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• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ TARA
• Manufacturer reference ‏ : ‎ TARA3006
• Label ‏ : ‎ TARA
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003YY6MP6
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
• 145,315 in Vinyl

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Liam O'Flynn - The Brendan Voyage

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The Brendan Voyage

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• Is discontinued by manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.09 x 12.63 x 1.37 cm; 81.65 g
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Tara Music Company
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The Brendan Voyage

• Post author By Simon King
• Post date July 24, 2020

You could say that Tim Severin is a historical re-enactor, but that would conjure all the wrong images, of renaissance fairs and Colonial Williamsburg. At nearly 80 years old, his accomplishments are better described as experiential archaeology , recreating legendary journeys to prove they could have happened. His historical adventures are based on years of upfront study, working with scholars to decipher ancient texts and find period-appropriate technology and materials. I only recently learned about Severin’s work, through his 1978 book that documents a fascinating early project called The Brendan Voyage .

In the 6th-century, an Irish monk named St. Brendan wrote the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot), a document describing a westward sea journey to the “promised land” that some believe was North America. The journey included numerous stops at islands along the way, and he described seeing fantastic sights and creatures from aboard his medieval “skin boat.” Although some scholars interpret the monk’s manuscript figuratively, others subscribe to the belief that it is more travelogue than fable. That question is at the heart of The Brendan Voyage , Severin’s project to recreate St. Brendan’s journey and prove that a leather-clad sailboat could successfully traverse the North Atlantic.

“Of course, if the claim was true, then Saint Brendan would have reached America almost a thousand years before Columbus and four hundred years before the Vikings.” The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, Chapter 1

Severin’s first task, which took years of hard work, was the creation of a boat that would match the one used by St. Brendan. In The Brendan Voyage he describes a process of researching, learning, and collaborating with various experts. The energy surrounding the project is contagious, and propelled by what he calls “Brendan Luck” that seems to grace him throughout the project.

The traditional Irish curragh , which is still in use today on the west coast of Ireland, is a descendent of the boat that St. Brendan would have sailed. In modern times, canvas is stretched over the wooden frame, but the Navigatio describes a boat covered with oxhide. This was the first materials challenge for Severin, and initial tests showed that leather would deteriorate quickly in sea water.

Luckily the text provides additional clues, describing the leather as “tanned in oak bark” and coated in “grease” to make it water proof. After numerous lab studies it was proven that, indeed, oak bark was the best leather treatment. Severin found a single tannery in Britain that could help, run by the Croggon family in the Cornish town of Grampound. They had been using traditional tanning techniques since they opened in 1711, and as Brendan Luck would have it, they were enthusiastic about the project.

“So began a delightful period of work. The British leather industry took the Brendan project to heart, and what splendid people the leathermakers turned out to be.” The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, Chapter 2

The manuscript describes applying “grease” to the leather, and even mentions bringing extra grease on the journey for re-application. These kinds of details further convinced Severin that he was reading the documentation of a real trip. It’s easy to determine that this must have been lanolin or “wool grease,” a wax that secreted by sheep. Severin and his crew applied it liberally to the oak bark leather and described the resulting stench as nearly unbearable.

“I wonder if you could supply me with some wool grease.” “Yes, of course. How much do you want?” “About three-quarters of a ton, please.” There was stunned silence. The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, Chapter 2

The remaining challenges of building Brenden , a 36-foot medieval boat were numerous and back breaking. Just the right cuts of oak and ash were found to build the mast and hull—apparently the north side of the tree is the strongest. Joints were lashed together with miles of leather stripping, and 49 overlapping ox hides were stitched together with flax cords. Brendan Luck struck again when Severin learned that John O’Connell, a master harness maker, lived nearby where the boat was being built. He joined the project and taught Severin and a team of volunteers how to stitch the thick leather. Once on the ocean their lives would depend on the quality of every stitch and knot, a reality that hung heavy over the slow and strenuous work.

For more detail on the boat’s construction I suggest checking out the article Across the Atlantic in a Leather Boat , which includes relevant excepts from the book and broader information on traditional skin boats in other parts of the world.

The Journey

On May 17, 1976 Brenden set sail from Brandon Creek (named after an alternate spelling of the monk’s name) in County Kerry, Ireland. Every step of the voyage is detailed wonderfully in the book, including photographs from aboard the boat. Even though I knew they would make it, the vivid description of life aboard the boat was both nail biting and riveting.

The route, as with the boat’s construction, was an attempt to recreate the original journey as much as possible. Brendan followed a “stepping stone” path along the western coast of Ireland, and into the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The first long stretch at sea was from Stornoway to the Faroe Islands, and in-between the crew was delighted by continual visits from pods of curious whales.

The Faroes are a potential match for two of the islands mentioned in the Navigatio : “The Island of Sheep” and “The Paradise of Birds.” As they approached the islands from the west, a storm in the Mykines Sound nearly forced Brendan to sail onward without landing, but they managed to maneuver north around Streymoy and land safely in the harbor at Tjørnuvík.

“More than any other people I had ever met, the Faroese understood the sea and showed their appreciation of the endeavor, and once again it was easy to detect the common bond which linked all seafarers in those hostile, northern waters.” The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, Chapter 7

Throughout the journey, there were a few points where it became necessary for crew members to leave the project, because of injury or circumstance, and thus new people were needed to join. On the Faroe Islands, Brendan Luck would have it, that Tim Severin met Tróndur Patterson.

Today, Tróndur Patterson is a well known artist in the Faroe Islands. He’s celebrated for his paintings, sculptures, and glass art that are inspired by life at sea. Severin described meeting Tróndur as an almost fateful occurrence, beginning with an invitation to his home in Kirkjubøur where he realized that the village had a historical place name related to St. Brendan.

“What is the name of the village?” I asked. “Kirkjubo,” she replied. “Does it have any other name?” “Yes, sometimes this place is called Brandarsvik.” The Brendan Voyage by Tim Severin, Chapter 7

Tróndur was quieter than the other crew members, but he brought a Faroese confidence to life at sea. He was adept at catching seabirds using whale blubber, and had tricks for staying warm in soaking wet clothes. He also had a sixth sense for a how to respond in stormy weather, which proved invaluable during the latter half of the trip. His spare time at sea was spent drawing, and the book is filled with his illustrations.

Not only was Patursson a vital crew member on Brendan , the fateful meeting kicked off a longer collaboration with Severin. Just two years after The Brendan Voyage was complete they were reunited aboard another ancient vessel to attempt The Sindbad Voyage .

From the Faroe Islands the crew sailed to Iceland, which St. Brendan called the “Island of Smiths” in an apparent description of a volcanic eruption. After bringing the boat ashore in Reykjavík, it was clear that Brendan had fared well. The leather hull was coated in barnacles, but without a single tear or hole. Still, after weeks of waiting for favorable weather, it was determined that the sea between Iceland and Greenland was simply too rough to continue; sailing season was over. They decided to wait until the following spring and docked Brendan in Iceland for the winter.

It had always been a good guess that the last leg of the trip would be the hardest, since the waters around Greenland and Labrador are sparsely inhabited and treacherous. That turned out to be true for Brendan , which nearly capsized in stormy weather and suffered damage to her leather hull while navigating through icebergs. It was touch and go at times, but of course, in the end, they were successful. On June 26, 1977 the voyage was completed by landing on Peckford Island, Newfoundland. In the documentary , which includes film from land-based crews as well as onboard footage, we see excited crowds awaiting the boat’s arrival and an impromptu parade celebrating the sailors’ accomplishment.

A successful voyage of course doesn’t prove that Irish monks came to North America a thousand years before Columbus, but it does show that they could have using the technology available to them. I find The Brendan Voyage fascinating for both its historical significance and the way it transpires across so many of my favorite islands. I’m also impressed by how well documented it was, the detail of the book and accompanying film. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about this adventure before, given that it concluded a full year before I was born. I guess I should consider it Brendan Luck that it finally crossed my path.

I’d suggest getting a physical copy of the The Brendan Voyage book , perhaps seeking out the original 1978 hardcover to ensure it has all of the photographs, maps, and illustrations by Tróndur Patursson.

Whether you read it or not, I highly recommend watching the documentary, which is available on YouTube in two parts and is just under an hour in total.

Finally, you might be interested in this Story Map about The Brendan Voyage , which includes accurate Google Maps showing the route across the North Atlantic.

• Tags boat , faroe islands , greenland , history , iceland , ireland , newfoundland , scotland

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Tim Severin's The Brendan Voyage

While cataloguing the Irish Folklife currach collection, I am always conscious that the boats I am working on are as far from their natural environment as they could possibly be. While most of them once worked the inshore fishing spots of the Irish west coast and rested out in the open when not in use, they are now safely stored indoors in environmentally controlled conditions that will ensure their preservation. As a result of their being stored indoors, both prior to and after the National Museum of Ireland acquired them, the skins of some of our boats have dried out and become hard and inflexible. Except for those who have taken to the water in a currach over a lengthy period, it is difficult to appreciate how their simple design and natural materials will perform when faced with the harsh truths of the sea and the elements. Part of my work on our planned boat gallery at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life is to talk to fishermen who worked, and still work, with currachs to understand the boat’s capabilities. Unfortunately, pandemic restrictions have prevented me from carrying out fieldwork and interviews but there are sources that provide first-hand accounts of experiencing travel by currach. Tim Severin’s book The Brendan Voyage is one of those sources.

Tim Severin (1940-2020). Photograph from www.timseverin.net.

Tim Severin was an explorer, author and historian who sadly passed away last month at the age of 80. Throughout 1976-1977, Severin led a small group of fellow explorers as they sailed the journey from Ireland west across the Atlantic Ocean to the Promised Land believed to have been completed by Saint Brendan in the sixth century. Saint Brendan had made the journey in a large currach made of a wooden frame and covered with tanned oxhides. Severin’s aim was to see whether Saint Brendan’s journey had been possible and to do that the group’s vessel would have to be as close a replica of the saint’s boat as possible which also meant using materials and building methods from that time.

The Brendan currach under construction in Crosshaven Boatyard showing its primitive wooden skeleton and hide skin. Photograph by Ian Yeomans.

The finished 36 foot boat, named Brendan, had a double gunwale of oak. Leather thongs were used to lash the ash frame together and the outside of the hull was then covered with 49 quarter of an inch thick oxhides that were stitched together and finished with a wool grease coating. Brendan’s two masts and oars were also made from ash and flax made suitable sails and ropes.

The Brendan currach. Photograph by Cotton Coulson.

The impressive construction of the boat was informed by thorough research, but how would she handle on the open waters of the rough Atlantic? Here, The Brendan Voyage gives us many practical and poetic descriptions of Brendan’s capabilities. Severin describes how Brendan’s light frame meant the boat could mould to the many waves that pounded its shell. The flexibility offered by the leather skin developed in Severin ‘a sense of being part of the sea’s motion’. He believed the leather survived so well in part due to the cold waters of the Atlantic.

The sides of the boat pumped gently in and out as though the Brendan were breathing

When Brendan was holed by drifting ice in the dangerous stretch between Greenland and Newfoundland, crew member George Molony had the unpleasant job of hanging over the gunwale in water temperatures as low as zero degrees centigrade in order to patch and stitch the hull while the boat kept sailing. Up to that point, ice had been glancing rather harmlessly off the curved hull of the currach.

Patches on the canvas skin of a National Museum of Ireland currach from Inis Oírr. © National Museum of Ireland.

The combination of Brendan’s medieval design and natural materials made it an extremely durable boat. Even during sea trials in advance of launching from Ireland, deliberate attempts to capsize Brendan were extraordinarily difficult. The currach could also be fast, when conditions were right. Brendan’s best 24-hour distance was an impressive 115 miles. Brendan reached her destination in June 1977. The large currach’s epic journey had proven that, in Tim Severin’s own words, ‘she was a true ocean-going vessel, and there was no longer any practical objection to the idea that Irish monks might have sailed their leather boats to North America before the Norsemen, and long before Columbus.’

My thanks to Afloat.ie for assistance in sourcing images.

Severin, Tim, The Brendan Voyage , London: Arrow Books Ltd., 1979.

Comments about this page

Hello Bill. The Brendan boat is on public display at Craggaunowen Castle in Co. Clare.

I just finished reading the Modern Library Exploration Edition of The Brendan Voyage and was amazed at the determination of the Crew through the entire process. I did wonder if the Brendan went to a museum after her adventure? It would have been a task to keep her in seaworthy condition, but as an old Sailor I hope she is still around. Great book overall.

Had the honor to meet Tim Severin onboard NatGeo’s Explorer May 2019 when he was a guest lecturer. He was engaging and his explorations so interesting. His contribution appreciated.

He will be missed by all.

Reading this brought back childhood memories of when the Brendan had to make an unscheduled stop at Ballywhoriskey along the Fanad coastline. I just submitted my words on it.

Thanks for your brief synopsis, it is a fascinating story. Mr Severin was a very brave man obviously a driven man but he must have done his research to a great extent to gather confidence for the journey. I love the sea but the thoughts of that challenge that they did with great success was truely remarkable. So proud of my name and of Mr. Severin. What a man!

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The Brendan Voyage Hardcover – January 1, 1978

• Book 1 of 6 Voyage
• Language English
• Publisher McGr aw-Hill Book Co.
• Publication date January 1, 1978
• ISBN-10 0340239514
• ISBN-13 978-0340239513
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGr aw-Hill Book Co.; First Edition (January 1, 1978)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0340239514
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0340239513
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
• #1,920 in Ship History (Books)
• #2,730 in Expeditions & Discoveries World History (Books)

About the author

Tim severin.

TIM SEVERIN has made a career of retracing the storied journeys of mythical and historical figures. He has sailed a leather boat across the Atlantic in the wake of the Irish monk Saint Brendan, captained an Arab sailing ship from Muscat to China, steered the replica of a Bronze Age galley to seek the landfalls of Jason and the Argonauts and Ulysses, ridden the route of the First Crusade from a castle in Belgium to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, travelled on horseback with the nomads of Mongolia to explore the heritage of Genghis Khan, sailed the Pacific on a bamboo raft to test the theory that ancient Chinese mariners could have travelled to the Americas, retraced the journeys of Alfred Russel Wallace, Victorian pioneer naturalist, through the Spice Islands of Indonesia aboard a native sailing vessel, identified the facts behind the story of Moby Dick the fighting white whale among the native peoples of the Pacific islands, and discovered the origins of the ‘real’ Robinson Crusoe in the adventures of a castaway stranded 300 years ago on a desert island off the coast of Venezuela.

As a historical novelist he has written the best-selling VIKING and HECTOR LYNCH trilogies. The Book of Dreams, the first volume of his SAXON trilogy was published in August 2012

His travels have been the subject of award winning documentary films and a major BBC documentary series, and are collected under the title TIME TRAVELLER. They have been screened on Discovery Channel, Sky Television, and National Geographic TV, and he has written regularly about his expeditions in the National Geographic Magazine. He has won the Thomas Cook Travel Book award, The Book of the Sea Award, a Christopher Prize, the Sykes Medal of the Society of Asian Affairs, and the literary Medal of the Academie de Marine. His replica boats have become museum exhibits. In l986 he was awarded the Gold Medal (Founder's Medal) of the Royal Geographical Society for his research into early voyages, and in 1987 the Livingstone Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. In 1996 he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, by Trinity College, Dublin, and in 2003 received an Honorary Doctorate from the National University of Ireland.

He lives in Co. Cork, Ireland.

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