Cover of Cool Metal, Clear Water

The book Cool Metal - Clear Water published by the Heritage Boat Association, with the support of Waterways Ireland, contains the individual histories of 72 of Irelands inland trading boats as well as general articles about Bolinder engines, G boats, the Guinness fleet and sand barges on Lough Neagh.

As well as many previously unpublished private photographs, Diageo gave the HBA access to the Guinness archives and thanks to Paddy Shortall it has an amazing collection of photographs from the Robert Shortall collection. The information in the book was gathered from innumerable sources, the men that worked the boats, former and current owners of these boats and from people’s personal archives and logs.

The book concentrates on boats that in some shape or form are still around today. It covers nearly all of the Horse Boats, M Boats, B Boats, G Boats, E Boats, Royal Canal Boats, Steam Boats as well as some of the other Barges and work boats that are still on our system. Unfortunately because of space limitations other boats didn’t make the book this time, these include Timber boats, the Shannon Tugs, River and Estuary Barges, Flying Boat tenders, Liffey Ferries and many of the more individual boats of historical interest.