Why is it that when one walks into a real-estate office in San Pedro, California, one sees snapshots of seine-netting for tuna where there should be framed professional awards hanging on the wall? Such is the connection that some people have with the sea that it permeates their every pore for generations after, according to David Taylor of the American Folklife Centre at the US Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
In the case of the real-estate family, their forefathers had been involved in commercial fishing. Thus, the cultural resources which informed their community were also cultural differences which remained essential to their identity, he has maintained.
This may explain why, in spite of an official indifference for many years at Government level, this island has spawned a plethora of maritime collections. A recent audit for the Heritage Council by Darina Tully has recorded 160 such repositories, from Achill Sound harbour in Co Mayo to Youghal Visitor Centre in Co Cork. As Tully points out, there is little protection for these collections under current legislation which covers only shipwreck artefacts recovered since 1987.
Des Branigan, one of the founders of the Maritime Institute, also believes that there is a need to remember that organisation's original remit.
Establishing a maritime museum was only a part of that responsibility, which also included ensuring State recognition for the contribution which the Irish mercantile marine made during the second World War.
Some 146 men lost their lives, and 31 others received terrible injuries in order to keep this island supplied with food, Branigan notes. A commemorative booklet which he produced includes 17 Kenneth King paintings of ships lost during that time, such as the steam trawler Leukos, sunk with 11 crew on board by a German submarine north west of Tory island, Co Donegal, in March 1940; and the deaths of 33 crewmen from Cos Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Wexford, Galway, Louth and Scotland on the SS Irish Pine, torpedoed and sunk in 1941.
As Branigan points out in his booklet, some 488 non-Irish seamen whose ships had been sunk were saved by Irish vessels during that terrible time.