'It’s time to retire': Cruise boat owner Jerome selling Spirit of Kinsale

Sun, 14 Apr, 2024 - 20:03

Tom MacSweeney

Jerome Lordan, who has operated Kinsale Harbour Cruises for over 20 years, is selling the Spirit of Kinsale boat and has decided to retire.

His family has, for generations, lived at the Old Head of Kinsale and he has published two books about that coastal area: No Flowers on a Sailor’s Grave, about the shipwrecks of Kinsale and Courtmacsherry; and Peninsula People, a visual genealogy and social history.

Jerome started his maritime career at the National Fisheries College in Greencastle, Co Donegal, in 1976, and fished for 28 years, in Ireland and overseas, in Australia, New Zealand, and in the UK, from Cornwall. He has owned several fishing boats.

In 2003, he left that industry to “look for a business” based on his experience. Kinsale Harbour Cruises was the result, now an established part of harbour activities: “An opportunity to combine maritime experience and my interest in heritage, culture, and wildlife,” Jerome said.

“I’m 66 now and it’s time to retire. Seeing Kinsale from the water is spectacular. Its history as a maritime location is massive.”

Jerome has recorded a lot of that history. After studying heritage management at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa, Cork, he did a BA in archaeology and Celtic civilisation at University College Cork and a masters degree in local history. That MA, in 2012, was awarded for his thesis on local place names of the Old Head.

“Local topography, folklore, and oral tradition are fascinating,” Jerome said. “The native inhabitants had different names for various places. There is the sadness of emigration and abandoned homesteads, the determination of the people, their struggles, disappointments, successes...”

Peninsula People has 450 photographs, one of the earliest of which shows Jerome’s great grandmother in 1890. Others date from the 1920s and 1930s. It was the effort of a ‘trio’: Jerome; Padraig Begley, who was involved in the restoration of the Old Head signal tower; and Eugene Dennis, whose father came from the Old Head.

They collected 600 photographs of which 450 were published. There was great support from the local community, who “searched through personal belongings for glimpses into the past”. After Eugene’s passing in August 2018, Padraig and Jerome completed the work.

“It is time to sell Spirit of Kinsale,” Jerome told me. “I’m retiring and, as boat owners know, it is a wrench selling a vessel, but it is time.”

Dominic Daly, whose auctioneering firm has experience in maritime sales — he has previously worked with state agencies, including the admiralty marshall of the High Court, the Department of the Marine, and other institutions, on the disposal of vessels and marine assets — is handling the sale of the steel vessel.

Jerome’s passion for the maritime sector, local history, and tradition will continue after the sale of Spirit of Kinsale. “We’ll see what happens,” he told me this week.

FISHING – USE IT OR LOSE IT SUGGESTION

43,000 tonnes of fish are uncaught by EU member states in Irish waters, an amount that could benefit the struggling Irish fishing industry, but it is prevented from catching the fish by the EU’s common fisheries policy, which favours other nations, giving them bigger catching rights in Irish waters than our own fleet.

That has been challenged by Cork MEP Billy Kelleher, who says a “use it, or lose it” principle should be imposed on those nations.

“Member states, such as France, have a habit of not catching their full quota,” he says. “There is 43,000 tonnes of fish, worth an estimated €177m per annum, left uncaught by other member states, which would support existing jobs and create new jobs in coastal communities in Ireland.”

Access to unused quota has been sought by Ireland, but rejected by the EU Commission, because member states that don’t catch their quotas wouldn’t permit extra catches for Ireland.

EU Fisheries Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius has ordered a “full evaluation” of the CFP, but there is suspicion on the Cork coastline.

“A smoke screen,” says Patrick Murphy, chief executive of the Irish South and West Fish Producers’ Organisation in Castletownbere. “There is no intention to review the CFP or to change it, absolute rubbish, total dishonesty. Our fishermen only want a fair share of fish in our waters, but we are not getting it.”

For years, the Irish industry, backed by a government report, has sought a full review of the CFP. Sinkevičius rejected that and suggests an “evaluation”, which means ‘the process of judging or calculating’. The meaning of ‘review’ is ‘a formal assessment with the intention of instituting change.’

Assessing words, particularly when the user is leaving his post, can be revealing.

Sinkevičius will end his commissioner role when the European elections take place.