Dublin Opinion

On hearing this news, were I in Dublin, I’d probably have ended up in that dacent pub on a corner on the North Strand (you know the one..) sniffling into a good pint of Guinness… Well, to be honest, I’d probably opt for the preceding solution whatever the circumstances… I do admit though, I was saddened to hear late last week that the Asgard II had gone under 20 miles or so off the Breton island Belle-Ile en mer RTÉ Report / IT Report . She was en route to the port of La Rochelle and wouldn’t have been far away where she went down. Over on Indymedia, Godzilla has gone into the incident with far more technical details than I could manage ( Godzilla on Asgard sinking ) and has gotten himself into an exchange of broadsides with an expat living on Belle Ile in the process. Godzilla, tongue firmly in cheek, is trying his best to foment conspiracy theories around the sinking. Mind you, on broaching the subject with an uncle-in-law who spent 2 stints in the French navy, he muttered about the possibility of an insurance job - another example of French ‘mauvaise foi’, I thought to myself while swallying the tot of whiskey.

Thankfully, nobody went down with the poor brigantine, as I believe we are to call her and the French navy / coastguard looked to have had the situation well in hand. Were I a minor character in a Shakespeare history play, let’s say the lost text ‘Brian I’ (the one where an offaly falstaffian Falstaff comes to power just as everything goes to pot) I might begin to feel concerned at the ’signs and portents’ going about at the present. Bits of Ireland sliding about the place, a 4 month monsoon season, our one and only brigantine sliding beneath the waves.. Indeed, the alert having been given through the ‘bilge alarm’ I find particularly apt - does anyone know where the country’s bilge alarm is fitted ?

[ Photo from RTÉ ]

The whole incident leads me to reflect on the strange sort of island race we are - for whatever reason, we have never been all that turned towards the sea - apart from when it carried us in cattle boats to England and beyond. In comparison to, say, the Bretons, we are, as the Irish Pirate Review might put it, a pack of ‘mangey scurvy landlubbers’. Asgard II was a very laudable attempt to make at least a small handful of us a bit less landlubber. As Godzilla states in his Indymedia article, she was also a good deal more accessible than the whole marina/yachting culture to those of us that didn’t come out of rugger schools. I also beg to differ with the Belle-Ile expat commenting on the article - whether in France or in Ireland, Wilde can still be paraphrased to refer to the yachting classes - ‘the unbearable adrift on the undrinkable’. It is perhaps economically necessary but nonetheless sad to see small ports almost entirely surrendered to them (and their bloody Lacoste sweaters and boat shoes).

If the Asgard II ever pretended to be a feeder / training vessel for the Irish (merchant?) marine (I don’t think it ever did) I also come to the realisation that no such entity exists any longer. Events of the last decade have, unfortunately, taken away any need for Irishmen or women to be trained for a career at sea - apart from one in the Navy. Not since all the ferry crews sailing in Irish waters have been ‘outsourced’ in any case.

Perhaps she was doomed from the time that other shipwreck survivor, Charlie Haughey, pronounced the words ’she’s my ship’ or words to that effect. No doubt we’ll get to the bottom of it in the tribunal. At least it should be the insurance sector, and not Paddy / Biddie in the street, that’ll foot the bill for the next Asgard. Let’s hope it takes a little less time than the Jeanie Johnstone (sic).