Leslie Green, who died recently, was probably the last survivor of the band of pioneers including Colonel Anthony Lawlor, Commander Seamus O Muiris, Fintan Murphy, An Seabhac, Basil Peterson, Cunard agent and Norwegian Consul Betson and a few other stalwarts interested in Ireland's seafaring past and its then most precarious maritime actuality, virtually blockaded by both sides in the greatest war in history, who in 1941 founded the Maritime Institute of Ireland. Their aim was for this institute to move public opinion to make our government realise that a genuinely independent and solidly prosperous Ireland would have to have a thriving fleet of merchant ships, a modern and dynamic fishing fleet and a well designed naval force for coastal defence.
By a series of chances Leslie had become the manager and eventually proprietor of what in the previous century had been the most advanced maker of lighthouse equipment in the world. Its name had been made by the pioneer lighthouse engineer Wigham, resident in Booterstown, who revolutionised lighthouse engineering the world over in the 1860s and 1870s. Leslie kept the Wigham tradition through a mixture of self-sacrificing hard work and genuine expertise until failing eyesight forced him to give up and hand over the historic records, instruments and other gear from the once celebrated lighthouse engineering works in Shoehouse Lane to the National Maritime Museum.
I remember, one Saturday in the 1950s, meeting a Dublin pilot of my acquaintance who said he had piloted 31 cargo ships out of Dublin that week, one only of which was carrying a cargo, and that a full one of Dublin lighthouse equipment for the Mediterranean. I have spoken to port officials as far distant from one another as Trieste and Hong Kong who boasted of their superb Dublin-made harbour lighting systems.
Leslie, who had all the virtues of a confirmed Quaker, was the soul of generosity and for many years as honorary treasurer of the Maritime Institute kept it going in bad times out of his own pocket. He was an idealist and a practical good citizen. He it was who set going in the institute the movement that later, belatedly, led to the erection on Sir John Rogerson's Quay of the monument to Irish seamen who lost their lives in the 1939-1945 war. A pacifist like all Quakers, but a man of sense, he led the institute's delegation that in 1949 met the State's first modern warship, the corvette LE Macha, on her arrival in the Liffey, declaring his conviction that no Irish warship would ever be involved in implementing a policy of military aggression.
J. De C.I.