There was magic in those calloused, careworn fingers

To mark the centenary of legendary Lecarrow boatbuilder Jimmy Furey's birth, John Fuery writes of his memories of his uncle.

by John Fuery

Although first and foremost a master boatbuilder, there was far more to Jimmy Furey than the clinker-built dinghies which are rightly revered as being amongst the finest to ever grace Ireland’s waterways.

For a man who seldom strayed far from the tiny Mount Plunkett cottage where he was born 100 years ago this month, Jimmy certainly left his mark on not only Ireland but also the world.

During my years working in Hong Kong, I remember an Irish colleague called Kerry chatting happily about her recent sailing holiday on Lough Ree. Her curiosity piqued by my interest in what type of boat she’d been crewing, she checked back with her hosts and informed me that it had been a Shannon One (“SO”) dinghy.

As I suspected that particular craft was one of the 37 or so that had started life in my late uncle’s tiny 7.2 x 4.3 m (31 sq m) workshop overlooking Blackbrink Bay. Its owner’s vivid lasting image of Jimmy was, Kerry told me, “a giant of a man with hands the size of bunches of bananas”.

While imposingly big and powerful, those calloused and careworn fists and fingers were capable of levels of nimbleness and delicacy that would have been equally at home in a hospital operating theatre. Indeed, so potent was the magic contained in Jimmy’s fingertips that almost all of the SOs he built during his 50-year career are still slicing through the Shannon like butter to this day.

Rather than squander the evenings of days spent bent over hulls slumped in front of the TV, Jimmy devoted his downtime to finessing award-winning scale models of historic sailing vessels. Greedily devouring fully three times more man-hours than their full-sized counterparts, the painstaking piecing together of these mini masterpieces was a real labour of love. The models’ only serious rival in the relaxation stakes was the string of lab retrievers (invariably called Jet or Brownie) that contentedly dozed in the shavings at Jimmy’s feet.

Fittingly, the inch-perfect recreation of an early SO dinghy Jimmy donated to London’s world-famous Greenwich Maritime Museum remains amongst the most admired pieces in its vast collection. When I glibly remarked that this must have been a real feather in his cap, Jimmy replied with a mischievous, atypically immodest glint in his eye “Well, I don’t know about my cap…”

Indeed, such was Jimmy’s mastery in bending wood to his will that he happily accepted a friend’s request he try his hand at crafting a replacement stock for a priceless antique Purdey shotgun. Jimmy’s substitute was so exquisitely realised, the company’s gunsmiths were amazed to discover it hadn’t emerged from their in-house workshop.

Jimmy repaid nature for the gift with which he had carved out his career by planting thousands of trees and becoming an early and passionate advocate of environmental causes. Learning of a 1990s proposal for a commercial development that would have despoiled the banks of Blackbrink Bay, he was pivotal in drafting the opposition group objections that sent the outsiders packing.

All in all, a pretty well-rounded life for a man forced to abandon his formal education and begin earning his crust fishing for eels around the time of his 14th birthday. Jimmy made up for the curtailment by becoming a voracious reader, a pleasure he continued to indulge in until the day he died in June 2020.

Entirely self-taught he might have been, but Jimmy was never at a loss for words. Nor was he ever short of an informed opinion when discussing weighty issues with experts ostensibly far better schooled than he himself.

Like his brothers and sisters Paddy, Mary, Jack and Kitty, Jimmy was born and raised during a turbulent period when Ireland was desperately poor and the world an increasingly febrile place. With TV practically unheard of and radios and newspapers a luxury few could afford, families’ primary source of news and entertainment were the “ramblers” who wandered from cottage to cottage.

The curiosity these encounters ignited in Jimmy burnt so brightly he was still inviting callers to Mount Plunkett inside for a cup of hot, sweet “tay” and a chat some 80 years later. Rare was the invitee who proved resistant to his or her charming host’s gentle probings as to where they had been; and what they might have seen or done while there.

Although especially fascinated by the advances that had transformed – and would continue to transform – a world he had zero desire to explore, Jimmy didn’t care overmuch for change. His distrust was more than validated on the mid-1990s night when modern life broke in and violated the tranquility of his and his newly retired merchant seaman brother Paddy’s spartan lives. The thugs who so cruelly beat and robbed Jimmy and Paddy that night were never charged with, or convicted for, the physical and psychological scars they left in their wake.

Despite his being too modest and unassuming to desire any kind of formal monument to his considerable accomplishments, Jimmy was only too happy to share his skills with others. Who knows, had my childhood holidays at Mount Plunkett not been spent excavating the treasure trove of magazines that battled boats for space in his shed, I might have picked up a few tips myself.

But who am I kidding! Like the various other young pretenders who fancied their chances at filling his shoes over the years, I was simply incapable of the single-minded pursuit of excellence that set Jimmy apart.

All of which isn’t to say there isn’t another Jimmy Furey floating around out there somewhere. Hopefully, that young talent will one day see David Shaw-Smith’s captivating Hands documentary about Jimmy, or begin excavating the treasure trove of papers his estate has permanently lodged with Roscommon County Library (see sidebar).

With a new sailing season fast approaching, sailors lucky enough to own one of the miracles of form and function wrought by Jimmy’s “big bunches of bananas” will soon be casting off. Should they surrender themselves to the whipcrack of wind on sail and the rhythmic slapping of wave on hull, those sailors may just catch the elements respectfully whispering Jimmy Furey’s name.

Roscommon County Library’s Jimmy Furey Centenary Collection

While respectful of Jimmy’s wishes that there be “no books or no museums commemorating [his] life”, Jimmy’s executors were keen to make his expertise available to young talents wishing to follow in his footsteps.

To this end, Jimmy’s estate has now donated what papers of his that remained in his cottage and boatshed after his death to Roscommon County Library. To mark the boatbuilder’s centenary in late March, the facility has established a Jimmy Furey Centenary Collection to sustain the boatbuilding tradition Jimmy did so much to foster.

Said Executive Librarian, Ruairi O hAodha: “The ultimate aim of this non-profit initiative is to provide an easily accessible and constantly evolving databank of information and inspiration for all those interested in learning more about Jimmy Furey’s life and work.”