Ireland, 2023 – A Dublin Day

National Art Gallery of Ireland, Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship, Docklands and River Walk

June 1, 2023

On my last full day in Dublin I had five stops planned but only managed three of them. This is definitely a city to spend some time in as there is so much to discover and do. I will stick with my assessment from one of my very first travel blog posts which was called “Dublin in One or Two Days? I Don’t Think So!” https://christineswalkabout.com/category/ireland/dublin/

My first stop was the National Art Gallery of Ireland. I walked up steps that advertised a special exhibit of works by Lavinia Fontana and then visited the collection of “European Art from 1850-1950”. Some of my favourite pieces in that collection were (clockwise from the right) “Le Corsage Noir” by Berthe Morisot, “Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat” by Claude Monet, and “The Terrace, Saint Tropez” by Paul Signac.

Next I visited a series of rooms featuring Irish paintings from 1660-1965 and I took my time there to observe the works that appealed to me and to read the brief but informative write ups that accompanied each one. The top left photo is of “Carting Seaweed on Sutton Sands”, by Joseph Malachi Kavanagh, and the bottom right is “A View of Lower Lake, Killarney” by Jonathan Fisher (Killarney is where I am now). The top right photo is “Lady Lavery as Kathleen Ni Houlihan” by John Lavery which was commissioned as a design for the first banknotes of the Irish Free State. The painting is a reworked portrait of his wife Hazel, posed in front of the Lower Lake, Killarney, and cast as Kathleen ni Houlihan, the mythical heroin of a play by W.B. Yeats. The notes were issued from between 1928 and 1977.

For the centre left photo above, entitled “The Liffey Swim” by Jack B. Yeats, I listened in on a school tour group and learned that this painting is a depiction from 1923 of a very popular two-mile competitive swim down the Liffey that occurs each year in Dublin. This painting was entered in the first-ever modern Olympic Games that took place in Paris in 1924 when there were medals awarded for sport-themed fine arts submissions. “The Liffey Swim” won a Silver, Ireland’s first Olympic medal.

The Gallery’s largest painting is “The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife” by Daniel Maclise which depicts the marriage in 1170 between the Norman invader, Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, and Aoife MacMurrough, daughter of Dermot, King of Leinster. Their marriage is seen as a key moment in the beginnings of Anglo-Norman rule in Ireland. The couple are in the centre, with Norman soldiers as shadowy figures in the top right while the goddess Eriu, after whom Ireland is named, is the anguished figure with arms upraised amidst a group of vanquished Celts. And, to the left of her, the harp of Brian Boru, also a symbol for Ireland, is held by a downcast harpist and has broken strings. (I listened in on a school tour here too and learned a lot!)

After my visit to the National Art Gallery of Ireland (during which I saw only a small fraction of the works on display), I walked towards the River Liffey which divides Dublin into North and South. From one spot on the south shore I took photos of the Sean O’Casey pedestrian bridge located upstream of me,

and a photo downstream, zoomed in, of the Samuel Beckett Bridge, more commonly known as the Harp Bridge. It is a swinging bridge that can move ninety degrees horizontally in only three minutes in order to let tall marine traffic travel up and down the river.

Behind me I was interested in the integration of old and new in the architecture of the HubSpot building. HubSpot is one of the many high tech companies that have moved into Dublin in recent years, many of them in this part of Dublin that is known as the Docklands, but is also sometimes referred to as Silicon Docks.

And directly across from me, moored on the north side of the river, was the Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship which was my next stop. I consider this museum to be a must-do for any visitor to Dublin.

I crossed the pedestrian bridge and at its end is the relatively new Epic Irish Emigration Museum which won the award for “Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction” in 2019, 2020, and 2021. It was one of my planned stops but I went to the Jeanie Johnston first and was so moved by what I learned there that I didn’t want to take in anything else today except more walking along the Liffey.

Before my guided tour of the Jeanie Johnston I visited the Famine Memorial, a visceral grouping of tall, gaunt, starving figures sculpted by Rowan Gillespie. During the years 1845-1852 a terrible blight destroyed Ireland’s entire crop of potatoes which were a subsistence food for much of the Irish population, especially in the south and the west of the country. There was little to no relief provided to the Irish from the English parliament whose ruling Whig party attributed the catastrophe as due to a lack of moral character by those suffering. Even though the potato crop had failed, there was enough wheat, oats, and other grains grown in Ireland during the years of the famine to feed the entire population but that grain continued to be exported out of the country by Ireland’s English and Anglo-Irish landowners.

Over one million Irish died of starvation, or from typhus and other famine-related diseases, and over one million emigrated, leaving Ireland’s population decimated by nearly a quarter. Of those that emigrated, 95 percent travelled to North America, mostly in the holds of cargo ships that came to be know as “coffin ships” as so many of the Irish died during the voyages due to unsanitary conditions, disease, and lack of food. All of these tragic facts, and more, were related to us on our tour aboard the Jeanie Johnston, but there were also a few glimmers of light and compassionate humanity as well in the story of this particular ship.

The Jeanie Johnston was a Canadian-built cargo ship that transported timber and other products to Ireland and like many other cargo ships it would typically return to North America empty. During the famine, these ships started transporting Irish emigrants across the Atlantic in their holds. (The ship here is a near-exact replica of the original Jeanie Johnston. It was built in Ireland as a Millenium project using authentic materials and techniques, with modifications made for current sailing safety standards.). After learning about the famine and the ship, we descended to the hold where an average of 200 passengers per trip made the perilous voyage across the Atlantic which took an average of 47 days. On other ships, the passengers, already weakened and ill from starvation, were kept below decks in filthy conditions but on the Jeanie Johnston the passengers came up onto the decks daily while the hold was cleaned and blankets were shaken out over the railings to get rid of disease-carrying fleas and body lice. Food and water were available (though not plentiful) and there was a doctor on board to deal with any illnesses. The Jeanie Johnston made sixteen voyages from Tralee to Canada and lost not one passenger on any of its voyages. As part of the tour, our excellent young guide related the true stories of some of the passengers known to have taken this ship to a new life overseas. They were all absorbing and some moved to me to tears. For example, on each voyage the captain would provide free passage to at least person or family including, once, a widower and his eleven children. Also, one female passenger travelling alone was nine months pregnant and gave birth on the ship the day the passengers boarded. Throughout the voyage, other passengers shared part of their rations with the nursing mother and took turns helping to care for the baby. I could tell more of the stories I heard but I won’t in this space. Please do make it a priority to visit this museum if you ever visit Dublin.

Here is one last amazing fact about the original Jeanie Johnston. In 1858 she stopped taking on Irish emigrants when new legislation made it illegal for cargo ships to transport passengers. That same year, on a voyage from England to Canada, she sank in the middle of the Atlantic after water got into the hold during a fierce storm. The waterlogged timbers on board became heavy causing the ship to slowly sink. Once the water was two feet deep on the deck, the crew climbed the rigging and lashed themselves to the top of the main mast.

The ship continued to slowly sink, and after nine days a passing Dutch ship, the Sophie Elizabeth, saw the mast, barely above water, with its clinging and exhausted crew who had almost surely lost hope, and they were all rescued!

After my visit to the Jeanie Johnston, I walked slowly downstream along the north side of the river towards and then past the Harp Bridge for about a kilometre or two, taking photos of the views and buildings.

I could see no more bridges ahead (though I saw one later on a map) so I turned back and returned to the Harp Bridge to cross over it to the south side of the river. The Harp Bridge is stunning!

I continued to admire the mix of old and new architecture as I walked upstream, and it was truly a pleasure to stroll along the river on such a fine day. I felt grateful to be here, whole, healthy and blessed with good fortune.

I walked by the 1908 Immaculate Heart of Mary church, Parish of City Quay, which was tucked in between two taller, newer structures and I decided to step inside for a few moments. The interior featured beautiful arched wooden beams holding up a steeply pitched roof. Large arched windows added to the overall feeling of lightness and height. It was an unusual design and a really beautiful space!

I continued my walk upriver, past the Sean O’Casey pedestrian bridge, the Talbot Memorial Bridge, the Butt Bridge, the Rosie Hackett Bridge and then the O’Connell Bridge, taking photos all the while.

I was heading to the famous 19th century Ha’penny pedestrian bridge, intending to cross again to the other side of the river, but I just had to stop first for a coffee and pastry. The young server, Daniel, gave me a discount, “just because” he said, and we chatted quite a bit as he worked. He and his husband, both born and bred Dubliners, are emigrating to Pennsylvania soon where one of them has family because the cost of rents has gone “sky high” in Dublin, with prices similar to those in Vancouver. He was friendly and funny and I hope that his move is the right one for him and that he and his husband do not miss Dublin too much. Suddenly feeling that my day had been full enough I decided to head home to my accommodation. I walked through the very busy and popular streets of Temple Bar that were crowded with tourists and large groups of young people enjoying the pubs and bars on their long weekend, and then on to Grafton Street where shopping was the order of the day for many.

Do we stop to think how lucky we are? Of course, the parts of Dublin that I visited on this trip are just a piece of a larger whole and I know from my hostesses and others I spoke with that there is more homelessness, poverty, drug and alcohol addiction and crime in other parts of the city, particularly north of the river. But I am sure that there is community there as well as some despair. Those cheery fellows in Howth that run the ferries to Ireland’s Eye were very proud of being from tough and working class “north-of-the-river Dublin 7”.

This post is getting rather long, and I am about to set out on a 77 kilometre long distance walk on the Kerry Way (in about half an hour!) so I’ll end this now by saying that any day in Dublin is a day that you will see something old and something new, and you will almost certainly enjoy exchanges with friendly and welcoming Dubliners and others. I greatly enjoyed my Dublin Day!