Political parties take note. A tribunal of inquiry was held over five years and achieved nothing. So says Noel Carroll, chief executive of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, describing the dilemma Dublin's authorities faced when the Ouzel, a merchant galley, reappeared with pirate booty in 1700 having vanished in 1695.

The city merchants solved the dilemma of what to do with the booty after forming the Ouzel Galley Society, the chamber's precursor.

The legend appears on the bottom of the society's stationery and the chamber is now seeking craftsmen and carpenters to set about rebuilding the good ship, named after a species of wader, as a millennium project and a tribute to the city's maritime and commercial history.

Meanwhile, an "ouzeler", Mr Carroll says, is a common word in Ringsend, from where the Ouzel disappeared, for a person of suspect birth.

No word yet of how the suspect sailors fared. But the inquiry continues.