Liffeys Royal Blue

A small tribute to all men who worked on the Dublin Docklands. All the merchant sea men The thousands of sailors who came from all over the world to the Port. The coal merchant tanker and cargo ships Passenger ships tug boats ferries row boats Crane men button men casuals watchmen B&I stores sheds Gas company and lorry men Horse carts wagons and handcart men Bikes shovels hooks and hobnail boots men Penny dinner's characters tramps and nuns Wineo's pubs church priests and mothers And the light of a full moon on the calm Royal blue waters of the river Liffey. Hard battles fought Union rules Opposition crushed By a button Inside a buttercup Flower About the Author Married to fellow Dubliner Joan, they have seven children, Adrienne, Stephen, Barbara, Frankie, Paul, Deirdre and Alex Preface The men came marching down to the docklands side by side wearing shabby work clothes flat caps hobnail boots and hope' pushing bicycles and carrying their heavy iron shovels from the tenement houses and dockside flats towards Lime street and the Hanover and Misery hills on to the south Dublin docks.
Seeking work on the American 'Yankee tanker ships' Gas company coal boats and Merchant cargo ships' the grain stores and sheds of the 'British and Irish Steam Packet Company Ltd' known by all dockworkers seamen sailors union and button men as the B&I' and anywhere on the quay's that Dockers could get a few day's manual work. Some of the stories poems and prose like the dockworkers might be considered a bit rough and the ballads probably come in to the same category' so when you are finished reading this book of life on the Dublin docks' check between your toes for coal dust.