St Patrick’s Rowing Club has been launching its boats from Ringsend for 75 years, and with new members joining every year, it’s a tradition that looks set to stay afloat
FOUR ROWERS pull away from the quay in a wooden boat, glide underneath an overhanging crane and head towards Dublin’s city centre. Just another evening on the river for a crew from St Patrick’s Coastal Rowing Club.
Dublin Port isn’t all big ships and cranes. Rowers have been launching their boats from Ringsend for 75 years, carrying on family traditions started when dockers rowed out to unload schooners in the 19th century.
These days, rowers are bus-drivers, panel beaters, childcare workers. But summer evenings are for the water.
“I just love the buzz of being on the river,” says Irene Montgomery, who has been rowing for 18 years. Wrapped up against the unseasonable cold, she says it’s impossible to imagine life without rowing.
Montgomery is here tonight supervising some young teams. They’re out in the silver-spruce boats, pulling with ease on oars over four metres long.
Later, in the boathouse, Darragh Murphy (12) and Lee Cassidy (12) say they race in a four-man crew with two friends.
The river is in Murphy’s blood – his father Gabriel watches him talk, his grandfather and uncle smile down from black-and-white photographs on the walls – and he’s been rowing since he was a toddler.
“I’m rowing since I was three,” he says, demonstrating how he sat on his father’s legs in a boat and learned by pretending to row.
Cassidy has been with the club for three years and says it’s just what everyone does. Asked what the best part of rowing is, he shrugs: “Just enjoying myself. Most of our friends row or used to row.”
Teams train five or six evenings a week, with a regatta every Sunday in summer. Winter is for indoor rowing machines and hurling or soccer, the boys explain. Their boats are almost the same as those the dockers, known as hobblers, used until the early 1900s.
Philip Murphy, 40 years rowing and no relation to young Murphy, says the club uses fibre boats for some races but the federation lays down strict building rules for the wooden skiffs so the traditions won’t be lost.
Running his hands over the varnished surface of a boat, he says: “They’re all clinker-built, that’s where the plank will link over the next plank. Nothing can get in there.” Tapping the side of the boat, he says: “You could stand up here out on the water. And the boat wouldn’t go over, it’s that well-balanced.”
This comes in handy when rowing to Wales. The older men say this as if it’s just another day on the river, but admit they get some funny looks from the Welsh customs on arrival in Aberystwyth.
Of course, some things have changed. The hobblers wouldn’t have allowed women on their boats; that only started in the 1960s. And the property boom changed the river. Montgomery says: “A lot of muck and silt has built up [in the river] over the last few years with all the building work that’s gone on.” She says an old slipway near the club can no longer be used.
Community liaison officer with Dublin Port Company, Charlie Murphy – no relation to the other Murphys, he thinks – says silt levels are affected by any building on the banks.
“The silt is coming down from the hills and the [new] bridges push it back,” he says. “But the clubs are well-established, No matter what happens in the port, we will always facilitate them.” The company gives the clubs “a rowing line” so they can navigate safely.
So while the sight of wooden boats alongside the StenaLine ferry might seem shocking to landlubbers, Murphy says it’s all under control.
“Its something we have all grown up with. We know them, they know us. When a ship is moving, they know what to do.” Lately, the community has been expanding beyond its traditional heartland. The club signed 15 new members this year, none of them Murphys.
“At the beginning, they find it a bit tricky because they’re not boat-orientated,” says Philip Murphy. “Most people from here were born in boats, born on the river. This is a fishing village.”
He looks around to find a way to stress how central rowing is to the area. Pointing out the window, he says: “There used to be an advertising pole there. When it was no longer in use, the boys cut it down and made an oar out of it.”
Laughing, he adds: “That’s it really. I’m 40 years rowing and I’m still rowing. And it’s still like an adventure every time you go out. That’s how it feels.”
For more information on St Patrick’s Rowing Club, tel: 01-855 0606
The Hobblers: Dublin's rowers remembered
THE BRONZE tower of lifejackets on Dún Laoghaire pier in Dublin is more than just art. It was commissioned as a memorial to three young men who drowned nearby in 1934.
It was common then for dockers from both sides of the harbour to row out to incoming schooners. Known as "hobblers", crews raced to be the first to throw a hook onto the ship's deck, hoping to earn a piloting fee and a wage for unloading cargo.
They sometimes anchored near the Poolbeg lighthouse and fished while waiting to sight a ship. Their 26-foot boats often doubled as a bed if it became too late to row home.
On December 5th 1934, Dún Laoghaire dockers Richard and Henry Shortall with their friends John and Gareth Hughes rowed out to a schooner in their skiff Jealous of Me.
After unloading in Ringsend, Gareth was left to wait for their money and walk home while the others rowed 8.8km back across the harbour. Historians with Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company say the three young men, aged between 18 and 20, were seen passing Poolbeg lighthouse that evening but never made it home.
Three other hobblers were killed in 1928 when their wooden boat was cut in half by a steamer in the middle of the night.
Every year the Hobbler's Challenge is raced in memory of all the hobblers. It takes place this year on September 3rd.
