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The Brendan Voyage: Sailing to America in a Leather Boat to Prove the Legend of the Irish Sailor Saints (Modern Library Exploration) Paperback – April 4, 2000

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• Book 1 of 6 Voyage
• Print length 304 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Random House Publishing Group
• Publication date April 4, 2000
• Dimensions 5.24 x 0.67 x 7.93 inches
• ISBN-10 9780375755248
• ISBN-13 978-0375755248
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From the inside flap, from the back cover, about the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0375755241
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group; First Thus edition (April 4, 2000)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780375755248
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375755248
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.24 x 0.67 x 7.93 inches
• #85 in Travel Writing Reference
• #87 in Expeditions & Discoveries World History (Books)
• #141 in Travelogues & Travel Essays

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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Book Review: The Brendan Voyage

Posted by Ann Hoffner | Book Reviews , Dogwatch , Reviews

Good Old Boat  uses affiliate links and may earn a small commission if you purchase anything after clicking through one of them. This comes at no cost to you. 

The book, a remarkable tale of twentieth century survival at sea, is the work of a man who billed himself an explorer/traveler and earned degrees in history and geography at Oxford during which he traced Marco Polo’s caravan route on a motorcycle. He made a life of recreating and then writing/filming historical explorations.

Saint Brendan the Navigator’s original voyage is told in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis, a Latin text written somewhat after the fact that has been the subject of much speculation. Severin, along with his wife, a medieval scholar, thought the trip could have been possible and wanted to prove it. In his book he recounts the years spent acquiring materials (including 49 oxhides which had to be stitched together with flax) and details of boat design based on the traditional curraghs of the West Irish coast, which are still in use.

If Severin’s book were simply his descriptions of building the Brendan and recreating Saint Brendan’s voyage, I would not be writing this review. Instead, The Brendan Voyage is one of the more swashbuckling sea stories I’ve read, describing in vivid language gales along the North Atlantic “stepping-stone” route through the islands off Ireland and Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland to the coast of Newfoundland, a route Severin notes sailing yachts stay away from. Life on the 36-foot Brendan is degrees harder than anything most modern sailors encounter on the ocean. The longest stretch encountered by the four-person crew, fifty days, took them into the ice pack west of Greenland where there was a real risk of losing the boat and their lives, even though they had a life raft, the conditions being so extreme. As part of his proof that Saint Brendan could have done the trip, Severin points to several periods of climate warming in the medieval ages when there would have been little or no sea ice.

The reader develops a visceral sense of the open leather boat which had a sea motion “more like a life raft than a conventional vessel. She heaved and swayed, then bobbed, swayed and heaved…” Brendan was covered more or less successfully with tarps, and her sides were low enough that the crew were almost eyelevel with the whales that visited on many occasions.

Whether indeed Saint Brendan and his Irish monks made the voyage, Severin and the Brendan’s safe arrival in Canada shows that a leather boat could. For me it was an interesting revelation that Irish people explored far and wide on the northern seas, like the Polynesian navigators in the Pacific helping to expand the world long before the Vikings and the Europeans and showing my own ancestors to be great explorers.

The Brendan Voyage: Sailing to America in a Leather Boat to Prove the Legend of the Irish Sailor Saints , by Tim Severin (Modern Library, 2000)

About The Author

Ann Hoffner

Ann Hoffner and her husband, photographer Tom Bailey, spent 10 years cruising on their Peterson 44, Oddly Enough. They sold the boat in Borneo, returned to the US, and bought a Cape Dory 25 in Maine. Ann is a long-time contributor to sailing magazines, most often writing about weather events on passage and places she's been.

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Tim Severin: Writer and explorer best known for the Brendan Voyage

Remarkable adventure saga became international best seller and documentary film.

Tim Severin with sextant as the leather vessel the Brendan crossed from Ireland to North America.

Tim Severin

Born: September 25th, 1940

Died: December 18th, 2020

The explorer, writer and film maker, Tim Severin, best known for the Brendan Voyage where he sailed from Ireland to Newfoundland to prove that the 6th century Irish saint could have reached the Americas 900 years before Columbus, has died at his home in west Cork at the age of 80.

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Severin was born in Assam in India, the son of an English tea planter, but he was keen to dispel any notions of privilege when he spoke to The Irish Times in 1999. “We were very poor. The tea planters were not rich. The people who owned the plantations were rich but they were back in Scotland and England. My parents were poor.”

He was sent to boarding school in England at the age of seven and he later read history and geography at Oxford, and it was while he was still an undergraduate there at Keble College in 1961 that he sought to recreate his first ancient journey, retracing on motorbike Marco Polo’s 13th-century journey into Asia.

Six years later he followed in the footsteps of Spanish conquistadors and others sailing down the Mississippi river, but it was his decision to try to follow in the footsteps of St Brendan and cross the Atlantic in a leather-bound boat in 1976 that caught the public imagination.

Studying the Latin texts of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot) which dates back to at least 800 AD and tells the story of Brendan’s (circa 489-583), Severin sought to follow in the Irish saint’s steps.

“I recreated the boat of St Brendan and set out to see what would happen, and it was in that way that I discovered for me, the fascination of travel wasn’t just space but being able to go back in time, and . . . that new dimension opened for me on the Atlantic,” he later said.

Severin set about building as close a replica of St Brendan’s boat as possible, sourcing oak and ash from Glennan Brothers in Longford and tanned leather from 25 oxen from a firm called Josiah Crogan in Cornwall. He consulted harnessmaker John O’Connell from Bishopstown in Cork. Eleven metres long and open, St Brendan, built at Crosshaven Boatyard in Co Cork, was made from ash ribs and oak dunnels, lashed together with nearly 3km of leather thongs in 1,600 knots, wrapped with 49 traditionally tanned ox hides and sealed with wool grease to protect against the salt water.

As he surveyed the stitching of the leather hides on to the boat at Crossshaven Boatyard, Severin told RTÉ News: “I think the boat is as safe as the people sailing her – the question is ‘Can we sail her well enough?’ And that is the one of the really great questions – in the few months available to us for our trials, can we learn some of the lost arts of handling this type of boat?

“I wouldn’t be doing it unless I was confident that we could manage to do it – we will need weather luck and we do need favourable winds and we could do without any storms.”

On May 17th, 1976, Severin and his three fellow crew men, led by sailing master George Moloney from Dublin, rowed out of Brandon Creek on the Dingle Peninsula, the spot where St Brendan is reported to have departed almost 1,500 years earlier to begin what would prove a 7,200km epic journey.

Severin later explained in a documentary film he made about the voyage: “It was the first of my major projects, and it was to test whether the story of St Brendan, which was hugely well-known during the later Middle Ages, could have been true.

“The story was called the Navigation . . . about the voyage of St Brendan, who sets out with a party of monks in a boat made of leather, and has various adventures on the way, stops at various islands, and reaches a great land far in the West. Some people of course have said he reached North America.

“When I say that it was very well known, it was well known to the extent that Columbus, when he was half way across, actually stopped his little flotilla of three vessels and said, ‘This is about the area where we should find the islands which St Brendan visited.’ Columbus believed in the story and the islands were marked on the map.”

Severin and his crew sailed to the Aran Islands and from there to Iona, the Hebrides, the Faroe Islands (where they picked up artist, Trondur Patersson), before sailing on to Iceland and Greenland and from Greenland to Newfoundland.

He believed his recreation of the voyage helped to identify the bases for many of the legendary elements of the St Brendan story: the Island of Sheep, the Paradise of Birds, Crystal Towers, mountains that hurled rocks at voyagers, and the Promised Land.

On June 26th, 1977, some 13 months after leaving Brandon Creek, Severin and his crew sailed into Musgrave Harbour on Peckford Island in Newfoundland and were welcomed as heroes by the locals who fully appreciated the navigational feat.

But crew member Arthur Mangan from Howth related just how dangerous the voyage was aboard the open boat when he spoke to RTÉ News the day after they landed safely at Musgrove Harbour following the final stage of the voyage – a 52 day trip from Greenland.

“We had some pretty hairy times out there . . . off the east of Greenland, we had a storm of Force 11 or 12 with 40ft waves folding in on us in the boot – at one stage I was up to my knees in water – the boat was half full of water and we just had to get that water out as fast as possible.”

Severin published the story of his remarkable adventure in The Brendan Voyage, a book which became an international best seller that was translated into 16 languages. He also made a documentary film about the voyage.

“It was a project which completely changed my life . . . Because of Brendan, I was able to do a number of other projects of similar kind, mainly investigating legendary voyages by building a ship of the time and sailing,” he told the Irish Examiner in 2017.

Severin undertook voyages to retrace the journey of Sinbad the Sailor from The One Thousand and One Nights in 1980 and 1981, and the voyages of legendary figures from Greek mythology such as Jason and the Argonauts in 1984 and Ulysses in 1985.

He followed the knights of the First Crusade by riding on horseback to Jerusalem in 1987 and 1988. He rode with Mongol horsemen in 1990 to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of Genghis Khan. That story was published in 1993 as The Search for Genghis Khan.

A prolific author, Severin also wrote a series of historical novels, The Vikings Series about a young Viking adventurer, Thorgils Leiffson who leaves the frozen shores of Greenland and sails as far as Byzantium .

In addition, Severin wrote a series of novels about fictional 17th-century pirate, Hector Lynch, before turning his hand to a series of historical novels set in Anglo-Saxon England. He returned to Hector Lynch in his most recent work of fiction, Freebooter, which was published in 2017.

Severin, who died at his home in Timoleague in west Cork, is survived by his wife, Dee and daughter, Ida as well as his son-in-law James Ashworth and grandsons, George and Guy.

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• Book Reviews

The Brendan Voyage

Tim Severin

Edition reviewed: Arrow, 1978. ISBN: 0-09-919460-0

On St Brendan's Day in May 1976, Tim Severin and four companions embarked on an attempt to sail across the North Atlantic from Ireland to North America in a leather boat, recreating the (legendary?) voyage of St Brendan the Navigator. St Brendan lived during the sixth century, and is one of the most important Irish saints. The medieval text Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot) tells how St Brendan and a crew of 17 Irish monks built themselves a leather curragh and set sail west over the ocean in search of the Promised Land. After many colourful adventures and hardships, during which they encountered many strange lands and strange creatures, they arrived at their destination and then returned safely home. Tim Severin set out to test the hypothesis that this apparently fantastical journey could have been an account of a real voyage, or voyages, from Ireland to North America. Was such a journey possible with sixth-century technology? To find out, he decided to build a leather curragh using as nearly as possible the materials, designs and techniques available in St Brendan's time, and to try the journey for himself. This book is an account of the project, from idea to completion.

Curraghs are small, narrow, keel-less boats, still in use on the west coast of Ireland (or they were at the time of the Brendan project). Now made of canvas rather than leather and called 'canoes', they are used for inshore fishing and to ferry cows out to offshore islands for summer grazing. Reconstructing a sixth-century ocean-going curragh required designing the boat itself, based on expertise in naval architecture and a single illustration in a medieval manuscript, then identifying and then sourcing the right kind of leather, the right kind of grease for preserving and waterproofing it, the right kind of flax thread for ropes and stitching, and the right kind of wood for the strong but flexible frame. Not to mention finding craftsmen who knew how to make and work such materials. The saga of designing and building the boat is almost as complex and fascinating as the saga of the journey itself. Very often Tim Severin found himself contacting the last firm or person still in business with the traditional skills he needed - a generation later and the knowledge might have been lost and the project not possible at all.

The ship, named Brendan (what else?) was eventually completed and set sail from Brandon Creek (Brandon is the modern Irish spelling of Brendan) in May 1976. Learning to sail a keel-less boat in the vagaries of the Atlantic weather was the first challenge - Tim Severin describes Brendan as "skidding across the waves like a tea tray". The planned sailing route was to take them north along the west coast of Ireland, then north-west and north to thread through the Hebridean islands, north again to the Faroes, then west to Iceland, west again to Greenland, then south-west along the coast and the edge of the Arctic pack ice to Labrador and Newfoundland. This apparently roundabout route is known as the Stepping Stone Route, and has the benefit that it allows the journey to be broken up into a series of comparatively short 'hops' from one island to the next. As the prevailing winds in the Atlantic are west-to-east, this allows a sailing ship to wait in harbour for the occasional east-to-west weather systems that blow the right way for the journey. Several centuries after St Brendan's time, the Norsemen used the same route in their voyages across the North Atlantic.

This is an epic journey by any standards, even more so when undertaken in a small open boat, and Tim Severin's clear and straightforward prose style is ideally suited to telling the story. There is adventure aplenty, whether it be the thrilling and dangerous ride through the rock-strewn Mykines Sound in the Faroes in the grip of gale and tide-race, or the heart-stopping anxiety of trying to repair Brendan in the harsh Greenland Sea after the hull was holed by ice. There are also moments of serene beauty in encounters with the whales who frequently came to investigate Brendan , perhaps wondering if the leather boat was some strange relative of theirs, and in the starkly stunning volcanic landscape of Iceland, the towering sea cliffs of the Faroes, and the deadly loveliness of the pack ice.

The author's fellow sailors are deftly characterised, from the cheerfully irrepressible Edan, nicknamed "Gannet" because he would eat anything (except, as it turned out, dried whale blubber), to the easy-going Arthur Magan and the calm, cool-headed George. Perhaps the most memorable is the Faroese fisherman Trondur, who could catch fulmars at sea as a welcome addition to the crew's diet, harpoon a whale bigger than the boat, and fish for cod in 300 feet of water. (Who says the Norse legend of Thor fishing for the World Serpent was a myth?)

The Brendan 's voyage showed that a leather curragh built with materials and technology available to St Brendan was capable of crossing the North Atlantic. Indeed, some of the early medieval technology turned out to be superior to the modern alternatives available in the 1970s. A diet of cheese, salt pork, smoked sausage, oatmeal and hazelnuts - supplemented of course by Trondur's seabirds and cod - proved more palatable, more nutritious and better able to survive the conditions in an open boat than modern packaged and dehydrated foods. Woollen clothing kept the crew warmer than synthetic materials, with the exception of modern waterproof immersion suits (without which survival in the cold Greenland Sea would have been measured in minutes). Wood, leather and flax proved more versatile and durable than many modern materials, and could be readily modified or repaired in an emergency. Tim Severin sums up by saying, "…the modern equipment worked better until it broke, but then the traditional gear, clumsy and inefficient though it was, managed to survive the adverse conditions - and this is what mattered."

As well as testing out the technology, the voyage also provided possible explanations for some of the apparently fantastic incidents in the Navigatio . The Island of Smiths, where one of St Brendan's monks was killed by fiery demons, could be a description of the eruption of a submarine volcano and the volcanoes on the south coast of Iceland. The Island of Sheep is recognisable as the Faroes - the modern name is derived from the Norse Faer-Eyjaer, or "Sheep Islands" - and the pillar of floating crystal could be a stray iceberg. Even the giant fish the monks tried to land on, thinking it was an island, could be a (somewhat embellished) description of a close encounter with a whale, since whales were apparently attracted to a leather boat.

The Brendan voyage doesn't prove that St Brendan and/or other Irish seafarers did sail to North America in the sixth century. That would require finding an inscription on the North American seaboard saying "St Brendan was here", or words to that effect, capable of being securely dated on radiocarbon or stylistic grounds to the right period. The chances of such a discovery must be vanishingly small. But what it clearly shows is that they could have done it - and that if they did, it would have been a marvellous adventure, well worth remembering and retelling for 1500 years.

Exciting adventure, remarkable travelogue and a fascinating study of early medieval seafaring technology, all rolled into one.

Tim Severin

• Saxon Series

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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The Brendan Voyage: The Seafaring Classic That Followed St. Brendan to America: Across the Atlantic in a leather boat Paperback – 1 May 2005

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It has been described as the greatest epic voyage in modern Irish history.

Tim Severin and his companions built a boat using only techniques and materials available in the sixth-century A.D., when St Brendan was supposed to have sailed to America. The vessel comprised forty-nine ox hides stitched together in a patchwork and stretched over a wooden frame. This leather skin was only a quarter of an inch thick. Yet Severin and his crew sailed Brendan from Brandon Creek in Dingle to Newfoundland, surviving storms and a puncture from pack ice. The Brendan Voyage is Tim Severin’s dramatic account of their journey. This new edition of a book already translated into twenty-seven languages introduces a new generation of readers to an enduring classic.

Tim Severin didn’t prove St Brendan reached America, only that he could have, that it was possible. Brilliantly written, The Brendan Voyage conveys unforgettably the sensation of being in a small, open boat in the vastness of the North Atlantic, visited by inquisitive whales, reaching mist-shrouded landfalls, and receiving a welcome from seafaring folk wherever the crew touched land.

• Book 1 of 6 Voyage
• Print length 280 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Gill & Macmillan Ltd
• Publication date 1 May 2005
• Dimensions 13.34 x 1.91 x 21.59 cm
• ISBN-10 0717139271
• ISBN-13 978-0717139279
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gill & Macmillan Ltd (1 May 2005)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 280 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0717139271
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0717139279
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 1.91 x 21.59 cm
• 2,943 in Travel Writing (Books)
• 18,691 in Adventure Stories & Action
• 25,535 in Historical Fiction (Books)

About the author

Timothy 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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The Brendan Voyage

© 2024 M.H. Gill & Co. Unlimited Company

Adventures In Historyland

Adventures In The Land of History

The Brendan Voyage Review.

The Brendan voyage by Tim Severin E-book Review. Published by Endeavour Press $4:79 http://www.amazon.com/The-Brendan-Voyage-ebook/dp/B00B4XLT4I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375089193&sr=8-1&keywords=the+brendan+voyage+endeavour+press

Few books can claim to tell the story of a true Adventure in Historyland like the Brendan Voyage. Tim Severin’s record of his epic 1976-1977 crossing of the Atlantic in a small leather boat, to recreate the fabled voyage of St Brendan the Navigator, who was supposed to have landed in America before the Vikings.

The subject is a great mix of adventure and history that will appeal to Traveler’s , historians, adventurers, archeologists and people who enjoy a story well told. It’s a modest size single volume of 234 pages with some helpful appendixes at the back, illustrated by seven interesting pictures. The cover is nice and grabbing, with a great picture of the leather boat Brendan, crossing a troubled sea.

Severin’s quest to research and build the Brendan will be familiar to those of us who are obsessed with trying to tease out the mysteries of History from their long established hiding places. It starts with a quick dive into the adventure, then slams on the brakes and builds back up, but there is no vile tedium, just the loving detail of someone who is telling the story of something he has gone through. The part about the building of the Brendan is fascinating, and the whole book is pervaded with Severin’s deep knowledge of his subject.

His prose is crisp and clear with a lively imagery and turn of phrase that is not at all pretentious, rather the whole takes on the spirit of a modern saga , rattling along with the enthusiasm and attention to detail of a natural story teller, mixed with a quasi romantic flair and sense of timing which betrays Severin’s talents as a novelist. It is an uncomplicated and largely uncluttered formula, which first and foremost tells the story by showing you what happened instead to trying to explain it, giving the whole an immediacy, and fast flowing narrative that is most attractive.

One of the best parts of the tale is the description of the Brendan’s crew. Each individual is set apart from the other to be as instantly identifiable as a character from Robin Hood or King Arthur. They take on a wonderful reality that is at the same time almost too good to be true, making you wonder from time to time whether you are reading about real life people or something from an ancient legend. If this book had been a work of fiction then it would have been a testament to the imagination and skill of the writer, but any writer would have been hard pressed to imagine the tale, of luck, courage, comradeship, skill, bravery, considerable privation and at times just down right insanity that plays out across the book.

Severin is an experienced seaman, but don’t be afraid that you’re going to get lost in allot of technical jargon, it’s very likely you won’t get everything, but even the most confirmed land lubbers will be able to gather what is going on.

Their encounters with birds and Wales are breathtaking and unreal. The welcoming nature of the islanders they encountered is warm and comforting and the terror of the Greenland ice flows brings home just how dangerous the expedition was, it’s all here. Honestly I expected to find monotony, but though when becalmed Brendan’s crew suffered as much as any sailor does from boredom, the nature of the boat in question inclined to craft a story, more of constant activity and watchfulness than drudgery. Were in instances that to any other modern ship would have been crushingly boring to read about, when transposed to the leather hull of the boat that, by the end of the book even I had come to love, makes you feel that there weren’t many dull moments on the Brendan Voyage.

This book will be an eye opener for those people not acquainted with the tales of the Irish monks that Christianised Britain. For it shows what type of men they were. Men of great faith, learning and piety, but also men of great skill, determination and bravery, whose scholarly and spiritual legacy often overshadows their tales of physical endurance and strength. I was struck by the great amount of luck “Brendan Luck” as Severin calls it, that accompanied the mission. Tough scrapes were turned into triumphs by sudden twists of fate, mistakes salvaged by the miraculous appearance of fishing boats and navy patrols, which needless to say the Irish monks could not have benefitted from, making the original premise of the voyage, just that much more amazing.

This book is a testament to the bravery and skill of the crew of the modern Brendan who went into the unknown of long lost endeavours, and also to the mysterious monks who braved the forbidden seas and treacherous shores who distantly call back to us to believe their story, through their manuscripts and illuminated chronicles. In a way this book is a modern echo of their voices, carried far across time and sea, in a small leather boat called Brendan.

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The Brendan Voyage

by Bradley Angle | Sep 2, 2019

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Atlantic navigators: the brendan voyage.

Tim Severin

• Extra Reading

A first-hand account of a harrowing voyage from the south-west coast of Ireland across the North Atlantic in a small open boat skinned with ox hides. 

Tim Severin and his companions set out to test whether the legendary voyage of the 6th century Irish monk, St Brendan, was based on the real life adventures of early medieval seafarers. For more information on Tim Severin visit his website www.timseverin.net

Next lecture in the series is The Mariners' Instruments

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Thank you for coming along to listen to me today. What I’m going to talk to you about is a voyage that I made in 1976/1977. It took two sailing seasons. It wasn’t intended that way; the idea was actually to do it in a single season. It was the first of my major projects, and it was to test whether the story of St Brendan, which was hugely well known during the later Middle Ages, could have been true. The story was called theNavigatio. It was about the voyage of St Brendan, who sets out with a party of monks in a boat made of leather, and has various adventures on the way, stops at various islands, and reaches a great land far in the West. Some people of course have said that he reached North America. Well, I made the voyage really to test whether that was physically possible. When I say that it was very well known, it was well known to the extent that Columbus, when he was half way across, actually stopped his little flotilla of three vessels and said, “This is about the area where we should find the islands which St Brendan visited.” Columbus believed in the story and the islands were marked on the map. So I made the Brendan voyage to see if this could have been possible, and researched the sort of vessel that might have been made. What I’m going to do is I’m going to run the documentary film of that voyage, and during this, I’m going to stop it and comment and so forth on how it’s going.

A hundred miles out in the North Atlantic, a small open boat runs for her life before a force nine gale, a boat from another century, a boat made of leather. On board, five men risk cold, discomfort and their lives. Their purpose? To pursue a legend.

I wanted to follow the route from Ireland, round the Hebrides, the Faroes, to Iceland, to North America. The reason for that was that Brendan had many adventures on the way. He stops at different islands, they land on the back of a whale, they have all sorts of episodes which seem to be utterly fantastic. There had been previous attempts to replicate a Brendan voyage, but by going southward, which is the downhill, easy route, from the west of Ireland down to the West Indies, which is the route that small boats can make with the greatest of ease. I wanted to go the difficult way, and the first thing to do was to try and make it accurate.

…past many other islands to a vast land far across the sea. Could he have reached America 900 years before Columbus? To test this theory, in a replica of his boat, was the object of the Brendan voyage. The early Christian Irish were famous as –

Now, I live in County Cork, in South-West Ireland, and it’s very unusual to have pictures of early boats. I have a picture of one called the Bantry Stone. This was carved we think about 700 or 800AD, and it shows four men rowing in a sort of a funny banana-shaped thing, with the fifth man, who sits in the stern, with a steering paddle. Over the top of the steering paddle is a cross. We think that might have symbolised the hand of God guides the navigators. This would have been carved, almost certainly, by Irish monks, and it is, as I say, really unusual to have pictures of early boats. That was one of the guidelines I used. Another guideline would be the type of boat, which is a descendent boat. So there’s the ethnography and also the historical evidence. Now, the ethnography is really this: it’s the descendent boat, which is the currach. This is a Dingle currach, and it’s rowed again, in this case by four men. There’s no steersman.

Both currach and carving point to the shape of St Brendan’s boat, but the legend said it was skinned with hide, weak stuff to face an ocean. Yet testing –

Now, this was a very important part. The whole idea was to get the materials testing done properly. I had an enormous amount of help from the British leather industry. They had a research organisation and they tested the different types of leather. It was quite easy for me to know what sort of leather would have skinned St Brendan’s boat. The story of St Brendan says he skins the boat with hides tanned in oak bark. Interestingly, the early scholars never translated the Latin correctly. When the word “oak” came in, they thought it was something to do with oak being used for the structure of the boat, but actually what the Latin text says is that this is oak bark tanned leather. Oak bark tanning was the type of tannage that was used at the time. We knew that because in the museums of Ireland you find bible satchels contemporary with St Brendan, leather satchels, a bit like briefcases, made by the monks to carry their most precious belongings, the holy texts. That told us the type of leather, the thickness of the leather, and it also told us what they used for stitching. They used flax. That even told us the type of stitching. It was amazing to have physical evidence of really what their technology was like. So the tests showed that the leather made in St Brendan’s day, provided it was soaked in grease, was going to stand up to the ocean better than many modern tannages.

There was one place that still made oak bark leather. Actually, there were two, but this was the key one. It was a firm called Josiah Crogan in Cornwall, and they still made leather with oak bark tannage.

For their boats, the Irish wrote how they then dressed their leather with grease, but they did omit one detail. Greased ox hides stink.

The Crogan family were absolutely extraordinary. I asked them to obtain hides from small cattle because cattle were obviously smaller in the early Middle Ages. It took months and months to tan the leather in the correct way, and throughout the process, we tried to be exact with the technology. The curious thing was that as the voyage unfolded, it turned out that what we were depending upon was the accuracy of our materials, and that the earlier materials were exactly what we needed for the project.

So we had the ox hides, and we tested the boat on the River Shannon. Although it had taken about four years to prepare all this, as usual, everything was a bit of a rush.

Now, even the timber had to be right. We knew that there was oak growing in Ireland at the time, but the most suitable timber for the curved ribs of the boat was ash. It is the flexible timber, and again, I went to the experts. This is another of the skilled people without whom this would not have been possible. It’s a man called Paddy Glennan in County Longford, a timber trading family, and I went out with him to cut down the ash trees. He’s just marvellous! He tells me what part of the ash tree I should use.

To build his replica of St Brendan’s boat for the modern voice, historian and explorer Tim Severin had devoted several years to a close study of the early Irish, their voyages, boats and building materials.

Paddy Glennan: What you want, especially for masts, you want something that will be very subtle. This is what you want. The north side of it, the rings are a little bit narrower. They’re closer together here than they are on the south side, the sunny side, so for any of the better quality pieces, we will try and take the north side.

Paddy Glennan said,…It’s from the north side of the ash tree that we cut the hurly sticks.” He said if you want really good hurly sticks for playing hurly, they must be carved from the north facing timber of an ash tree. It’s the sort of information which made this whole project, as it turned out to be, the success that it was.

So timber, flax, which came from the linen people up in the North of Ireland, we assembled them all down near where I live in County Cork, and we made out the shape of the boat. The naval architect involved was a man called Colin Moody, who is the real guru of replica vessels today. You’ll be familiar with other of his vessels, like the vessel that went to Canada; he does a lot of sail training ships. Colin did the designs. He has this wonderful phrase: he said he can do all the technical aspects, but what is important is, he said, is listen to the craftsmen. In County Cork, we began to assemble, if you like, or make our vessel.

Oak dunnels, like the rib cage of a stranded whale. The loose frame would be lashed together with leather thongs. Here, George Molony joined the project, Tim’s first choice for crew, as sailing master.

The job was back-breaking. Day after day, they crouched inside the wooden skeleton, poking and groping for slippery strips of leather, then heaving the knots tight until their muscles ached. Two miles of leather secured the frame, with 1,600 knots.

The ultimate key person in the construction of this vessel was: John O’Connell, harness maker. Now, as I said, we had bible satchels, we saw how the monks used to stitch leather. They were highly skilled. I needed to find somebody who knew how to work leather, very thick leather. I went round saddlers and so forth, and they said it’s not a saddler’s job, it’s a harness maker’s job. Harness makers are very few and far between.

I was watching television, and Roy Strong was talking about coronations and so forth – he’s got a book on that – and they showed the coronation coach. The man who refurbished the straps and the leather harness for the coronation coach was this man, John O’Connell. As I went round trying to find a harness maker I went to the royal saddlers here and I went to saddlers in Ireland, and they said, “No, no, no, you must find a harness maker,” and people referred to John O’Connell. They said he comes from Ireland, but he’s left the trade, and we don’t know where to find him. I hunted around, and I couldn’t find anybody, and I actually had started the construction of the boat in Crosshaven in County Cork, and I still didn’t have someone to show us how to sew the leather.

I heard of a saddler, a retired saddler, in Cork city. I went to his place, tracked him down, and he came to the door. He was obviously well past doing any sort of work of that type. Just at the end, I said, “Have you ever heard of John O’Connell?” He said, “Yes, he’s living up on the housing estate over in Bishopstown.” So I went up to Bishopstown, and there was a modern housing estate. I stopped somebody there, and I said, “Do you know John O’Connell?” They said, “Ah, we’ve got several O’Connells here.” I said, “Well, this’ll be fellow with huge arms.” “That’ll be John at Number 8.” I went there, and John came down. John is now deceased, but his knowledge of leather working was absolutely unsurpassed.

To stitch the outer side of hide, they used threads of hand-rolled flax, another raw material from St Brendan’s day. To show them how came John O’Connell, harness maker. O’Connell also oversaw the cutting of the 49 ox hides needed, fitting them neatly round the contours of the wooden frame.

John O’Connell: …have to straighten that right up to nothing there. The next hide will come over in line with this, towards the stitching here…

And that gives a double stitch.

He was absolutely extraordinary! John oversaw what we were doing, he showed us how to do it. The difficult bits, he would do himself, and if anything was wrong, he would say “Rip it!” We could work for a whole day, and he’d come with a little half-moon knife, and he would just slash all the stitches and say, “Not good enough! You’re going to depend upon it.” He was quite extraordinary.

We worked throughout the winter. The last thing we did was we spread wool grease on the hull. The leather itself had been soaked, had been impregnated with wool grease, and we had the boat ready – it took us about four to five months to actually build her, and in a bitterly cold January day, she was ready to be launched at Crosshaven. To launch such a vessel, we had the Bishop of Kerry. We launched her. She’d never been out to sea before – we took her up to the place where traditionally St Brendan started from, on the coast of Kerry.

We went to the creek from which Brendan is alleged to have set out with his party of monks. I had a crew for this, very typical West Kerry people. We had as our sail mark the Irish cross, on yellow canvas oilskin, so that if people were looking for us from the air, we would be visible.

We had no escort vessel. We were filmed from a fishing boat nearby. The vessel, which is 36 feet long and has just got 18 inches in the water, easily rolls on top of the waves. I have to say, we were pretty scared starting out. Absolutely no keel underneath her – sort of like a leather banana. We ran immediately into heavy weather.

Brendan was put to the test, and was hit by gales. Now, five men’s lives depended on her sound construction and their own endurance.

At the time, this seemed to be very poor luck for us, but as it turned out, it was the right thing to have happened, because we ran into a gale on the first night, which blew us way out to sea. It scared us, but it showed that the boat could survive the gale. We were blown back to the land, and we’d learned our lessons. In those days, if you had stuff which was rubbish, you tended to throw it overboard. I had made a mistake. I had thought that the food we should take would be the sort of food that mountaineers would use. Our plastic bag split, the sea water came in, and all that lovely dehydrated food re-hydrated and was completely useless. Our leather boat, the medieval boat, had held up, but our modern food had not. We had learned a few lessons about sailing on a medieval boat.

…out of sight of land until then and the first time she really went out of sight of land was as the victim of quite a strong gale. I made certain mental notes: one of the most important was never to be without the stores, and particularly the water, to face at least two weeks, because one can be driven offshore two weeks away from getting land and fresh water again, and with a medieval boat, you have to have that leeway of surviving.

The lessons were, this boat would look after us, but it was going to be cold and wet and very, very cramped. We had a little shelter, almost like a poly-tunnel that we’d rigged up.

Our clothing, incidentally, is very traditional. It’s actually woollen clothing. We found that to be the most satisfactory. We tried some of the modern materials – we weren’t trying to replicate how the monks lived. They were a lot tougher than us, and we were testing the vessel and not ourselves.

George Molony, the sailing master, was the most experienced of the sailors on board, and I’d asked him to look after the sailing of the vessel.

…climb over everything. You know, there were no gangways, nothing like that.

With cramp, came sickness, as Brendan’s supple hull flexed to the shape of each wave.

In the first couple of weeks, I was very sick because she rolls incredibly. The stink of the hides didn’t help at all.

But stomachs soon settled, and as they sailed north, the crew learned the measure of their boat’s performance. George Molony, sailing master.

GM: We were very fortunate. We had some very nice winds for the next few days when we reckoned that we were achieving a height of perhaps nine knots.

If the wind was in our favour, we could make nine knots. Now, in a modern cruising yacht, we’d be very happy with that. For those who are technically minded, Brendan could not sail upwind. She could sail across the wind, and since this series is about navigation, the simplest way of sailing a vessel like this, which doesn’t go against the wind, is when the wind’s against you, you lower the sail and you drift slowly backwards, and when the wind is sufficiently favourable, you hoist sail and you progress at about three or four times the speed that you went backwards. So eventually, you will get there. Now, this is perhaps not a modern attitude towards sailing, but it worked very well, and we really made good progress up the west coast of Scotland, and at that point, from the Hebrides, we started to head out towards the Faroes.

We were then filmed from a little rubber dingy which I subsequently obtained. We were sailing north from the Hebrides towards the Faroes. You can see our route. We’ve gone through the Hebrides, heading up to Faroes. We know that the Irish monks got to the Faroes. In fact, the place we landed is called Brendaswick, which is Brendon’s Creek, in the Faroes. In the story of St Brendan, he comes to an island called the Island of Sheep, and the Island of Sheep translated into Faroese is Faroes. It was the most dramatic of our landfalls, because the tides run through Faroes. In the very narrow channels between the islands, the tides can run at six and seven knots. It’s like a fast flowing river. We could see the clouds that built up over the land. Medieval navigation depended a huge amount upon eyesight, watching where wild birds are flying, where your sea birds are flying, looking for clouds that build up over land, and we came in to Faroes, and believe me, it was terrifying!

…failed to clear the tides, Brendan swept into Faroes at more than ten knots. From his Island of Sheep, St Brendan said he could look across a narrow sound to an island called the Paradise of Birds. Today, the Faroes are as famous for their sheep as ever, and sea birds still nest there in vast colonies.

When we left Faroes, we had a new crew member on board who’s been on every one of my maritime expeditions since. He’s a Faroese islander called Trondur Patursson, and he showed us how to live off the sea. He’s cutting up little bits of whale blubber and throwing them into the water behind the becalmed boat. He then takes a little piece of whale blubber and he puts it on a hook, and streams the hook out behind.

…using it to bait a hook.

The sea birds’ greed was Brendan’s gain.

For those of you who are interested, the sea bird, that is fulmar. It tastes a bit like pigeon. Most sea birds, seagulls, are slightly like pigeon to taste, and they’re excellent. On subsequent voyages with Trondur, I’ve eaten gillimot. There is a famous story – Brendan lands on the back of a whale, which he mistakes to be an island. The scholars have said, “Oh, this is the story you get in Sinbad the Sailor. It’s an old chestnut of voyaging stories.” Those scholars have never been out in the North Atlantic in a skin boat which is a little bit like a whale, because guess what, the whales all come up out of curiosity and visit you, and literally, day after day after day, we were being visited by the great whales. They’d come up right alongside, and wallow there, looking at us. I think they really thought that this whale-shaped boat covered in skin with a rib inside was another sort of curious whale, and I think that the Irish did see vast numbers of whales and that this is how that story developed.

Then, as now, to a leather boat bobbing in his sea. Crouched in his tiny berth, Trondur spent every free moment sketching the daily scenes around him.

I’m happy to say that in the many years since that voyage Trondur is now perhaps Scandinavia’s most respected maritime artist. He’s really a remarkable artist.

We did have a little radio on board. It didn’t work very well. I occasionally managed to make contact, bless them, with the Icelandic Coastguard, for whom I retain to this day a very soft spot. They sent out a plane to look for us, and they spotted us. We’d come from Faroes at the rate of about 120 miles every 24 hours, which is very good going. We were having favourable winds, and that brought us to Reykjavik, where the literary sources tell us the Irish had arrived, because when the Norse came there, they said they found that the “papers”, the fathers, had been there before them.

…flocked to Reykjavik’s harbour in welcome, for a boat from their own distant past.

Rather nicely, I was up in Iceland about a year ago, and they have a national museum, which shows the Norse and the history of Iceland, and the first big photograph as you go in is the photograph of Brendan. It is really nice that it’s so recognised by them.

We took the boat out of the water. The hull had got barnacles and algae, but we scraped off the grease to check the leather, and it was really in superb condition. Nothing had deteriorated. The weather window had closed. I stayed up in Iceland, we all stayed there, for about five weeks. It was a very, very bad ice year. The ice around Greenland was very thick, it extended out a long way, it was not going to break, so I decided – I’m actually a very cautious person – to leave the boat here. After all, the Irish and St Brendan spends years on his voyage. They made stopovers. The Icelandic Coastguard put Brendan in their aircraft hanger, and we came back there the next season. But Iceland conforms to the old tale:

The Irish monks came to a slag-covered island, whose fierce inhabitants flung burning coals at them. The sea hissed, the air was filled with stench, while the island blazed like a furnace. To those in search of Brendan’s path, volcanic Iceland provides the same scenes to this day.

So we began the second sector. Trondur carried on board what we then took as food, smoked and dried meat. If that falls into the bilge and the waves come over, you can still eat it. We adapted pretty much. The more and more we experienced on our voyage, the further back we went to the technology of the time as being the most suitable for us. It was very straightforward – we just set up the H-frame and put on the steering oar. We loaded up with water, and the four of us set out.

The four were Arthur Magan, George Molony, Trondur Patursson and myself. We knew that this was going to be the real test of the boat, because we’re going out from Reykjavik, out into the Denmark Strait, heading for Greenland, which is notorious for bad weather. We had been in one storm off the Irish coast – let’s call it a heavy gale – we knew the boat would survive, but with the conditions in the Denmark Strait, it was inevitable that we were going to get really bad weather. It’s a curious feeling, very reflective…we’d committed ourselves, so there wasn’t really any turning back.

The Icelandic Coastguard said that they would come out with their patrol ships to the 200 mile limit, and they’d try and visit us from time to time, but after that, we were very much on our own. We were very conscious that our real risk was of capsize or being swamped, and in those waters, the survival time is about three minutes.

Everything was okay to begin with. We settled back down into our routine. Trondur went back to his drawing. I mentioned we had a little rubber boat at this stage. It was like a little bathtub, which allowed me to do the filming, with a clockwork camera. It was all pretty basic technology, I have to say. The whales reappeared, almost immediately, just a day out of Iceland, our companions returned, and Trondur of course goes back to feeding us.

It was only a lull before the inevitable foul weather. Nine days out, by St Brendan’s day, the weather would show a different face, as the crew huddled in mid-ship to celebrate.

Well, it’s a toast to St Brendan on St Brendan’s day – St Brendan!

At 200 miles, Brendan passed beyond the protective care of Iceland’s Coastguard patrol. Within 48 hours, the weather began to deteriorate rapidly.

The radio on board Brendan was actually powered by some little solar panels. Again, they were fairly primitive solar panels. It was a high frequency radio. We didn’t have the possibility of satellite communication, as you would use today. That solar power gave me I think 60 seconds of transmission a day. The Icelanders and the Canadians and the Danes, on the tip of Greenland, their radio operators listened out for us, but essentially, I think we made contact with shore stations only three times during the next 50 days. We were very much on our own. The weather did deteriorate, and Trondur, still kept fishing.

By May 24th, Brendan was running into gales rising to force nine. The sail was shortened to a bare minimum. The crew put on full survival kit.

The real risk on Brendan was undoubtedly capsized. There were a couple of nights when things really were very difficult. We got swamped. The first occasion, I was actually down sleeping in my sleeping bag, and there was a thump and I was floating in the water, and so was George, who was my watch companion, and you just get out and you throw the water, in the darkness, back out into the sea. But I think the worst night was the second night. It was very dark. We were streaming ropes behind us to slow the boat down. All we could do was run downwind and use a tiny sail, and let the waves come past you. That night – and the night-time was the worst part – you could hear each wave coming up behind you, and it just did sound like an express train, and it would just come out of the darkness, the whole boat would lurge and go screaming down the face of the wave, and you just had to keep the boat level and hope she neither capsized nor got swamped. I have to say that it was…an experience I think which set for all of us a level of fear. It was every 15, 17 seconds, like being almost in a car crash. The boat survived. She didn’t roll over. Then of course, we checked to see if she was falling apart, and in fact, she was fine. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the stitching. Everything was all right.

I remembered the Roman army used to hold leather shields over their heads. I rigged the leather as shields to stop the waves breaking into the vessel. Obviously you can’t film in the height of the storm. It’s far too dangerous. But Brendan did survive. Subsequently, I was told that the Icelandic Coastguard were reporting force ten in the area. I don’t think we were ever in anything as bad as that, but in a very small boat, when you get between the really big waves, the wind’s going right over the top. It’s the waves that matter, not the strength of the wind.

George repaired a sail afterwards. He was repairing away, and you heard the “whoo” – it was obviously a whale breathing out. He looks over, and there’s a sperm whale. Subsequently marine biologists, said, “Sperm whales shouldn’t be up there at that time.” I said, “We were seeing whales the whole time.” They looked at the pictures and said, “Well, that’s two large bull sperm whales,” in an area where according to the marine biologists at that time they don’t exist. However, having seen the footage they said – “Ah, well, now we know that they do swim up there.”

I tried to contact Greenland. The Danes maintain a radio station at Prince Christian Sound. I couldn’t get through. Our antenna height was too low, and we were pretty much on our own. I had been told that the ice was very bad around Greenland, so that instead of landing in Greenland, I made the decision, we’d head around Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland, and try and go direct to North America, where we were turned round by the gale. We ran into this characteristic of the North Atlantic, the heavy fog, dense fog, and it’s what St Brendan encountered.

On his journey, St Brendan was asked by one of his companions, “Do you know what this fog is?” “This fog encircles that land you’ve been seeking these seven years.” Was the fog through which the modern Brendan now sailed coincidence, or was it further proof of ancient Irish knowledge of these icy waters?

Severe weather had battered another tiny ocean traveller. One day, a small migrating bird dropped exhausted on Brendan’s deck.

Now, at this stage, we were past the tip of Greenland. We’d had no contact with the outside world. I had an emergency radio beacon, which I switched on, thinking that this might help people locate us. What happened instead, there was no response to that, and a few days later, the fog lifted, and we saw a sight that I didn’t anticipate and I didn’t like the look of, which was the edge of the Labrador pack ice to the north of us. The Labrador pack was much further south than usual, and we were sailing along its edge. The best thing about the pack ice is that you get favourable winds, from our point of view, along the ice edge. I couldn’t contact land, so I decided to sail along the ice edge and head for Newfoundland, because Labrador was impossible. We headed on, thinking that all was well. We were about four-fifths through our journey.

The crew relaxed, in anticipation of the long journey’s end. They had barely 200 miles to go.

Suddenly, in the small hours of June 18 th, came a sickening rasp that no one at first recognised. Brendan had run into ice. The very winds that swept her home had broken the pack to the north and blown it across her path.

That was the strangest thing. In the middle of the night, when you were out in the ocean, and that thin leather hull hit something. I thought of course initially it was flotsam. I can remember scrambling out in a panic, switching on the torch, and this is what we saw. In the dark, we had sailed into the pack, and we had no choice. We simply had to sail on through that. We had to wriggle our way through. There was one advantage. The pack ice muffled the waves, so we were no longer in fear – there was a very strong wind blowing – of capsize. That’s the best thing about pack ice, you don’t have these huge waves, and we pushed our way through.

Throughout the day, Brendan staggered forward through the same ice that a week before had sunk a steel icebreaker nearby, yet here was she, a medieval boat of leather.

After 14 hours, the danger seemed to be lessening, when suddenly, Brendan struck a submerged piece of ice. She gave a peculiar shudder – she was holed.

The second worst night was actually having to keep her afloat. We knew she was punctured. The best moment of the entire voyage was the next day. I had been pumping that night and there was phosphorescence in the water. I was right against the hull of the boat pumping away when I saw a flicker of phosphorescence outside and it was repeated inside the semi water logged boat and I thought to myself there must be a connection around this area. And so at dawn I crawled around the boat looking and believe me the best moment of that entire voyage, and it was not the end of it, was actually locating the puncture and realising that it was close enough to the surface, although it was underwater obviously, for someone with long arms to reach it. That person was George.

“A spare net was cut. Plunging raw hands into the frozen sea George starting stitching from the outside. If he failed Brendan was done for. Inside the hull Trondur passed the net back. Three frozen hours later Brendan was saved and water tight again”.

That pack ice had sunk an ice breaker to the north of us two days before and the fact that we were such a small boat meant we either slid up on to the pack ice or we bounced off it. When we were finally punctured it was because we had hit some very hard ice. We were able to repair the boat and again I think back to John O’Connell who showed us how to stitch leather properly. It was his knowledge that contributed to our survival. So we sailed on, the Canadian Coastguard came out to their two hundred mile limit met us with an ice breaker. We sailed onto our destination.

“And the legend had looked more like the truth with every mile. On her last morning at sea her old friends the whales surfaced alongside her in a dance of farewell”.

“In 1977 the leather boat Brendan reached the New World at 8 pm on June 26th on the shore of Peckford Island off the Newfoundland Coast ”.

“She reached the shore. She had nothing more to prove”.

The purpose was simply to show that the technology of the Irish monks was capable of reaching North America. It was a lovely moment because it was a fishing community and word had spread that we were coming to their harbour. They all came down and we were towed into a place called Musgrove Harbour on the Coast of Newfoundland and they got themselves a traffic jam on the way down to the harbour. It was lovely. The fishing people were just so enthusiastic. Many of the people that live that area are descendents of immigrants from County Waxford and they speak with Waxford accents and have the Waxford songs. We were towed in with great jubilation. We were very exhausted. We had been 50 days on Brendan since we left Reykjavik and it was a great moment although we were so tired at that stage.

“Well are you satisfied with everything you’ve done?”

“Pretty much so, I think we’re all just overwhelmed that it’s worked out so well”.

“Tell me what was the worst part of your trip?”

“I think we probably each one of us all have our worst parts but for me it was when we ran into some very heavy weather between Iceland andGreenland but really heavy weather in the Denmark stretch. We were in it for about 24 hours but we were lucky and the boat looked after us”.

“And you did strike some ice that punctured her?”

“Yes we were about 24 hours in the pack and just as we were getting out of the pack we were unlucky and got nipped. A sharp corner of what must have been some old ice punctured the hull and of course inevitably it was a gale and inevitably we had night coming on. We had a pretty dismal night pumping her out until dawn and then George and Trondur managed to get a patch stitched on her in mid ocean which you couldn’t do with anything other than a leather hull”.

“Did it leak other than that?”

“No we were actually taking less than eight gallons a day”.

“Is there any sign at all of it deteriorating after all these months?”

“Absolutely none and believe me if we had been in a wooden boat in the ice we would have just been crushed”.

“Does this satisfy you that the Christian Irish probably did come across here?”

“It satisfies me that they had the technical knowledge and the ability to get here”.

“Thank you very much and welcome again”.

So I stress we only showed that it was possible and not that it was done.

Brendan is now in a Museum in County Mayo not far from Shannon Airport, Trondur is now a well-known artist, George has been delivering yachts for years, Arthur lives in Ireland and I’ve gone on to do other expeditions, all the maritime ones with Trondur as a companion. Bringing things right up to date for you, and giving a slight plug, because I have had this experience of those waters I have actually become a historical novelist writing a series called Viking in which, should you ever read any, you will recognise these conditions.

© Tim Severin, Gresham College, 3 October 2005

This event was on Mon, 03 Oct 2005

Tim Severin was a British explorer, historian and writer, noted for his work in retracing the legendary journeys of historical figures. He undertook many voyages...

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