Like many other Irish towns Dun Laoghaire grew out of its port, but it is much the youngest of them; and, unlike other port towns such as Carlingford, Wexford, Derry, lordly Dublin and so on, the port of Dun Laoghaire was not built to be traded into or from.
It is difficult for the inhabitants of Dublin and the largely urbanised stretch of coast between it and Bray to realise - even if they are told, which few of them are - how mercilessly dangerous Dublin Bay was to shipping before the advent of the steamship.
The most renowned navigator in the British navy at the zenith of its Nelsonic prestige at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, shortly to become commander-in-chief of Britain's all-important Indian Ocean Fleet, said that the port of Dublin was the most dangerous port of importance in the world for a ship to enter or leave. This observation was made when he was captain here of the English king's yacht - a job he could have got only if supremely competent.
Even today, when not altogether rare north-easterly gales spring up off Dublin, the sea can be difficult for small craft, and even dangerous for large warships, as the captain of a very big US aircraft carrier discovered recently, having scoffed at a warning of a threatening easterly. His ship, after all, had weathered typhoons and hurricanes without damage.
During the 18th century, when Dublin's trade was increasing, the number of shipwrecks in the bay grew so great that public opinion revolted, and when, on a November night in 1809, over 400 lives were lost in the wreck of two ships, it exploded, as can and does still happen.
People had long been complaining about the need, week after week, to salvage corpses along the coast and see them buried. In 1800 the port of Dublin had indeed set up Europe's first co-ordinated lifeboat service round the bay, but the boats, though bravely and skilfully handled, were quite incapable of coping with the sea that whipped up the bay that November night.
Led by a Norwegian-born master mariner, naturalised and long living in Dalkey, a massive popular protest movement was organised and officialdom was shaken out of its apathy. The proposal of the Norwegian captain for an Asylum Harbour to be built around and outward from the tiny fishing hamlet of Dun Laoghaire was adopted, and in 1813 the first stone of the new port was solemnly laid.
Originally the plan was to have a single pier - the present East Pier - behind which ships bound to or from Dublin could shelter when an easterly was expected; but engineering expertise wisely urged that a second, longer (the West) pier should be laid, and in fewer than 40 years the elegant piers were complete, embracing many acres of safe water.
A remarkable seaman of Co Kildare origin, Captain Hutchison - a one-time naval man, who had been haven master at Bulloch Harbour, Dalkey and coxswain of the local lifeboat - achieved prodigies, as the first and greatest of a string of admirable harbour masters. For the first half of its existence the port was called Kingstown Harbour, out of which, largely thanks to Hutchison's wisdom, the new town of Kingstown, now Dun Laoghaire, rapidly grew.
Work on the harbour happened to coincide with the tentative introduction of the first steamships (George IV, a king of whom nobody had a good word, was the first monarch to make a voyage in a steam ship). The earliest ones frequently blew up their boilers, with devastating results. He was also the first English King to visit Ireland without an army, and made sea-bathing and Brighton fashionable. From the day of George's steamship visit, Hutchison saw the possibility of Kingstown, long after its role as an "asylum" had ceased to be paramount, becoming the greatest port on the Irish Sea carrying passengers and mail.
So the harbour was a triumphant success, and was looked upon by the local people - to whom, rather than to unimaginative bureaucrats and money-grubbing "entrepreneurs", it owed its existence - as their own property. For the greater part of its existence the port was controlled by the Board of Works, known, if not for an imaginative vision of the future, at least for the meticulousness of the construction and repair work that it undertook. Under the Board the port, with its great arms embracing the sea and the constant coming and going of visitors of many kinds, our harbour, as we citizens of Dun Laoghaire call it, was a thing of beauty and so, we were sure, a joy forever.
Unfortunately, under a new Harbour Act of 1996, the Board of Works ceased to be the controller of the port, and a new harbour company was imposed. From March 2001 a company called Marina Marketing and Management Ltd will take over the management of the coal harbour and boatyard. This is apparently intended, in the soul-destroying spirit of the so-called Celtic Tiger, to work for the rapid enrichment and comfort of a small number of individuals rather than for the public good.
This is supposed to be a democracy, i.e. a community ruled by itself, but calls for suggestions or advice from the public, who love their port, were never heard. Unfortunately the new harbour company seems to me to be sadly lacking in common courtesy, or any sense whatever of the drama and poignancy of our harbour's nearly 200 years of existence, and the way in which ordinary citizens were enabled to make use of it, the creation of their ordinary citizen ancestors.