Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 19 June 2014
“Technical Memories (Part 79) – A Field of Enterprise”
The new airport in Cork symbolises our purpose and will help us in our desire to have the world see us as a modern progressive state, coming rapidly and fully into line with all others in modern equipment and facilities. There are no longer any doubts about the importance of air transport development or about our ability to achieve standards of proficiency as good as the best in any field of enterprise. Both as a symbol of our progress and of our purpose, and as an important contribution to the already buoyant economy of Cork, the coming into operational use of Cork Airport is a proper occasion for celebration (Seán Lemass, Cork Examiner, Tuesday morning, 17 October 1961, p.1).
Returning to exploring technical education and industrial progress in the decade of the 1960s, the opening of Cork City Airport was an enormous symbol of progress. Opening his address at the airport Taoiseach Seán Lemass said the opening would have a stimulating effect on the industry and trade of County Cork. He spoke about the effects to be experienced in every sector of economic activity and about the benefits of tourist traffic. He hoped that in many areas of the county, those engaged in the many businesses, which catered for holiday makers would prepare themselves for the increase in numbers which could be confidently expected. He also noted of a financial stimulus in the form of grants and loans for hotel extensions, some 24 hotels and four guest houses in Cork City and county has extended their accommodation by about 100 additional rooms.
The Cork Examiner in its special supplement the day after the opening related the evolution of the dream towards having an airport. One interesting throwback was presented that back in 1933, Richard O’Connor, one time Cork County Surveyor envisaged Cork Harbour as the obvious choice for a North European terminal airport. Unique in its geographical position as the most westerly harbour in Europe, situated on the track of the north Atlantic steamship routes and equipped to accommodate large liner traffic, the harbour was ideally situated for such a project. In those days, although the Atlantic had been crossed by an aeroplane, commercial crossings existed only in the minds of engineers. The popular belief was that by the late 1930s the crossing of the Atlantic by seaplane services would become an accomplished fact. In the light of those circumstances, it was essential that Cork’s airport should be set up at once if advantage was to be taken of liner traffic, so that air routes would be accomplished before the seaplane crossing of the Atlantic became practical business.
The main objective of the scheme was to gain control of English and continental transatlantic mail services and it was hoped and believed that a proportion of passenger and light goods traffic would, in the ordinary course, follow the mail routes. During those years in the mid-thirties, representatives of many of the principal British and European air lines came to Cobh to meet and board all fast east-bound Atlantic liners. The purpose of these visits was to facilitate American and other air-minded travellers by arranging for air transport to be ready when they landed later at Liverpool, Southampton, Cherbourg, Hamburg or elsewhere. At such places at that time there were fully equipped airports and aerodromes and it was felt that there were exciting prospects if the proposed facilities at Belvelly could save time from one to three days in getting to destinations in Europe.
Richard O’Connor produced an ambitious plan for an airport to be built on the mud flats of Belvelly from which would radiate air routes to Dublin, Belfast, Glasgow, Liverpool, Hull, Rosslare, Pembroke, London and Cherbourg. The plan regarded it feasible to reclaim an area of 460 acres at Belvelly by constructing dams and suitable tidal sluices. This scheme proposed to construct runway measuring from three quarters of a mile to a mile and a quarter in length. The control buildings were to be on Fota Island where there was ample room for future expansion. The site was examined by land and from the air by several experienced airmen. Travellers disembarking from the liners at Cobh were to be brought the five miles to the airport. Side by side with Belvelly was to be a seaplane base at Cobh, with communication between seaplane and liner by fast motor tender.
In 1934, a sub committee consisting of representatives of the Cork Corporation, County Council was formed which accumulated a lot of data which they forwarded to President DeValera. The Local Authorities Airport Committee was set up and its first task was to engage a British firm of consultants to make a survey of the possibilities and prospects of establishing seaplane and airplane bases in Cork. In 1936, the consultants reported back. The report reiterated the belief that the seaplane would oust the aeroplane and that a good seaplane base might be of “even more ultimate importance to Cork City, where nature afforded the possibilities of such a base, than a good aerodrome which was immediate and permanent requirement”. The project continued to be debated and was never realised due to financial reasons.
To be continued…
Captions:
746a. Belvelly Castle, Great Island, Cork Harbour overlooking the mudflats, which were to be the site of an airport in the late 1930s (picture: Kieran McCarthy).