The Irish Maritime Festival will be centre-stage on RTE Nationwide tonight at 7.00pm on RTÉ One as the full half-hour programme is dedicated to its recent staging at Drogheda Port on the River Boyne. It will feature the Boyne Swim, the visiting Tall Ships, the new Fiddle Case Pier, Drogheda’s Sail Training Bursary and all the colour of the festival.
A Rankin is a traditional wooden dinghy which was built in Cobh, of which it’s believed there were 80 and of which The Rankin Dinghy Group has traced nearly half.
The name of the Rankin dinghies is revered in Cork Harbour and particularly in the harbourside town of Cobh.
And the name of one of those boats is linked to the gunboat which fought against the Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Easter Rising and later for the emergent Irish Free State Government against anti-Treaty Forces during the Irish Civil War.
It also links the renowned boat-building Rankin family in Cobh, one of whose members crewed on the gunboat.
Maurice Kidney and Conor English are driving the restoration of the Rankin dinghies in Cork Harbour. They have discovered that Rankins were bought and sailed in several parts of the country.
Ireland's Sailing and Boating Magazine
