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Displaying items by tag: Passage West Dockyard

#WaterfrontProperty - Victoria Dockyard an eight-acre site in Passage West which is up for sale needs to be purchased by the State or Cork County Council in order for a development that benefits the town centre to be built there, TDs have warned.

As the Evening Echo reports, the site was once home to the Royal Victoria Dockyard where ships were built for over 100 years and where over 1,000 people were employed during WW1. It contains several hundred metres of road frontage, three access points and six terraced houses encompassed in a stone wall boundary.

Previous owners Howard Holdings had planned to build a hotel on the site after a €25m purchase in the early 2000s but then sold it to the Doyle Shipping Group (DSG) for €2.75m. It has recently been utilised as a steel scrapyard and is being offered on the open market for around €3.5m.

The current occupier would have to move out once the sale is completed and the buyer would be free to use it as they see fit within planning regulations. The site has been on the open market since September of last year.

It is unlikely its current use will continue once it is sold. To read more on the story click here.

The private quay at Passage West is where last month Afloat.ie featured an Irish owned cargoship involved (not in scrap-trading) but the loading of wood-chip bound for Scotland.  

Published in West Cork

About Conor O'Brien, Irish Circumnavigator

In 1923-25, Conor O'Brien became the first amateur skipper to circle the world south of the Great Capes. O'Brien's boat Saoirse was reputedly the first small boat (42-foot, 13 metres long) to sail around the world since Joshua Slocum completed his voyage in the 'Spray' during 1895 to 1898. It is a journey that O' Brien documented in his book Across Three Oceans. O'Brien's voyage began and ended at the Port of Foynes, County Limerick, Ireland, where he lived.

Saoirse, under O'Brien's command and with three crew, was the first yacht to circumnavigate the world by way of the three great capes: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin; and was the first boat flying the Irish tri-colour to enter many of the world's ports and harbours. He ran down his easting in the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties between the years 1923 to 1925.

Up until O'Brien's circumnavigation, this route was the preserve of square-rigged grain ships taking part in the grain race from Australia to England via Cape Horn (also known as the clipper route).

At a Glance - Conor O'Brien's Circumnavigation 

In June 1923, Limerick man Conor O’Brien set off on his yacht, the Saoirse — named after the then newly created Irish Free State — on the two-year voyage from Dun Laoghaire Harbour that was to make him the first Irish amateur to sail around the world.

June 1923 - Saoirse’s arrival in Madeira after her maiden passage out from Dublin Bay

2nd December 1924 - Saoirse crossed the longitude of Cape Horn

June 20th 1925 - O’Brien’s return to Dun Laoghaire Harbour

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