FOOTSTEPS IN THE SNOW
You’ll never forget the song you hear on the new edition of the MARITIME IRELAND RADIO SHOW from next Monday.
We will be discussing Dockers, the workforce of ports, in which there is great culture, history and maritime tradition. There have been huge changes in the ports, brought by containerisation (which we will be discussing in a future programme) and modern technology, so that the dock labour force, the dockers, have been eradicated in many ports. But they should never be forgotten.
I first met dockers as a junior reporter on the EVENING ECHO in Cork… It’s now the Cork morning daily, THE ECHO, where I write a weekly MARITIME CORK column… In the course of that, in the past few weeks, I was writing about my first time reporting about the dock labour force and how, over the years, I have come to know and respect the community of men who formed that workforce and their families, a great community. I’ve also come to know the Dublin Dock Workers’ Preservation Society. For ten years it has been working on the preservation of the history and culture of the dock labour force on Liffeyside. What you are going to hear now is a remarkable story and a lovely song about dockers —– but women dockers
Declan Byrne, one of the leaders of the Dublin Society joins me with the story of a photograph, memories involving Irish Shipping – and the FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. The photograph about which the song has been written and the programme discusses and plays, is courtesy of the collection of thousands of photos assembled by the Dublin Dock Workers/ Preservation Society.
I hope you will join me on edition No.22 of the show to be issued next Monday, September 27.
And we’ll have the latest information about Wally the Walrus from ‘the journey home’.
