Sailing Smacks Exhibition

On 22nd October 2011 Donald Meek, Emeritus Professor of Scottish and Gaelic Studies at the University of Edinburgh  launched an audiovisual display on the history of the Lismore Sailing Smacks.The display is a rich collection of photographs and documents from the heyday (1870-1940) of the sailing smacks that operated mainly out of Port Ramsay,. It has commentaries in English and Gaelic by Duncan Black, Calum MacCorquodale and John MacFadyen, who all remember the last days of the smacks. Margaret Black  curated the collection. Professor Meek, brought up in a Gaelic-speaking household on Tiree, is an authority on a wide range of subjects including the Book of the Dean of Lismore. He can tell us a great deal about the MacFadyen sea captains who came from Tiree to Lismore in the 1870s, and he has contributed an important photograph to the display.

In his opening remarks he said it was a pleasure to see such a fine heritage centre and congratulated the island on creating this impressive resource. He then spoke of the skill of the skippers who sailed these versatile boats all of whom were Cape Horners in square rigged ships who later brought their experience of the deep sea trade to the home trade, as Lismore skippers are doing to this day.