2020 | Leave a comment

Gandalows on the Cashen, which enters the sea south of Ballybunion in Co Kerry. The photo was taken from the bridge on the R551 in 2015.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Irish inland waterways vessels

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Walking on water

Posted on Saturday 29 February 2020 | 1 comment

Marine Pedestrianism

Mr Kent, whose surprising exploits have attracted so much attention in Liverpool and other places where he has appeared before the public, arrived here on Sunday evening by the Steam Packet Waterloo.

On the packet reaching Ringsend, he launched and mounted his marine velocipede, and proceeded before the packet up to Sir John Rogerson’s-quay, where he was loudly cheered by the spectators on shore.

We understand it is his intention to exhibit his apparatus here, should he meet with public encouragement previously to his departure for London.

Saunders’s News-Letter 24 July 1821

Walking on water

On Friday a prodigious crowd, upwards of 30000 people, assembled on the banks of the Clyde, to witness the performance of Mt Keat [sic], who had announced his intention of riding on his aquatic velocipede, from Rutherglen-bridge to the Wooden-bridge. He started precisely at a quarter before three o’clock, and reached the Wooden-bridge at a quarter past three. He amused himself with loading and discharging a fowling-piece as he sailed along. Several porters were stationed at the different entrances of the Green with subscription-boxes. The machine consists of three oval tin cases united by iron rods to support a sort of saddle, upon which the artist sits, at such a height as is suitable for using his feet to give the requisite impulse. The weight of the whole does not exceed 14 lbs.

Salisbury and Winchester Journal 21 May 1821

Here’s a later version.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Historical matters, Shannon

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Shannon water levels

Posted on Monday 24 February 2020 | Leave a comment

Just a reminder about the ESB’s useful page of hydrometric information here.

As of yesterday morning (23 February 2020), the discharge through Parteen Villa Weir was 659 cubic metres per second [cumec]. That’s the total discharge from the Shannon, covering both what goes through Ardnacrusha and what goes down the original course of the river [which in summer gets 10 cumec].

Of that 659, Ardnacrusha was getting 381 cumec, which means that 278 was going down the river’s original course.

The ESB’s Shannon forecast says

It is expected that a discharge ranging between 315 [cumec] and 370 [cumec] will be necessary at Parteen Weir over the next 5 days based on current weather forecast.

Those figures are well below the current combined discharge of 659 and more rain is expected, so I presume that the forecast refers to discharge down the original course of the river, which is to increase by between 13% and 33%. Water levels below Parteen Villa Weir are already high, though not at 2009 levels, so an investment in wellies might be advisable.

Shannon floods 2009 here.

Here’s an old page of mine about why the Shannon floods. I’ve removed some links that no longer work. The link to the ESB’s infographic does still work.

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Posted in Ashore, Drainage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Modern matters, Operations, Shannon, Waterways management

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Shinners to the right of them …

Posted on Wednesday 12 February 2020 | 5 comments

… Shinners to the left of them. The local resident Shinners, having done well in a recent election, may end up forming part of a government while, across the water, the British Shinners (formerly known as the Conservative Party) are well ensconced and about to start dispensing benefits to their supporters.

No, no, not those ex-Labour idiots who voted for them: how much did any of those voters contribute to party funds? Very little, I imagine, so they can’t expect to be rewarded with anything other than the drippings from the pan.

One of the things uniting Irish and British Shinners is a devotion to useless vanity projects, usually costing the public purse a fortune in return for little or no benefit. The Irish Shinners have been pushing the Clones Sheugh for years and they also support the Narrow Water Bridge, which would be built in the middle of nowhere and be far less useful than the Newry Bypass. The British Shinners, however, have an even more idiotic bridge in mind, to be built across a munitions dump.

Her Majesty’s Chief Nitwit, the appalling Johnson, has a string of idiotic proposals behind him, some of which even got built. And now he’s at it again, proposing both a railway line and a bridge to distract attention from his cluelessness, ignorance and stupidity. But there is probably more to it than that, as the admirable Richard Murphy points out today. The bridge (and, I suggest, the railway) will benefit the modern courtiers who finance such projects.

 

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Posted in Ashore, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Modern matters, Politics, Roads, Sea

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New header pic February 2020

Posted on Tuesday 4 February 2020 | Leave a comment

The Liffey in 1846, cropped from a panorama published in the Illustrated London News on 6 June 1846.

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Posted in Ashore, Built heritage, Canals, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Historical matters, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Operations, Rail, Roads, Sea, Sources

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