ILEN

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aukepalmhof
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ILEN

Post by aukepalmhof » Sun Dec 20, 2009 7:16 pm

Luck would have it that an Irish adventurer should arrive in the Falklands Islands on 06 December 1924 short of potatoes.
Writer-sailor-architect-patriot Conor O’Brien was a fluent Irish speaker, an early member of Sinn Fein, and an outspoken Home Ruler. His involvement with the 1914 “guns running” to Ireland on behalf of the Irish Volunteers stemmed from a fusion of his sailing and political enthusiasms.
In 1910 he had become the owner of the KELPIE a 26 ton cutter from 1871. He converted her to ketch rig and in 1911 sailed her around Ireland.
In 1914 the KELPIE and the ASGARD made several gun-running trips to Ireland. The KELPIE met her end in September 1921 when O’Brien over-slept while catnapping and came ashore on the Galloway coast in south west Scotland. She soon became a total loss.

O’Brien created his next dream-ship, the 42-foot long SAOIRSE (Freedom), so named in honour of the new Irish State, with the help of master shipwright Tom Moynihan in Baltimore, West Cork in 1922.
One of the first Irish registered vessels SAOIRSE set out from Dun Laoghaire on 20 June 1923. By the time she returned exactly two years later, she had been around the world taking on the Roaring Forties and Screaming Fifties of the Southern Ocean in a time before radio communication; spending days, weeks and months sailing in complete isolation; O’Brien is the first amateur skipper to achieve this feat.

SAOIRSE was sold to an English owner Erik Ruck in 1940 and sold again in 1974. She sailed for her new owners to Iceland that year, then sailed to the Caribbean. Sadly, a hurricane in Jamaica in 1979 ended her days while she laid at anchor.
O’Brien voyage with the SAOIRSE so impressed the Falkland Islanders, when lack of potatoes forced him into Port Stanley, that he wound up designing a ship like her for the Falkland Island Company.

The ILEN a 56-foot ketch was launched in August 1926 from a yard in Baltimore, Ireland, destined for the Falklands.
Named after the West Cork Ilen River which flows into the sea at Baltimore, she sailed with the Royal Irish Yacht Club elegantly inscribed on her transom.
O’Brien with two shipmates sailed her to the Falklands.
Her first stop was at Avonmouth near Bristol for fuel en stores, and then on to Madeira and ports in Brazil and Argentine before reaching Port Stanley in the new year of 1927.
As for the quality of construction; a traditional rig with a reliable old Kelvin engine, the ILEN was to survive 60 brutally busy years as the Falkland service boat, undertaking rough jobs of many types.
In the 1980s was she replaced.

Then the daughter of her longest serving skipper Sandy Bonner, bought her for her son Maurice Davis, who continued to carry cargoes for nearly 10 more years.
Her working life finally finished in the early 1990s. But in testimony to the integrity of Baltimor’s shipwrights her hull was in good order, and the engine ran sweet as a bird.
She was bought by islander Paul Ellis, who planned to use her for leisure purpose, but the harsh climate of the Falklands was not conducive to relaxation afloat. ILEN became little-used fixture of the Port Stanley waterfront.

Meanwhile back in Ireland, a Limerick sailor Gary MacMahon found himself increasingly drawn to stories about O’Brien and his well-known vessel, particularly the SAOIRSE. But after the loss of the famous ship, his attentions turned to the ILEN.
It was about the same time that the Hunt Museum was putting together a plan to recreate the 18th century quayside as illustrated in a W.H. Bartletts painting restoring historic Limerick to its former glory. And ILEN dovetailed neatly into the plan.
Having flown to the Falklands and acquiring ownership of the ILEN, MacMahon was setback by the absence of a crane in Port Stanle4y big enough to lift ILEN’s 30 tons weight.
10 October 1997 was she eventually lifted aboard the ANGELIKI by the ship cranes.
Severe storms off the Spanish coast on the return voyage to Ireland saw some of ANGELIKI’s cargo damaged but ILEN was unscathed.

She was discharged onto the quayside in Dublin on 10 November 1997 and is currently part of the Hunt Museum, and docked in front of the old Custom House at Limerick.
After 71 years ILEN returned home safely to take a quit place in Irish history.

On the stamp her tonnage is given as 39 ton, dim. 16.5 x 4.5 x 2.2m.

Falkland Islands 1998 35p sg820, scott 711.
Ireland 1999 35p sg1220, scott?

Source: From Watercraft Philately Vol. 45 page 71
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