In June 2026, members of Kilmore Quay Conservation Group were fortunate to be on Cape Clear Island for a special moment in Irish maritime history: watching Ard Casta leave the island to begin her journey to a West Cork boatyard for conservation.

Ard Casta is one of the surviving vessels from a remarkable generation of wooden fishing boats that once provided livelihoods for families around the Irish coast. As she left Cape Clear that day, she carried with her the memories of one island community, but also the story of a generation of fishermen, boats and coastal communities – including our own.

Her conservation is now being undertaken at Liam Hegarty’s boatyard at Oldcourt, near Baltimore, helping to ensure that both the vessel and the stories associated with her survive for future generations.

Celebrating Heritage Week in Kilmore Quay

As we celebrate Heritage Week here in Kilmore Quay, it seems especially fitting to look beyond our own harbour and recognise how our maritime heritage is connected to that of other coastal communities around Ireland.

Heritage is not only about buildings, monuments or objects preserved in museums. It also lives in the boats people worked on, the skills they learned, the stories they told and the memories passed from one generation to the next.That is why witnessing Ard Casta leave Cape Clear had such resonance for members of Kilmore Quay Conservation Group. Although she belongs to the story of Cape Clear, the world she represents would have been very familiar here in Kilmore Quay. Vessels from the same generation of BIM 50- and 56-foot wooden fishing boats also became part of our local fishing story.

Heritage Week gives us an opportunity not only to celebrate that history, but to record it while those memories are still with us. The names of boats, their owners and crews, the fisheries they worked, the journeys they made and the stories associated with them are all part of Kilmore Quay’s living maritime heritage.

The boats that changed Irish fishing

After the Second World War, Ireland’s fishing fleet was undergoing enormous change. The 50-footers, many popularly remembered as the ‘Ros boats’, were first developed through the Irish Sea Fisheries Association, and the programme was later continued and expanded by Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM).

Designed by naval architect James Cahill Stafford, the 50-footer drew on the proven lines of Scottish fishing vessels. The standard boat measured approximately 49 ft 6 in, had a draught of around six feet, was constructed largely from Irish oak and larch, and had a fish hold capable of carrying around 11 tons.

They were followed by the larger 56-footers, many carrying names beginning with ‘Ard’. These boats offered fishermen greater space and carrying capacity and represented another important step in the development of Ireland’s modern fishing fleet.

Maritime historian Pat Nolan tells the story of these two generations in Sea Change: The Rise of the BIM 50-footer and Its Impact on Coastal Ireland (2008) and A Step Up: The Arrival of BIM 56-footers (2013). The titles themselves capture the story: the pioneering 50-footer brought major change to coastal fishing, while the larger 56-footer represented the next ‘step up’.

Both types were versatile working boats rather than vessels designed solely for herring. They worked a range of fisheries, including whitefish, while many also participated in the important seasonal herring fisheries of the 1950s and 1960s, when boats and crews followed the fishing around the Irish coast.

And they were here in Kilmore Quay

For older generations in Kilmore Quay, this is not distant maritime history.

Local fishermen recall BIM 56-footers becoming part of the Kilmore Quay fleet, including Ard Ailbhe (on the left), remembered locally in connection with Liam Rossiter, and Ard Gillen (on the right), remembered in connection with Brian Furlong. These boats helped local fishermen earn their living from the sea and formed part of a period that saw Kilmore Quay develop as an important fishing port. For the families who depended upon them, they were much more than boats. They were workplaces and livelihoods – places where knowledge of fishing, weather, tides and the sea was learned through experience and passed from one generation to another.

Saving more than a boat

As Ireland’s fishing fleet continued to modernise, many of these old wooden vessels were eventually sold, altered, abandoned or broken up. Relatively few of the original 50- and 56-footers now survive.

That makes conservation projects such as Ard Casta especially significant. Preserving her is not simply about saving an old wooden fishing boat. It is about preserving the stories of the people who built her, owned her, crewed her and depended upon her for their livelihood.

Watching Ard Casta leave Cape Clear was therefore particularly meaningful for visitors from another fishing community. Cape Clear and Kilmore Quay may be separated by miles of coastline, but their histories are connected by the sea – by fishing, boats, families and generations of knowledge passed down through coastal communities.

“A boat may belong to one harbour, but its story can belong to an entire coastline.”

And perhaps that is why Ard Casta matters to places like Kilmore Quay too. Ireland’s maritime heritage is not found only in famous ships, lighthouses or naval history. It also survives in the working wooden boats that once left small harbours around our coast, carried generations of fishermen to sea and helped shape the economic, social and cultural life of communities like Cape Clear and Kilmore Quay.

Sources and further reading

• Pat Nolan, Sea Change: The Rise of the BIM 50-footer and Its Impact on Coastal Ireland (2008).
• Pat Nolan, A Step Up: The Arrival of BIM 56-footers (2013).
• Ireland Made, ‘Ros Aoibhinn – One of the Last BIM 50-footers’ (background on the BIM 50-footer design and specifications).
• Cape Clear / Oileán Chléire material on the Ard Casta conservation project.
• Kilmore Quay oral-history recollections concerning Ard Ailbhe, Ard Gillen and Anna Maria.