“A river mouth opening upon one of the finest natural harbours would seem to offer an ideal situation for a town or trading station.” These were the first words written in Professor Mary Donovan O’Sullivan’s very important history Old Galway, which would indicate her surprise that such a fine location would not have attracted a Norse settlement. Water, in the form of the sea, the river and the many streams, was a major factor in the development of the town of Galway from when the Anglo Norman invaders settled and built their castle and town.
For these settlers, the sea at the bay was the only link with the authority to which they owed allegiance and so boating and shipping were the breath of life of Galway. The citizens endeavoured to maintain control of the bay and tried to prevent the native Irish from having the same access to boats. As the wealth and influence of the merchants grew, their success in business depended to a large extent on the port and on their ships so the power of seafaring became more and more important. The levies on imported goods helped to build the city walls and give security to the inhabitants. Trade was the staple of the city.
In 1517, the Corporation levied “Every ship that cometh afishing within the haven of Galway to pay for the upkeep of the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas.” Any Galway man buying goods from any foreign ship without licence from the mayor suffered heavy penalties, and the Corporation also prohibited any local person from acting as a pilot to lead any foreign vessel into any creek or other harbour where the captain might unload goods without paying corporation dues.
Local boats were for the most part involved in fishing, the coastal trade or in the lucrative smuggling business. The building of harbours and piers around the bay by Alexander Nimmo made the development of the distinctive Galway Hooker, and its smaller counterparts, possible. The port remained a very busy place, a vital lifeline between Galway and the rest of the world.
It was the era of great sailing, days of the “wooden ships and iron men”. But things were changing. The era of steam had arrived. The first steamboat to sail on the bay was The Citie of the Tribes and she was registered on December 24, 1872. It was, according to old sailing salts, the advent of the era of “iron ships and wooden men”.
In the 1860s there were great hopes of developing Galway Docks as a transatlantic packet station. Father Peter Daly and John O’Lever worked hard to have their vision made a reality and stirred up a lot of enthusiasm in that age when the transatlantic liner was about to begin its heyday. In June 1858, their hopes, they thought, were about to be realised as the 3,000 ton steamer Indian Queen entered the bay, but sadly, the ship struck a rock and that put paid to their venture.
Our first image today is possibly one of the earliest photographs ever taken in Galway apart from posed ones taken in a photographer’s studio. It is of an albumen print, attributed to Augustus Darcy and was taken c1863. It shows an unidentified three-masted sailing ship which is one of the images featured in Sean Sexton’s outstanding book Ireland, Photographs, 1840-1930. The docks were relatively newly built at the time so there are, as yet, no buildings constructed facing the dockside. We are looking at the backs of buildings which faced Merchants Road.
Our second photograph (courtesy of the National Library ) was taken just a few years later than the first and, judging from the number of masts we see, there was a lot of traffic in the port. I wonder if the three-masted ship on the left of the photograph is the same one as in our first image.
