While watching the TV series ‘The Bay’ last summer about Dublin Bay, it took me back a long time ago when I was working for Irish Shipping Ltd.

In the first episode of ‘The Bay’, Sandycove and the ‘40-foot’ featured. Martin Miller and his son Adrian are everyday swimmers and Martin himself is an old seadog. He served as chief steward in Irish Shipping years ago– a great man for the good oul yarns is Martin.

‘MV Irish Larch’, a 26,000-ton geared bulk carrier, came flooding back into my memory. I served in this ship on three different occasions and several men featured in this series were on board: Captain Dave Dignam, the current harbour master at Dublin port, along with his assistant Fergus Britton; pilot Neil Myles, tug boat skipper and Donal Scanlon. While the vessel was trading down in Australia, another man, captain Tom McCarthy, who is the present master of the sailing ship ‘Jeannie Johnson’ was on the ‘Larch’.

One thing which always comes to mind about that trip was that the bosun Paddy (the Bomber) Harris died of a heart attack while we were in Port Kembla.

Another interesting character was Mr Austin Gill from Westport in Mayo– he was lamptrimmer and was promoted to bosun when Bomber died, a gas man if ever there was one. He was on board the ‘MV Kilkenny’ when she was in collision in Dublin Bay back in 1991.

My last trip with Irish Shipping was on board the ‘Irish Larch’ in 1982. When we came into Dublin Bay the master was Captain Mick O’Dwyer, the chief mate was Tom McCarthy, second mate was Dave Dignam.

We arrived into Dublin from Vancouver, British Columbia and the place was covered in snow. I will never forget it, the whole country came to a standstill, you could not go anywhere!

After 11 days of this, I was offered a job down in the Mediterrian on a small oil tanker and I was away to the sun again. Memories are great, especially good ones and to see some old shipmates makes them even better.

Above: ‘The Irish Larch’