The Saint Agnes Restoring the Saint Agnes
© O’Dwyer Productions
The St. Agnes is probably the oldest surviving sail/fishing vessel built on the
South Coast of Ireland. Her keel is 26 feet, 31 feet overall and was laid down in a
field overlooking Stony Cove in Dunmore East in 1899. She was built by John
Halley and Nicholas Murphy of pitch pine in oak. When her hull was completed
she was lowered down and floated in Stony Cove with ropes and tackle. She was
then rigged with mast, spars and red canvas sails. In 1902 she was officially
registered as a fishing boat with registration number W229.
She continued her working life as an inshore fishing boat in this form probably until after the Second World War. Buddy Fancy Power remembers
when boats of her class would sail, or in flat calm be rowed out to a scarf line where drift and tide met. Wine baskets would be lowered over the
side and then rapidly hauled in again. They would often be full of sprat, herring or mackerel feeding in shoals along the scarf line.
In the latter half of the 20th Century, the St. Agnes was stripped of her mast and sails, her rail was raised by a couple of planks and an engine was
installed. Later again she was fiberglassed and an open wheel house was fitted so she remained a working fishing half decker until 2003 when she
was tied up to the wall in Dunmore for the last time where she sank into the harbour mud.
In 2005 Tomas McGrath decided to lift her and begin a complete renovation. He enlisted Tony McLoughlin who already had long experience of old
wooden boat renovations and with the permission of the Harbour Master they raised her and propped the hull up on the harbour under the cliff.
The first job was to remove all the fibreglass. This was a painstaking effort using mallets and wooden wedges to prise the sheets away from the
planks. Then the wheel house foredeck and upper rail were removed.
It was clear that the oak ribs, the planking to the waterline, the transom and the foredeck would have to be renewed. It was also decided to curve
back the stem into the original design. To this end an ingenious wood steamer was made using an old gas cylinder and a rectangular wooden box
so that ribs and planks could be steamed and softened and then curved into shape. The original planks were removed and replaced one by one
with 2 x 1 inch batons, screwed into the original ribs so that the lines of the boat would be perfectly preserved. Each rib was cut back to good
wood and replaced with new oak. They were alternated so that there was one sawn and one steamed. Thus the entire boat was re-ribbed from
the waterline up whilst the original shape was maintained.
The next stage was re-planking using larch planks, the re-alignment of the stem and the replacement of the transom. To date, the hull is almost
complete with only the foredeck and some small finishing work to be done. The St. Agnes has been scientifically measured and surveyed by
Michael Tyrell of Arklow, who projected her plan onto a three dimensional computer programme. He then designed the correct sails and rigging
for her hull shape and age. An almost identical rig can be seen on similar boats from Baltimore.
The timbers for her mast and spars were cut from a Douglas fir forest in Cheekpoint, whilst the sails are to be made by a specialised sail maker
in Gdansk, Poland. Work on the St. Agnes has already been going on for two years and it is hoped that she may be complete and sailing in the
autumn of 2008. Praise to McGrath and McLoughlin for bringing back the old St. Agnes of Dunmore East and good luck to all who sail in her in
her new life. We look forward to her second maiden voyage.
Simon O’Dwyer, January 2008
