Lough Foyle Punts
Dónál MacPolín and Harry Madill

Lough Foyle is not particularly sheltered, being a large expanse of tidal water, and in a south-westerly wind there is a 14-mile fetch towards Greencastle at its mouth. However, there is generally good shelter on the Donegal shore, and it was from here that the majority of punts were worked.

The principal builders of Lough Foyle punts were the Loudens and Dohertys of Culmore and the McDonalds and Beatties of Moville. Essentially these punts were small working boats used for salmon or herring and long-line fishing within the sheltered waters of Lough Foyle. They rarely ventured outside the Lough, and were perfect for small-time fishing 'inside'. They were cheap, easily handled by two men and kept hauled onto a beach or moored at a jetty. Only the brave or foolhardy headed across on stormy summer nights to the 'back strand' (the shallow bay to the north east of Magiligan Point in County Derry) to drift-net for salmon, Those were the days of the great abundance of fish after the second World War when the herring came in their great shoals into the Lough. The salmon arrived in June and were drift-netted until August. The codling came in September-October. Then there was winter fishing of lobster along the shore, the occasional 'shot' of winter herring and long-lining for pollack, cod or flatfish.

Punts were used also for cutting the leathach or long seaweed used as fertiliser for the potatoes in Spring. Many 'hungry days' were remembered as the weed was cut at slack water with a long-handled scythe, the men often chewing the edible dulse that came up with the weed which was lifted on board with an old reaping hook. The heavily laden boat, often 'one board above the water' and leaking iodine-coloured water, was slowly rowed home on the food tide before being unloaded into carts on the beach, taken to the fields and spread on the drills in a single operation, The weed could not be left lying as it would 'go into snotters' (go very soft), making it hard to lift.

The boats fished with oar and sail, latterly with outboard engines. Each was equipped with two single oars about 14 feet long, and a pair of shorter (double) oars about 10 feet long, (known as the 'petals'). The normal two-man crew occupied the middle two thwarts, pulling the two single oars. With their fine lines these punts were easily driven. Charlie McCann remembers as a youth rowing a couple of old fishermen with hand lines from Stroove (just outside the Lough) round the north shore past Inishowen Head to Kinnegoe Bay on one tide, and back the same evening - riding the 'flood', a distance of about 8 miles.

If the wind and the work suited, the punts set a sailing rig. This was carried on an unstayed mast planted through a hole in the second beam on to a step on the keel. The sprit mainsail was kept permanently bent on the mast, stretched by lashings at throat and tack and held in between by robands round the mast. The slow taper on the top end of the sprit spar was jammed into the peak cringle. On a breezy day when it was likely to flutter out, the sprit end was given a turn in the sail to hold it firmly before being hoisted up on to the mast, setting its blunt taper heel into the rope loop known on the Foyle as the 'becket'. Greencastle men pronounced this as 'bicket'. The sail was set loose-footed with a single mainsheet rope taken directly to a turn on a cleat on the lee quarter. No reef points were used and the sail was reduced if necessary by taking out the sprit and halving the area by pulling the peak back down to the tack with a light line. A small jib was tacked to the stem head and hoisted through a block hung from the masthead; the halyard fall was made up round the mast beam. In all, it was a small, handy rig of about 100 square feet.

The great names associated with boat-building on the Foyle are the McDonalds and the Beatties, only the former family alive today. Originally building the Greencastle yawls or drontheims and later their 'half-decker' descendants, they also built great numbers of working and racing punts. In the 1950s and 1960s, fine racing punts were also built by Billy and Ernie Doherty of Whitecastle. The original lines for their punts had been given to them by the Beatties, to whom they were related.

While boat builders were always considered a special breed in any fishing community, the Beatties are remembered with bemused affection as being somewhat eccentric, to say the least. However, that did not extend to their boat-building, and their mastery was never in question. While McDonnell's traditionally built a heavier but finely-constructed working boat, the Beatties built the better sailing model, the better racing punt. Undoubtedly the beautiful design of these boats was gradually developed over a long period by these two families. The Beatties had sailed an 17-foot punt themselves and so knew exactly what they wanted. They built every punt the same and even had a template for every board! Billy Doherty also raced the punts. Having built at least 30 of them, he always favoured one no more than two or three years old - a 'fresher' boat was best.

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