Question 1

What is the Ilen?

Accepted Answer

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

Question 2

Who designed the Ilen?

Accepted Answer

The Ilen was designed by Conor O’Brien, the first Irish man to circumnavigate the world.

Question 3

Where does the name Ilen get her name?

Accepted Answer

Ilen is named for the West Cork River which flows to the sea at Baltimore, her home port.

Question 4

Who built the Ilen?

Accepted Answer

The Ilen was built by Baltimore Sea Fisheries School, West Cork in 1926. Tom Moynihan was foreman.

Question 5

What is Ilen built from?

Accepted Answer

Ilen's wood construction is of oak ribs and planks of larch.

Question 6

What are the dimensions of the lIen?

Accepted Answer

As-built initially, she is 56 feet in length overall with a beam of 14 feet and a displacement of 45 tonnes.

Question 7

How did the Ilen get from Baltimore to the Falkland Islands in 1926?

Accepted Answer

Conor O’Brien set sail in August 1926 with two Cadogan cousins from Cape Clear in West Cork, arriving at Port Stanley in January 1927 and handed it over to the new owners.

Question 8

How much did the Ilen cost in 1926?

Accepted Answer

The Ilen was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company, in exchange for £1,500.

Question 9

What roles has Ilen performed in her lifetime?

Accepted Answer

Ilen served for over 70 years as a cargo ship and a ferry in the Falkland Islands, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties. She stayed in service until the early 1990s.

Question 10

Who from Ireland rediscovered the Ilen in the Falkland Islands?

Accepted Answer

Limerick sailor Gary McMahon and his team located Ilen. MacMahon started looking for her in 1996 and went out to the Falklands and struck a deal with the owner to bring her back to Ireland.

Question 11

What condition was Ilen in when she was found in the Falkland Islands?

Accepted Answer

After a lifetime of hard work in the Falklands, Ilen required a ground-up rebuild.

Question 12

How did the Ilen come back to Ireland?

Accepted Answer

A Russian cargo ship transported her back on a 12,000-mile trip from the Southern Oceans to Dublin. The Ilen was discharged at the Port of Dublin 1997, after an absence from Ireland of 70 years.

Question 13

Who restored the Ilen?

Accepted Answer

It was a collaboration between the Ilen Project in Limerick and Hegarty’s Boatyard in Old Court, near Skibbereen. Much of the heavy lifting, of frames, planking, deadwood & backbone, knees, floors, shelves and stringers, deck beams, and carlins, was done in Hegarty’s. The generally lighter work of preparing sole, bulkheads, deck‐houses fixed furniture, fixtures & fittings, deck fittings, machinery, systems, tanks, spar making and rigging is being done at the Ilen boat building school in Limerick.

Question 14

How long did it take to restore Ilen?

Accepted Answer

Ten years. The boat was much the worse for wear when it returned to West Cork in May 1998, and it remained dormant for ten years before the start of a decade-long restoration.

Question 15

What is the role of the Ilen today?

Accepted Answer

Ilen now serves as a community floating classroom and cargo vessel – visiting 23 ports in 2019 and making a transatlantic crossing to Greenland as part of a relationship-building project to link youth in Limerick City with youth in Nuuk, west Greenland.

Question 16

What is so good about Ilen’s relatively small size as a sailing cargo ship?

Accepted Answer

At a mere 56ft, Ilen is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

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