"The stewardship of the Ireland’s cultural heritage is the key to its sustainable development and to create new ways of living and working sustainably. Building local boats with regional, renewable resources and local skills as well as using natural forces for propulsion provides quintessential green leisure activities and sustainable commercial ventures."
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Floating Heritage
Our island community retains an understanding and knowledge of seafaring skills which could, if given room to flourish anew, help to create to a more sustainable way of life. By preserving and developing these skills the future generations on we can start, once again, to make the most of our unique position and heritage, upholding and nurturing the Ireland’s long established links with the sea and other communities across the northern seaboard of Europe. Holger has been making Irish currachs since 2001 when he made his first Dunfanaghy currach (image to the right). He has since built a 25' Kerry Naomhóg, a Tory Island currach and a small Bunbeg type for his own use. Over recent years he has also offered currach making courses for communities and organisations, resulting in more than thirty currachs to date. In 2005, Holger initiated Lough Neagh Boating Heritage Association, a group dedicated to researching and building traditional Irish boats and particularly Lough Neagh clinker fishing boats. Boat making has also transformed Holger's artistic practice and currachs and their sails are transformed into art objects.
Both, the historic context and sustainable significance of currachs are important to Holger. The frame and skin design concept out of which currachs emerged has been with humankind for millennia and is even now applied to many engineering constructions, albeit with a considerable change in the materials used. The canvas cover is now often replaced by glass fibre reinforced polyester resin (GRP), a change necessary to allow powerful outboard engines to be used. Environmental questions were not, however, taken into account with this shift, resulting in an enormous increase in the embodied energy values. This figure describes the sum of all the energy invested in a material throughout its production and use, and increases exponentially the more processed and wider transported these materials become. Like all energy, it is measured in Mega Joules (MJ) in relation to the weight of the material in kilograms (kg). In a 50kg currach, the use of natural materials like wood and cotton with an average embodied energy value of 6MJ/kg, amount to a total of 300MJ of energy input. A GRP composite boat of similar weight needs more than eighty times as much energy input to produce (c. 25,000MJ at an average 500 MJ/kg for composite resin/fibre materials). The small gain in strength is achieved at a high environmental price.
And with the exception of tar, paints and modern fastenings, the materials used in traditional currachs are mostly from renewable resources which bind the greenhouse gas CO2 and as such tend to be carbon neutral. Some materials like hazel, ash and pine can even be grown locally, thus further reducing transport and environmental impact. It is not surprising that the most archaic of all Irish currachs – the Boyne river currach – survived virtually unchanged right into the last century. All its materials are abundant, locally grown and, essentially, free.
The curach shares its basic design ethos with other objects of material culture associated with human mobility. A few sticks tied together with twine and covered with a sheet of felt makes an effective shelter against the weather, such as the Yurt used by nomadic Kyrgyzian tribes and the hazel-framed tents of Irish travellers used until little more than a generation ago. Rods woven into a large basket and covered with skin or cloth make a boat – our curach. Adding a pair of wings to such a superstructure essentially makes a glider. While this may present an over-simplified picture, a common underlying design principle is certainly evident. Frame and cloth/skin constructions have been an indispensable component of travel on land and sea since Mesolithic times, and in our own time have contributed to man’s conquest of the sky. Such constructions are not therefore primitive, transitional concepts, but can be the basis of sophisticated and well-adapted design solutions. Two elements - clearly evident in a currach - are essential for such constructions: a lightweight space-frame or skeleton and a dense and flexible sheet material to cover it – functioning like a skin over a rib cage. Currachs, gliders and tents share the fact that they are extremely light (even a 25ft Kerry naomhóg weighs less than 75kg) and at the same time so sturdy as to withstand the forces of nature. They are flexible – moving with and giving way to these forces, reacting with rather than in opposition to them. Flexibility is indeed the secret of the superb seaworthiness of the currach. The gunwale, the latticework of ribs and laths and the canvas seem fragile in themselves, but in combination form a strong, ductile and tensile structure that is able to withstand great forces of wind and wave. Such a combination allows for multi-hide boats of up to 60ft to be constructed, such as in the case of some 18th century Greenland skin boats.
This design ethos is reflected in the materials used in building a currach, which, to maintain the underlying principle of lightness and flexibility, have to be soft and elastic. But while the materials should be in harmony with the overall design concept, they should ideally also be inexpensive, abundant and freely available to the maker. The currach’s constituent parts can be described under the headings of framework (including gunwale and hull, both of which determine the regional differences of the various currach types), covering, and the materials used in its propulsion.
Launching Curachs
Together with Pete Hill, Holger designed a unique launching situation for the Wildworks production of The Beautiful Journey at Wallsend near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2010. A 60ft distance to the water, steep banks, a 12ft tidal rise and a rotten gantry called for a sophisticated launch solution. The curach was 'flown' on a wire to a purpose-built raised jetty, and lowered into the water with a pully system ready to be boarded by two actors and rowed into the waters of the Tyne. The 16ft Dunfanaghy currach was built by Holger with help from Kate, Bethan and Chris in five days.
Some images of a Dunfanaghy curach made by Holger for the Wildworks theatre production The Beautiful Journey at the naval dockyard in Devonport. This curach has carved gunwales and oars. Creative freedom was also taken to make the sail, transforming what would ordinarily be a craft product into an art object. Please roll over the images to enlarge.
