`Tourists, cattle, pigs, film stars and millionaires . . ." This was the late Sean Lemass's predicted passenger list for the Aran Island ferry, Naomh Eanna, when the ship was launched at the Liffey Dockyard in 1957. Now that a new £3 million passenger vessel is set to take up to 271 passengers on to the islands per trip this summer, there must be a few islanders wishing the old "tub" would return.
After all, when the Naomh Eanna, and its predecessor, the Dun Aengus, plied the passage on behalf of CIE, there was little fear of the islands being swamped as they are now with summer visitors. Tourists earned their welcome back then. By the time currachs met them off the vessel with its high freeboard, they would have experienced the best and the worst of the Naomh Eanna's Atlantic roll.
Still, the "melting pot boat", which has been berthed for the best part of the last decade in Dublin's Grand Canal Basin, holds treasured memories for some. Several former crew and island passengers exchanged experiences at O'Connor's hostelry in Salthill, Galway, last week, during a special edition of Sea- scapes, the weekly RTE programme.
Martin Quinn, former clerical officer and liaison for CIE, who is now with Bus Eireann, noted that in 30 years of service, the ship only missed seven scheduled sailings.
He and other contributors recalled how the vessel quickly made its name on one unscheduled outing. In August 1958, three months after it was first introduced, it joined the lifeboat and the Naval Service corvette, Macha, on a search for bodies when a KLM Super Constellation airliner crashed about 65 miles off Slyne Head, with the loss of 99 lives. The distress call had come as the ship was loading for a crossing. Some of the passengers didn't know what a "Mayday" was when informed of the alert, and a few were concerned that they would get their money back.
Eamonn Tobin, former assistant engineer, conceded that the vessel was "a bit top heavy", which would explain its tendency to broach when running before a heavy sea. He recalled how the late Tod Andrews, then CIE chairman, had said he would give the ship to anybody who would run it "for a pound of tea", but there were no takers.
The ship ferried many cattle to and from the islands during its time, and Padraig Coyne, a former cattle jobber, was among those with clear memories of how the animals were off-loaded on slings and swam ashore on Inis Meain and Inis Oirr before both got proper piers.
There was much more from John Reck, deck steward and "captain's tiger", Arthur Pratt, a regular passenger, Christy Fitzgerald, a CIE official who recited a verse, Denis Walsh, now engineer with Island Ferries, Gerry Glynn, Irish Rail district manager, and Bartley Beatty, checker/steward who came out from Arainn for the programme despite the fact that his father had just passed away.