Timoleague was once a well-established maritime centre, though of limited depth even prior to the tsunami (Smith 1774, Second Edition, First published 1749), while Courtmacsherry, closer to the harbour mouth, was originally the manor of Rynnanylan, granted to the Barry’s by Geoffrey FitzOdo (from whom came the eponym Hodnett, in Irish, Mac Seathraigh, from whence Mac Sherry) around the beginning of the fourteenth century (Nicholls 1972). The Port of Timoleague lost shipping and trade in the seventeenth century due to a combination of silting and Boyle’s development of the towns of Clonakilty and Bandon. Courtmacsherry, with access to deeper water, developed about one kilometre east of the Cistercian abbey of Abbeymahon, moved to this location c.1278. A late eighteenth-century map documents the name Timoleague Harbour on earlier maps being replaced by Courtmacsherry Bay (Section 2: Fig. 3).
Fig. 46: Passage West: The Original Port of Cork, c. 1848 – 50 (Photo courtesy of James Murphy, the Passage West Maritime Museum).
Port of Cork
( Charlotte )
While Cork was endowed with a commodious harbour, the River Lee lacked width and depth in the eighteenth century due to shoals and silting. In the middle of the century ‘ ships of 70- or 80-tons burden could only reach the city on high spring tides ’ ( McCarthy 2019). Cargoes had to be transported on smaller craft between the upper and lower harbour. Emergency improvement grants resulted in gradual improvements and by 1783 vessels of up to 350 tons were routinely docked in the city ( ibid ). Subsequent reprioritization of funds and the Napoleonic War resulted in re- silting, deterioration of the river’s navigability and led to the recognition that a more permanent solution was necessary. The Board of Cork Harbour Commissioners, established in 1813 and funded with ongoing tax revenues, was charged with widening, deepening and repairing the Harbour and River of Cork. This process would continue slowly throughout the nineteenth century. Key to the Lee ’s improved navigability, was the construction of quays and the creation of an impregnable south riverbank which was accomplished by improving and extending the Navigation Wall from Cork City to Blackrock. This task was only completed in 1863 when the old 1761 wall at Victoria Quay was replaced . Infilling behind the New Wall with dredged material from the river would provide the south river frontage now known as the Marina (McCarthy 2019; O’Riordan 2014). The first steam dredger was purchased in 1826 by the Harbour Board (for 1250 pounds sterling) and access between East Ferry and Ballinacurra was significantly improved at that time (O’Riordan 2014; Appendix above: Ballinacurra ). On August 4 1820, the Harbour Board appointed Captain William Preston-White, the first Cork Harbour and Ballast
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