Mae Leonard

Oh, I sink right down to my knees in stinking sludge.

Indian maze, Dad says, shaking his head.

I heard that a canal boat sank upstream during the winter.

The whole place is destroyed.

We can't swim here this year, that's for sure.

Thank you, God, I prayed silently.

This is my excuse.

I have to go swimming at Corbally now.

Dad agrees.

Corbally it was from then on.

The magic of our boat and our picnics on St Thomas Island faded into oblivion.

I had discovered boys.

All of this came back to me when I met a man the other day who knows everything there is to know about the trading boats of Ireland's inland waterways.

We chatted about the Shannon and my memories of the Guinness Canal boats coming past our house.

And I told him about the desecration of the sandy swimming spot on St Thomas Island.

The 52M, he told me, she did it.

Apparently the 52M was a canal boat built for the Grand Canal Company in 1928.

It was used to ferry barrels of porter from Guinness in Dublin to towns along the Shannon and usually had a cargo of goods on the journey back.

It was on one of those return journeys and carrying a load of maize that the crew had what was reported as an unfortunate directional incident and sank in the tailrace of Ardnacrusha just below Parteen Bridge.

The boat remained underwater for the winter and was raised the following spring when water levels were lower.