Currachs: Lifelines for trade, travel and tradition with a sporting streak

Irish Times

2 days ago

Querrin in
Co Clare
is a spot that can be described as being rather far from anywhere. Just shy of five miles from Kilkee, eight miles to Kilrush, a whopping 36 miles to the county town of Ennis, but funnily, little over three miles across the Shannon estuary to Kerry.
To go by land, it's about an 85-mile spin – up along the belly of the Banner, into Limerick City, back out west past Foynes and on to north Kerry. Before the dawn of the Killimer-to-Tarbert ferry service in 1969, rowing was the speediest option by a considerable margin, if you had the brawn.
Describing the historical use of currachs in west Clare, Dixie Collins recalls a story that local man Eddie Lynch told him of one particular journey across the estuary.
After cycling down to Querrin from Kilkee, just one bike between himself and a friend, the pair rowed across to Kerry and then cycled on to Tralee to watch the county final, making the return trip that evening. In west Clare, their love of the sea is rivalled only by their love of football.
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'There was a huge connection over and back across the river between Kerry and Clare,' says Collins, a founding member of the West Clare Currach Club.
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Currach restored by Mountjoy Prison inmates gifted to social services charity to help young people
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'People used to go over to dances in Ballybunion on canoes and come back. The Shannon all the way up was like the highway before the roads came in, going back hundreds of years. People were related and knew each other over and back the river.'
A silhouette of a currach as a crew row along the Liffey in Dublin. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw/PA
The style of boat goes by different names depending on location, reflecting variations in shape that 'evolved with local sea conditions in mind', Collins explains.
Currachs, naomhógs, or canoes as they're called in west Clare, are unique in their construction, starting with a timber frame which is then covered with a 'skin' layer – originally made of animal hide but later of calico canvas painted with layers of tar, and more recently, light nylon sheets.
The result is a boat nimble enough to navigate tricky fishing spots, strong enough to withstand rough sea conditions, and light enough to be shouldered to and from the shore.
For many communities along the west coast, currachs were a lifeline for work, trade and transport. That is particularly true for Inisheer.
Tomás Sharry grew up on the smallest of the Aran Islands and is now raising his three daughters there.
Lying just five miles northwest of Doolin, Co Clare, and about two miles southeast of Inishmaan, currachs linked Inisheer to the mainland and its fellow Aran Islands.
'Every family would have had a currach,' he says. 'Even the priest years ago – he was rowed to Inishmaan once a week for Mass, so families would have a turn to bring the priest to Inishmaan.'
Currachs on the beach in Inisheer. Photograph: Eamon Ward
Sharry adds that construction on the island also relied on the currachs, since building supplies had to be rowed ashore when cargo boats couldn't use the island's pier.
Even at the height of their powers as working boats, communities such as that on Inisheer also used the currachs for sport.
The biggest weekend on the island comes in August when the community hosts the annual Rasaí Inis Óirr – with this year's instalment taking place this past weekend. The highlight of the event is the currach races.
Competitions are divided into various categories – underage, senior, men's, women's, 'fear agus bean' (mixed) – and by the number of 'hands', generally two or three rowers per boat. Areas that host events tend to have a long-established racing course that is seldom, if ever, altered.
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Currach racing set for the Liffey on Sunday
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But having a currach at your disposal is half the battle, and as such the sport is not particularly accessible beyond the traditional strongholds.
In west Clare, Collins says, there was no shortage of canoes, but they were in private ownership, having been 'minded and treasured' for decades by local fishing families.
In the 1990s, he and a few other dedicated hands set about acquiring these canoes and began holding races in various spots around the peninsula.
Seamen carry their currach on Inishmaan, May 1984. Photograph: Gérard Sioen/Gamma-Rapho/Getty
In 2004 came the decision to build six standardised canoes, opting for the local fishing canoe style rather than that of a racing boat, to better withstand harsh Atlantic conditions.
Supported by the Leader programme – a funding initiative for development projects in rural communities – the group set to work under the guidance of local boat builder James Madigan. 'We were in an old garage in Kilkee [building the boats] and the old fishermen all came in to us,' says Collins.
'They wanted to see what we were doing, and they wanted to make sure we were doing it right. They wouldn't let you do it wrong!'
Once built, the six canoes were given to communities in the club's catchment – such as Kilkee, Kilrush and Doonbeg – to enable people from each area to get out on the water.
On Inisheer, Sharry says currach racing was simply part of life on the island.
Members of the West Clare Currach Club on the water in Kilkee. Photograph: Tony Whelan
'When I was young there was no football team on the island, so the currach racing was the main sport.'
His first race came as a 12-year-old in 1996, and he's been at it ever since, competing for much of that time
with his brother Seán
and their friend Mairtín Seoighe.
They haven't been short of success. In 2023 the trio won the All-Ireland – a competition picked from among the events in the racing calendar each year – in home waters, and in 2024 they won the league, a points-based competition spanning the season.
However, from its once prominent position, the number of people rowing on Inisheer has dwindled.
'We try to hold on to as much of it as we can,' he says of their efforts to preserve the island's traditions, the speaking of Irish chief among them, but also currach racing.
This is not all just the preserve of the westerners – similar efforts are taking place right around the Irish coast to ensure the currach remains a living piece of our history, with clubs such as Draíocht na Life in Dublin flying the flag out east, having launched three new currachs on the Liffey in 2022.
While preservation is rarely an easy task, Collins insists participation in currach racing and coastal rowing as a whole
'is broadening out all the time', with their club noting a particular uptick in women joining their ranks.
'These boats were work boats for 200 years, and they haven't changed that much over that time ... If we didn't have these boats, from a kind of a sense of identity, a sense of rootedness, we would really be very poor,' he says.
But for now, 'the sails are filling,' he adds, and the currach lives on.