A Mayo builder, a Galway businessman and a west of Ireland doctor have signed up for an expedition to the North-West Passage, in the wake of 19th-century Irish polar explorers.
Northabout is the name of the 49-foot aluminium boat which has been built in a shed in Knock, Co Mayo, for the voyage through the infamous passage which links the Atlantic to the Pacific. Marked by "a trail of bleached bones and lonely cairns", the passage has fascinated generations and claimed many lives. It was only just over a century ago, from 1903 to 1906, that it was first navigated by the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen.
Irish links with the route date back to the aftermath of the lost Franklin expedition of 1845-47. It is six centuries since the first attempts to seek a sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific which avoided the dreaded Cape Horn. John Cabot was among the first, with such explorers as John Davis, Henry Hudson, William Baffin and Samuel Hearne making vain efforts to find a way through the Canadian Arctic.
The most concerted attempts by the British Admiralty took place after the Napoleonic Wars. In 1845 John Franklin took the ships Erebus and Terror - commanded by Co Down sailor Francis Crozier - with him on another venture, but both ships' crews vanished mysteriously.
Robert McClure of Wexford, Capt Henry Kellett of Tipperary and Capt Leopold McClintock of Dundalk, Co Louth, were among the Irish participants in voyages dispatched in search of Franklin. McClure became the first man to complete the North-West passage, though partly on foot. McClintock was sent out by Lady Franklin, and found three corpses and other traces of her husband's crew during his trip in 1857-59.
It is partly in tribute to these Irishmen that the current expedition has been put together. It involves members of the South Aris team which tried to retrace Ernest Shackleton's early 20th century open boat voyage across Antarctic waters. The joint leaders of South Aris, Galway hooker sailor Paddy Barry and Irish Everest mountaineer Frank Nugent, have drawn in Jarlath Cunnane, the Mayo-based retired construction manager who built the replica of Shackleton's James Caird lifeboat for that adventure.
Sadly, Cunnane had to watch his wooden vessel being scuttled then, after the crew experienced several capsizes during a violent Antarctic storm. He hopes for no such fate for the Northabout, a sturdy aluminium cutter-rig vessel which has been specially designed for Polar conditions - with, he says, "an ice pusher" on its bow.
Also participating are: John Coyle, Galway sailor, owner of the gleoiteog, Aoife, and well-known businessman; Mike Brogan, a doctor from Kinvara who owns a Galway hooker and has sailed extensively in Irish and European waters, including a voyage to Iceland and Spitzbergen in 1990 with Paddy Barry; Kevin Cronin, a Dublin accountant and a long-time crew member of Barry's St Patrick; and Terry Irvine, a materials manager from Co Antrim who has sailed in both northern and southern waters and has also traversed Africa from Tunis to Cape Town.
Northabout is currently being fitted out. Sea trials are due to take place from April, and the vessel will leave Westport in June for the first leg of the 7,800-mile trip to Vancouver in the Canadian Pacific, via Greenland, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, the Canadian and Alaskan coastline and islands, the Beaufort Sea and the Bering Strait.
The participants have put up £85,000 in funds - just over half the estimated cost - and know that they may have to winter the boat on shore, or in a safe bay, if the channel is closed by ice.
It is possible to complete the voyage in one season, but this requires good ice conditions. It took Roald Amundsen three winters in his 47-ton herring sloop, Gjoa, and two more recent attempts - by the Royal Canadian mounties in 1944 and by a Belgian, Willy de Roos, in 1977 - succeeded in one year.
A major sponsor has just been secured, according to John Coyle, and this is expected to attract further support. He can be contacted at (091)794722 or email: jdcoyle@renvyle.iol.ie