Cormac Lowth of Dublin is a one-man Irish maritime history institute, the first and last port of call for anyone seeking the facts about some aspect of our seagoing history, whether it's obscure or supposedly well-known. Quite how he carries so much information - and with continuing enthusiasm at that - is beyond most people's imagination, but the logic is that every so often, he should collate at least one strand of detailed research into a book, and he has done that with his knowledgeable fascination with the way that the Ringsend fishery in Dublin developed between the ending of the Napoleonic wars in 1815, and the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
This was thanks to a mutuually-beneficial dynamic interaction between the hotbed of fishing development which was to be found at the small but hyper-busy port of Brixham in southwest England, and the almost-autonomous maritime community of Ringsend in Dublin. It's both a simple and a complex story, and apart from the great maritime interest, it's a human story too, with the inevitable exceptional people involved in order to move things forward.
Cormac's book has been brought to publication by Hal Sisk's Peggy Bawn Press, and the official come-all-ye launching is at the Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club on Wednesday, October 12th at 8 pm. It's surely the most-appropriate venue possible, as the type-defining St Patrick was built nearby - just a few hundred yards away - 135 years ago, and the photo shows her in what are now the PY&BC moorings.
Cormac's book has been brought to publication by Hal Sisk's Peggy Bawn Press
