In a few weeks Simon will have owned the ship for two years.
Doesn’t time fly when you are enjoying yourself? After his first night aboard
(29 June 2013) he reported “Awesome,
spent last night on board and yesterday and today clearing the decks for the
welder. So peaceful down here, I love it! BBQ last night and fed the swans the scraps,
woke up to blue skies and the clang of lines on masts not sirens and traffic”.
(Photo 901)
One of the (many)
jobs that will have to be tackled when he does have more time is painting the
hull. He recently spotted the owner of a neighbouring boat taking advantage of
the tide being out to paint his hull (Photo 902). A facial mud-pack is one
thing, but everything below the waist is a bit much I think! Simon is determined to find a better way!
This story is
running on this Blog and three other appropriate web-sites. A total of around 900 people view the posts
each week and the overall figure has now passed 60,000. Those of you who have followed from the start
(or gone back to the beginning and caught up) will know that there have been
highs, lows and plateaus (plateaux?), both in the renovation and the historical
research. Patience has certainly been a virtue in both areas! At the moment
both areas are in a plateau phase – Simon being inundated with wall-papering
projects (he is happy about that of course) and I am searching for new avenues
to explore, including those ‘inaccessible’ CIL records lurking somewhere in
Dublin.
In 1878 the
Cormorant cost £7,500 which in today’s money amounts to over £600,000
calculated on purchasing power. That is roughly the cost of two Rolls-Royce
Phantom cars! I still have not yet
discovered anything about the Victoria Shipbuilding Co., West Passage,
Cork. Every source I have found
identifies this company as the builder of Cormorant in 1878, but I cannot trace
it. There was a great deal of
shipbuilding around West Passage and there certainly was a Victoria Dock (later
the Royal Victoria Dock), built by H&W Brown (Photo 903), but the only
company I can find operating here in the 1860/70 period was the Passage
Docks Shipbuilding Company.
However, according to the Heritage Boat
Association, the yard(s) weathered a general slump in ship-building in the
1870/80 period and changed hands a couple of times, so the name may well have
changed as well. I do believe Cormorant
was built in the Victoria Dockyard, but by whom? Maybe someone over in Cork can
find out the answer for me…..
David
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