Towelsail
Yawls
The Lobsterboats of Heir Island and Roaringwater Bay
Cormac Levis
From the 1870s
to the 1950s, the sailing lobsterboats of Heir Island and Roaringwater
Bay in West Cork dominated the lobster fishery of the south coast
of Ireland. Leading a semi-nomadic lifestyle, the lobstermen fished
a stretch of coastline of over a hundred nautical miles in their
small open boats.
Cormac Levis has spent many years collecting folklore and memories
from the older generation of seafarers, and tells for the first
time the remarkable story of these boats and the men who fished
them, providing a fascinating insight into a unique way of life
that had been in danger of passing unrecorded into oblivion. The
author also puts forward evidence of the existence of a pre-Famine
lobsterfleet, and details the modernisation and eventual demise
of the lobsterboats in the 1950s and 1960s.
Cormac Levis, who teaches at St Fachtna's De La Salle, Skibbereen,
is a native of Ballydehob. For generations, his family worked
sailing sand-dredgers out of this small, tidal harbour. In the
late 1970s and early 1980s, he fished off the south coast at a
time when many veterans of the towelsail yawls were still going
to sea. Cormac is one of a nationwide team of maritime researchers
involved in Traditional Boats of Ireland, a co-operative project
for the publication of a major study on traditional Irish boats.
He has also written comprehensively on the West Cork sandboats
for the Mizen Journal and other publications. He has lectured
on both the lobsterboats and sandboats at the Glandore Classic
Boat Summer School and at various historical-society meetings,
and has contributed to radio programmes on the subject. He is
a founding committee member of the Ilen River Cruising Club.
Published in
hardback by Galley Head Press
ISBN: 0 9542159 0 7
160 pages · 52 photographs · 16 illustrations
19.75 euros · £15.00 sterling · $19.00 ·
+ postage & packaging
To order, contact: islandbooks@eircom.net