Publications | Down Survey | 1998 Issue Contents

Yawls at Killough, County Down
H C Magill

Details of the construction and layout of the yawl Marian B13 are described within the general context of yawl fishing at Killough from the early nineteenth century until its disappearance in the 1970s. Included are the recollections of Harry Henvey who remembers the working days of these yawls from the 1930s through to the end.

The village of Killough lies on the west side of the small Killough Bay which faces south-east into the Irish Sea. As soon as the wind might veer past .south southwest, however, the bay becomes sheltered by St John's Point a mile further west, and even in southerly or southeasterly wind a number of water rocks in the entrance to the bay absorb much of the wave force. Therefore the drying harbour, in the inner reaches of the bay, remains comparatively sheltered behind its piers.

The original little town of Killough and its quay was developed only during the early eighteenth century by the Ward family, as independent Irish Sea access to their adjacent estates. In the 1820s substantial further piers and wharves were built, and until the 1850s the harbour carried on a considerable trade, mostly grain exports and coal imports.¹

A fishery report of 1822 by Alexander Nimmo for the Commissioners of Irish Fisheries² noted Killough's commercial activity and its involvement in the summer herring fishery. (The adjacent deep-water harbour of Ardglass was the centre for the fleets which converged at that time of the year on the north Irish Sea grounds.)

For Killough, Nimmo recorded:

It is a considerable port for the corn and coal trade,
having 15 carrying vessels; it is also engaged in the fishery, 18 smacks and wherries, and during the herring-fishing is much frequented by wherries from other places. It has also the only salt-work in the neighbourhood.

However, all this activity at the harbour appears to have been largely irrelevant to the year-round fishing carried on by small yawls. This was centred at Scordaun, half a mile to seaward of the commercial harbour, where the boats used a gravelly beach sheltered from the east and south behind a rocky foreshore. Nimmo noted:

There are 22 yawls which pursue the line fishery for haddock, cod, blockens etc. on the Rigg and East bank, about two miles from the harbour, and afford the chief supply of white fish to the county of Down; they use a small cove without a pier, where they can be readily launched into deep water by a slip which has been lately improved for their convenience.

In this yawl fishing the actual town and harbour at Killough appeared only to serve as a focus for the fishermen's dwellings and a possible first market for their catch.

Some 14 years after the Nimmo Report there is another glimpse into the fishing, in a 1836 Report into the Inquiry into the State of the Irish Fisheries.³ There was then no mention of Killough vessels taking part in the Irish Sea herring fishery. It may well have been, with the continuing development of deep-water Ardglass, that tidal Killough was merely being used as a servicing and fish marketing overspill for the visiting fleets. However the yawl fishery was still active. The report noted that Killough had 20 of these boats each with five crew, and there was critical comparison between Killough yawl men and those who fished from Ardglass. Whereas many of the Ardglass men also had small plots of land and fished only three months of the year - making them 'neither good fishermen nor farmers' - of those fishermen at Killough only three had small farms and very few even had gardens. The Killough men, therefore, were nearly totally dependent on their boats, either fishing or acting as pilots for the harbour.

The Killough fishermen are almost always out...

Evidence given in this 1836 Inquiry specifically describes these Killough boats as 'Norway Yawls'. Michael McCaughan has constructed a map of Ireland on which he located all similar Report references to Norway Yawls.3 This gives a distribution of them as the principal coastal boat type continuously from Malin Head to Fair Head and down the east coast to Dublin Bay. For Ardglass the yawls were described by one source quoted in the 1836 Report as:

... built with fir timber, about 20 feet keel,6 feet beam, rowing 4 oars and costing from £5 to £7.

This description was repeated and expanded a little further by the coastguard at Portrush on the north coast of County Antrim:

They are alike at both ends, and very low in the centre; in length twenty feet: breadth, six feet; depth, two feet four inches.⁵

Michael McCaughan points out that the Norway Yawl boat type first came to Ireland during the eighteenth century through importation of Norwegian-built boats brought in with cargoes of Scandinavian timber. He dates the end of such boat imports to the years following 1804, when the Norwegian timber trade with Britain became greatly reduced as a victim of the economic wars which ran in parallel to the military wars with Napoleon's Europe.

But even when Norwegian boats were still being imported it seems likely that Irish builders were also supplying a significant proportion of demand, and that the boats which they produced were based on the mode:l of their Norwegian-built competitors in shape performance and price. When imports ceased local builders on the north and east coasts continued to build largely independently of each other, but both still producing the essentials of the Norway pattern demanded by their customers as 'the proper boat'.

On the north coast of Ireland the Norwegian elevation shape was modified with straighter stem and stern, and less gunwale sheer; but constructionally the builders still maintained their own fabricated version of the Norwegian general flanged keel section,⁶ and its separation from any direct support of the transverse frame timbers.⁷ In County Down building the elevation shape followed more closely the Norwegian rounding of the ends, and in the maintaining of the lively sheer line Constructionally too County Down remembered Norwegian practice in forming the curved-section of garboards by carving out of the solid, and in following the rabbeted keel tradition - although this latter detail is not a uniquely south Norway building feature.⁸

Differences also evolved in naming the boat type along different lengths of the coast. A skiff in County Louth and south Down was a yawl in the remainder of County Down north of Dundrum. A yawl east of Bengore Head in County Antrim (which the Ballintoy or Rathlin fishermen might even describe as a shallop, sloop, lateen, schooner, smack or wherry depending on the sailing rig), was a drontheim - that echoing of past Norwegian sources again - from Bengore Head to Malin Head. As transplanted later into the remainder of Donegal, and south into Connacht, it was described in official terminology as the Greencastle yawl. As regards rigs the east coast boats generally used a single-masted lug, and the north and later the west coast boats two-masted sprit sails.⁹

But despite this individualism the nineteenth century differences in east and north coast hull development were not differences of principle or concept, only of fine detail. New owners, throughout, continued to demand open, double-ended boats, clinker built, fine lined for easy working under oar or sail, light and strong enough to be launched off the foreshore. This was what the original Norwegian boats had provided and this is what the local building continued to give.

Although Killough as a small commercial port had been in decline from the mid-nineteenth century,¹⁰ the 1911 edition of the Irish Coast Pilot for seamen was still noting its activity. "It is much resorted to by coasters and by fishing vessels in the herring season." The same comment was repeated in the 1930 edition, but with a caution: " .. the west pier affords the best shelter...but it was reported in 1926 to be unsafe."

In 1928 ¹¹ the government declined to undertake major repair and during the 1930s trade had declined to a coal
boat once a month and export of perhaps a couple of cargoes of potatoes and a cargo of grain once a year. At the beginning of the second World War what turned out to be the last cargo of Whitehaven coal was landed, and the 1941 edition of the Irish Coast Pilot was now warning any further potential users that "... both piers were in 1936 in a dilapidated state." And so after 200 years of use Killough's little port had melted away.

But all through this long decline the yawl fishing continued at Scordaun. In 1926 12 boats were still alive, seven full-time employing 18 men, and five part-time with eight men. Two boats were laid up. A government study carried out in 1928 into the state of Northern Ireland fishing shows that, despite working only under oar and sail, the value of whitefish and pot catches from this 12 boat yawl fleet was very significant in comparison with the non-herring catches of the other County Down harbours, where engine power and trawling was now making inroads.¹²

From this table (which was prepared from 1926 data) Killough, apparently, was landing the greatest value of lobster/crab of all the County Down harbours, and its overall highest earning value of catch per boat would indicate the commitment of its fishing community.

The yawl Marian, surveyed in 1998 after being laid up for some years, was one of that Killough fleet. It had been built in 1924 by James Murnan of Kilclief for Robert Taylor of Killough, fisherman and harbour pilot, and was registered as a new boat B 13 in the Belfast district on the 9 April 1924. At 6.29m (20'7") length overall it was typical of the Killough yawl size, which the registry shows ranged generally between 5.5-6.7m ( 18'20'). The beam of 1.74m(5'9") was of the traditional narrow proportion but maintained well over the centre third of the boat. The plan shape is quite symmetrical fore and aft at gunwale level with the fine entry waterlines even a trace finer at the stern quarters. In elevation the ends are well rounded; the curved stem and stern posts extend 1.0-1.5m (3'3"-5') inward from the vertical before joining into the straight keel.

The hull is planked in eight clinker-fastened strakes. The midships section has the top two boards forming a uniformly-flared topside with the definite bilge turn taking place in the next three boards. From there the uniform 10° minimum moulded deadrise floor¹³ is produced with the next two boards and this finally leads to the more steeply-angled garboard strake beside the keel. This garboard is of the traditional south Down hollow section. It appears to have been fashioned out of 178x22mm (7"x%") stock with l0mm (%") hollowing from the centre of the outside and taken also from the edge faces of the inside, to leave a uniform l2mm (%") curved section strake. This is set into the keel rabbet at a minimum chord deadrise of 28" (for which the deadrise of the rabbet slot face required to be 38° to accommodate the inside rounding). With the bilges immersed at the normal load waterline and with the amount of draft produced by the wineglass garboard layout, this body section gives a good combination of stability and weatherliness for the fine-shaped, easily-driven hull. The north coast drontheim section may have had a little more overall beam but its bilges were slacker.¹⁴

In construction the stems are fashioned out of 60 sided xl20mm (23/8"x4 3/4") oak and scarfed to a 60 sided x 65mm (2 3/8"x2 5/8") larch keel. Beneath this is fastened a further 62mm (2 1/2") depth of beach keel. Although this boat presently has protecting steel keelstrip only locally bow and stern, all the yawls working from the rough foreshore had full-length steel protection from bow to stern.

Planking is lime(%b") thick spruce, copper rooved along the landings. The garboards and strake-ends are hooded and deadnailed into the keel and stem rabbets; no inside aprons were used. The bilge planking is protect by 2m(6'6") long wooden bilge keels fastened along the lower edge of the 4th strake from the gunwale.

Transverse timbers are alternately bent larch, and a combination of sawn elm floors with side-lapped bent larch futtock pieces running to the gunwales. The bent larch is of 32 sided x20mm ( 1 %" x 1 %") section, and where used from gunwale to gunwale has a short elm filler piece from garboard to garboard so that there is a smooth curvature possible across the keel. In the composite timbers the sawn elm floors are of 45 sided x 32mm minimum thickness ( 1 %" x 1 %"), joggled to give a close fit over keel and strakes. The larch futtock extensions are lapped to the floors by an average of 200mm(8"). Skin fastening to the bent timbers is by rooved copper nails; to the sawn floors by deadnailing. In all cases the sawn floors or filler pieces under the bent timbers rest on and are securely fastened to the keel, with substantial limber holes for drainage provided at each side of the keel. (In north coast drontheim building where the timbers span clear across the keel, the fishermen refer to the resulting large limberhole as 'the gutter')

Gunwales are 45 moulded x 35mm ( 1 %" x 1 %") larch, tapered bow and stern to be held between substantial oak breasthooks. The outside edge of the top strake is protected by a wooden rubbing strip, with some lengths locally along the top of the gunwales protected by half round steel strips.

The yawl presently contains 3 rowing tafts with a clear space between the middle and aft tafts where a portable 'slip taft' could be set when more seating then stowage space was needed. The mast heel originally fitted into a step mounted on top of the floor timbers, the mast held against the after side of the middle taft by a metal collar. This taft was specially supported by oak lodging and standing knees, the other tafts and seats only by standing knees. Each of the 3 rowing tafts rest on a light 55xlOmm (2 1/4" x 3/8") wearing fastened to the timbers, with rowing rowths bored for twin thole pins fitted on top of the gunwale adjacent to each. Close to the bow is a small beam and close to the stern a small seat for the helmsman. The standing knees are of a form particular to south Down in that instead of being through-fastened onto the flat of the taft they are only deadnailed into the sides of the beam. Fastening to the gunwales, however, is in the normal through-rivited form.

The yawl clearly was intended for sailing as well as rowing because the builder included on it 4 alternative tack strongpoints attached to each gunwale between the bow and the foreward rowing taft, to suit a variety of wind directions and reefing patterns for the dipping lugsail. For making fast the halliard, another strong-point is fastened to the gunwale each side at 3 frames aft of the mast, and for sheet control 2 holes with inside strengthening are provided both sides through the top strake, adjacent to the aft steering seat.

Floorboards in the body of the boat between the 3 rowing tafts are laid in panels directly onto the timbers and follow the skin curvature. Foreward and aft of this the floorboards are laid in flat panels supported on horizontal floor joists.

The outside colour scheme has the 3 top strakes maintained white as originally. The lower 5 strakes presently are painted light grey, but this appears to be an overcoating of an original green colour. Inside, the top 2 strakes and the taft ends are maintained white, with the gunwales and remainder of the tafts picked out in light grey. The inside bilges appear to have been tarred originally; presently they too have been painted light grey.

In its transition from pulling/sailing to outboard engine the yawl dispensed with the original rudder, and the top of the sternpost was modified to take an outboard bracket. The rudder shown on the drawing is as recalled by Harry Henvey of St John's Point from his days growing up in Killough between the 1930s and the 1950s. The sail plan drawing has also been prepared from his recollections, together with the placing of the various sailing fitments still existing on the yawl.

'I remember there being up to 10 pulling and sailing yawls at Scordaun before the war and up to about 1950. There was very little fishing during the war because the usual ground was in a firing-range area and was closed. But the fishing started off again after the war.

The boats were all kept at Scordaun, pulled up on the gravel beach above the high watermark. None was kept afloat so they didn't need their bottoms antifouled. The topsides inside and out were painted generally a light colour but the bilges inside were tarred and the bottom outside would be tarred or red-leaded.

The yawls were worked up and down to the water on greased wooden sticks, about 3ft long of 3" by 1 /Z "set out about 4ft apart. Two men could launch a boat down the slope of the shore, but it could take 3 or 4 to bring them back up. At low water spring tide it could be up to 100 yards from the water, even up to 70 yards at
low water neaps; so it could be quite a pull.

Most of the yawls were worked fulltime by their crews, when the weather allowed. None had any land. While Killough harbour was still working Bob Taylor in Marian and Alex O'Prey in the St Bernard were also pilots and used their own boats for boarding steamers. But there were other owners too; I remember Dan and Desmond O'Prey in the Alexander and Sam Simmons in the Snowdrop and Willie Ross in the Excelsior. And then there were other fishing families with boats; George Small in the Kate and Paddy Burns in Mannix, and Sammy McSherry. Willie Ross still lives in Killough.

The summer fishing from April to the end of September was inshore working pots from Killough Bay, and round St John's Point to Dundrum bar with 2 man crews. Tn July and August there could be handlining for mackerel too, when they would come in; and some boats might jig lines for herring or drift short nets if there were signs of them being close to the shore. But it was never like the Mourne herring fishing at Kilkeel.

The winter fishing was handlines and long lines for cod and haddock from October to April. At times the yawls with up to 6-man crews might even go 10 to 15 miles south or south-west of St John's Point to fish. If the wind didn't suit to set a sail then 4 men at a time would take spells in rowing. The oars were about 10 to 12 feet long. For sailing, the boats carried a dipping lug and would stow 3 or 4 half cwt. bags of sand under the mast and aft rowing tafts for ballast. The rope tail in the tack of the sail was made up to one of the tack points on the weather gunwale. The halliard to hoist the yard was passed through a sheave or a dumb sheave in the mast head, and the fall made fast to an eye on the weather gunwale aft of the mast. When the boat was tacked the halliard was eased so that when the sail tack was undone and brought round behind the mast, then there was enough slack to dip the heel of the yard and to make the sail tack up again on the new weather gunwale. The single sheet rope then had to be unreeved and lead from the outside into the new leeside fairlead hole aft, beside the helmsman. If the wind got up there were 2 sets of reef points for shortening sail. When the boat was just being rowed then the mast was taken down and stowed with its heel under the mast taft and its head 5 or 6 feet over the bow.

The yawls worked with oar and sail up to the early 1950s but gradually many of the sterns were altered to take Seagull outboard engines; though Bob Taylor's boat worked all her days at Killough just as she had been built. After the 1950s any new boat that came had a square stern.'

When Bob Taylor and his brother Willie decided to retire from fishing in the 1970s the Taylor family yawl Marian was sold to Robert Fitzpatrick of Minerstown, about three miles west of Killough, where it continued to be worked off the shore fishing pots until 1988. It was during this time that the stern was altered to take an outboard engine. After the owner's death the boat was donated by the Fitzpatrick family to Down County Museum who recognised its value as one of the last yawls once so common on the coast. In particular it represented the long history of the Killough fishing community, which because of its lack of facilities had been unable to make the transition from a fishing trade to a fishing industry. Since 1993 it has been in temporary storage under cover at Castleward, courtesy of the National Trust. After 74 years this boat is still in remarkably good condition and easily capable of being restored for museum display, her working days long over.

But the yawl tradition is not dead, for a replica of Marian has just now been built at St John's Point by Harry Henvey for the Killough Community Association. With a grant of money from the European Regional Development Fund this Association has set up the Palatine Trust to administer the building of the yawl and the acquisition and restoration of a disused store in Killough where the history of the town's harbour and fishing can be displayed. The Trust intends the rig its new yawl and to stimulate general interest in relearning the art of working it again from Killough, under its dipping lug sail.¹⁵

A W Brogger has written about the continuity of boat culture in Norway over the past 1000 years:

... The most interesting feature in this building of smaller boats, which thus maintained itself for hundreds and hundreds of years, untouched by wars, changes of kings and dynasties, higher political developments of every kind, is this deep substratum of folk-culture. The big ships vanished with the wars and the Norwegian royal line. The little boats remained indissolubly bound up with the life of the peasantry ... The peasant boat-builders conserved the full harvest of that vast social effort which is linked with the Norwegian boat.'16

Some 240 years ago, perhaps, the Norway yawl entered Irish coastal culture also and was similarly conserved. Despite the inroads of industrialisation, where small wooden boats are yet being built in the northern half of Ireland there is still much of this Norwegian clinker heritage unconsciously within what is believed to be 'the proper boat'.

Harry Madill is a retired civil engineer, particularly interested in recording details of Irish traditional small boats and their usage within local communities.

References

1.	R H Buchanan, 'The Irish Sea: the geographical framework' in Michael McCaughan and John Appleby (eds) The Irish Sea: aspects of maritime history (Belfast 1989) p9.
2.	Fourth Report of Commissioners of Irish Fisheries,l822, House of Commons Papers, 1823(383)x.409
3.	First Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the Irish Fisheries 1836, House of Commons Papers 1837(77)xxii.53-55.
4.	Michael McCaughan, 'Double-ended and clinker built. The Irish dimension of a European boat-building tradition' in Alan Gailey(ed) The Use of Tradition (Cultra 1988) p34.
5.	See note 3, 1836 Report, p73.
6.	For flanged and rabbeted keel forms see - Sean McGrail Ancient Boats in North west Europe (London 1987) pp112115; A Osler, The Shetland Boat (National Maritime Museum Monograph 58, London 1983) pp52-54. This details the making of a flanged keel from the solid. A Christensen (ed), Ircshore Craft of Norway, based on the work of Bernard and Oystein FaerOyvik (Greenwich 1979). Where boat section drawings are included, the flanged keel form appears to be indicated on 19 out of the 20 small boats under 9m overall length. Only in a single case (from south Norway) is a rabbeted keel shown. For the general situation, however, see p31, '... the (south-)eastern boat builders used rabbets in keel and stem, while the western and northem boat builders worked with a T shaped keel and unrabbetted stems...'
7.	For separation of frame timbers and keel in Norwegian boat construction see - McGrail Ancient Boats p145, '... in the Viking boatbuilding tradition no fmd has yet been recorded with frames fastened to the keel...'; Osler The Shetland Boat, Fig21 clearly shows the similar Shetland tradition. In Christensen, Inshore Craft... all the boat section drawings, including that for the rabbeted keel, indicates an arching of the frame timber over the keel without direct support one to the other.
8.	Christensen, Inshore Crafi... ppl6, 18 'Within living memory, most of the types of western and northern Norway (boats) were built with axe-hewn garboards, even in districts where sawn timber was abundant.
9.	Local naming of the boat type a. A. Teggarty, Kilkeel, 22 March 1996: '... Co Louth and here was 'skiff' country. A yawl in Kilkeel was a small square-sterned punt, anything over 10 to 12 feet, that the nickey boats carried as drive boats. ... b. H.Henvey, St John's Point, 18 Feb 1998. c. Newry Fishing Boat Registers 1869-1930, Public Record Office of Northern Ireland CUS/3/6/3/1,3. d. Belfast Fishing Boat Registers 1902 -1950, Public Record Office NI CUS/1/6/3/1,2 e. Coleraine Fishing Boat Register 1902-1939, Merchant Shipping Agency Cardiff. f. Londonderry Fishing Boat Registers 1871-1915, CUS/2/6/3/1,2.
10.	R H Buchanan, ibid. p10.
11.	Request for improvements to Killough harbour 1926-28, Public Record Office NI D/2720/1
12.	Report of the Departmental Advisory Committee on the Development of Fishing Harbours in Northern Ireland 2lFeb 1928, Public Record Office NI COM/42/2. This provides the data on boats, men and catches used in the given table.
13.	McGrail, Ancient Boats p114 quotes definitions proposed by Eric McKee to describe various amounts of floor deadrise; 0-7° flat floor, 7° - 11° raised floor, more than 11° vee floor. The 10° deadrise found on this yawl would therefore fall at the upper end of the proposed 'raised floor' middle category.
14.	Garboard deadrise a. Christensen, ibid. Of the twenty l8th to 20th century Norwegian boats under 9m (30feet) length for which midship section drawings are included, the measured minimum garboard deadrise is in the range 15&deg; - 45&deg; , the overall average is 22&deg;. This Killough yawl garboard chord deadrise of 28&deg; (deadrise of the upper face of the rabbet 38&deg;) is slightly more than the average of the sample of boats included in Faeroyvik.<br> b. The building and trials of the replica of an ancient boat; the Gokstad faering, (National Maritime Museum Monograph 11, London 1974). Garboard deadrise in the 9th century Gokstad faering is 20&deg; for the 6.5m boat.
15.	Maurice Hayes' book Sweet Killough Let Go Your Anchor (Belfast 1994) gives a wonderful flavour of Killough village, its activities and its community in the 1930s, through the all observing eyes of the author growing up there as a small boy.
16.	A W Brogger and H Shetelig The ~king Ships (Stanford 1953).