Category Archives: The fishing trade

Additions

Posted on Tuesday 4 May 2010 | Leave a comment

Material has been added today to the pages on

  • non-WI workboats
  • traditional boats and replicas
  • Waterways Ireland workboats
  • Irish waterway bogs.

See links to the right.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Irish inland waterways vessels, Irish waterways general, Operations, Scenery, shannon estuary, The fishing trade, Uncategorized

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Saleen Pier

Posted on Thursday 25 March 2010 | Leave a comment

It’s a long way from Trinity College, Dublin to the pier at Saleen on Ballylongford Creek, on the south side of the Shannon Estuary. But the college owned large amounts of land in the area, including bogs, and turf was one of the cargoes exported from Ballylongford. There was a battery on Carrig Island at the mouth of the creek and a Coast Guard Station at Saleen Pier, which was built by the Commissioners for the Improvement of the Navigation of the Shannon. Read more about Saleen here.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Irish waterways general, Scenery, shannon estuary, Steamers, The fishing trade, The turf trade, Water sports activities

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Nimmo’s non-existent harbour

Posted on Tuesday 16 March 2010 | Leave a comment

Beginning a section about the piers, quays and harbours of the Shannon Estuary, especially those noticed in the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, and while the Shannon Commissioners were at work, the estuary was seen as a part of the river, just as Lough Derg was, although nowadays the Shannon Foynes Port Company controls the estuary and Waterways Ireland (and the ESB) the river upstream from Limerick.

Noel P Wilkins, in his recent biography of the engineer Alexander Nimmo (Irish Academic Press 2009), says that Kilbaha was the only place where Nimmo selected an unsuitable site for a harbour. Within a couple of years it had been abandoned and replaced by a pier.

Kilbaha is the westernmost harbour on the north side of the Shannon Estuary and the closest to Loop Head. It exported turf (peat) and imported sea-manures; it was also a pilot station. A lot of activity for a small place. Read about it here.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Irish waterways general, Scenery, shannon estuary, The fishing trade, The turf trade

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Online maps

Posted on Thursday 22 October 2009 | Leave a comment

Much of what I’ve learned about old Irish waterways has come from studying the Irish Ordnance Survey maps of the ~1830s and ~1900s (the tilde shows that the dates are approximate: individual sheets were surveyed and published on different dates). However, I had to pay a subscription to get access to them online, so I couldn’t refer visitors of this site to them. Instead, I suggested that visitors consult the free Google Maps and the Griffiths Valuation online maps.

Now, however, the Ordnance Survey maps are available, free of charge, online. “Historic” is the ~1830s maps in colour and “Historic 25i” is the ~1900s maps. Contemporary orthophotographic maps are also available and, best of all, you can overlay a modern map on an old one. Hours of innocent enjoyment and highly recommended.

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Posted in Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Irish waterways general, Non-waterway, Operations, Scenery, Sources, Steamers, The fishing trade, The turf trade

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Some updates

Posted on Sunday 26 July 2009 | Leave a comment

I’ve added some extra photos of

– Waterways Ireland workboats (four photos down the bottom of the page)

– non-WI workboats (several photos in several categories)

– sailing boats (a single photo taken on Lough Ree)

– traditional boats (three photos of Nore cots).

If you don’t want to have to scroll through everything on each page, ask your browser to find “July 2008” (all pages except Traditional boats) or “June 2008” (Traditional boats).

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Posted in Irish inland waterways vessels, The fishing trade

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Ireland’s shortest canal?

Posted on Monday 18 May 2009 | Leave a comment

What may have been Ireland’s shortest canal was at Banagher in Co Offaly; it was used to carry eels to the railway station. Here is a brief account of it.

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Posted in Forgotten navigations, Irish waterways general, The fishing trade

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