Joe O’Driscoll

Joe O’Driscoll has been in the boat-building business for all of his working life, as was his father before him. In this recording, Joe recalls that his father began work in a boatyard in Baltimore, and later moved into management of the Naval Dockyard at Haulbowline. He explains that the craft in earlier days were all wooden-framed. During the Second World War, Joe’s father purchased the ‘Ice Sail’, a three-masted sail training ship, and formed the South of Ireland Shipping Company. Through working with his father, Joe grew to love the trade of boat-building and later set up his own business in Ringaskiddy. Also, in this recording Joe talks about the drawing-loft, and the great Cork boat builders who served their time with himself and his father. Joe went on to manage a boatyard in Crosshaven, employing 45 people until 1973, and he speaks at great length about the Air India crash in the 1980s and recalls that the remains of the passengers and the debris were brought to another of his boatyards, the O’Driscoll Boat Building Company in Baltimore, which had been hired by the government for this purpose.