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Discover a remarkable piece of maritime history at the Boatyard Museum, Enniskillen, where the beautifully restored Erin-go-Bragh steamship model is now on display.
The Erin-go-Bragh was built in Liverpool in 1840-1841. Tonnage: 330 tons, Length: 131 feet, Beam: 26 feet, and a shallow draft of about 5 feet 6 inches. Engine power: 100 horsepower. (City of Dublin Co. record her as being 126.4ft and 324GRT)
She was a sail assisted, side-wheeled paddle steamer built of Iron at a time when iron was still distrusted by mariners. She was commissioned for the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company for service on the Lower Shannon estuary connecting the communities of Limerick, Kilrush and Tarbert. Her maiden voyage to the Shannon proved the seaworthiness of her build with no structural hull damage, surviving hurricane force winds and mountainous seas off Co. Kerry. The storm became an important early public demonstration of the strength of iron shipbuilding, at a time when many believed wooden hulls were safer. Between 1843 she operated on routes from Liverpool on the North Wales coast and returned to the Shannon in 1847 to the early 1860’s when she may have been broken up for scrap having become obsolete.
This now working, steam driven model has been lovingly and skillfully restored by William Anderson and Roy Huddleston. Though it is not known for sure that she is a replica of the Erin-go-Bragh she was built in her entirety by John Millar, a tinsmith, residing at 26 Eglinton Street, Glasgow, in 1840-1845. It was possibly an exhibition piece, a show piece displaying the model maker’s skills as a tinsmith. The model however arrived in Ireland with Col. L.S.Henshall following the end of the First World War as an elaborate Victorian toy, and as such was used by the lender’s father and uncle as youngsters on Belfast Lough. She never displayed a name plate; however she was always known fondly within the family as the ‘Erin-go-Bragh’.
This model has been loaned by Robert Henshall to the Boatyard Museum (Riverside Walk Enniskillen).
