A year after a Government promise to return it to the sea, the gun-running yacht Asgard is in danger of becoming a museum exhibit, according to a group of maritime enthusiasts.
Members of the Asgard Support Group have expressed fears that the Minister for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Ms de Valera, is about to make "the wrong decision" on the yacht's future.
The group believes the Minister intends to consign the yacht to the National Museum, on advice from the Heritage Council. However, a spokesman for the Minister said this week that no decision was imminent and a report from the National Museum on the yacht's future was still awaited.
Last year, Ms de Valera's Cabinet colleague, the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, confirmed financial support for the restoration of the sail-training yacht, formerly owned by Erskine Childers, with a view to returning it to a seagoing state.
At a press conference during the Tall Ships Race, the Minister said that up to 50 per cent of the restoration costs, estimated at about 0.5 million, £500,000, would be provided by his Department.
In saying he favoured a "living, moving" craft, Mr Smith effectively reversed a move to send the vessel from its dry berth in Kilmainham Jail to the National Museum.
He endorsed the efforts of the Asgard Support Group, chaired by Mr Arthur Hughes and which includes the maritime historian Dr John de Courcy Ireland, the former Asgard skipper, Capt Eric Healy, the explorer and author Tim Severin, and the Norwegian Ambassador, Mr Helge Vindenes.
The ketch was built in 1905 for Erskine Childers and his American wife, Mollie, and was designed by the Scots-Norwegian naval architect, Colin Archer.
They sailed extensively in Europe, including the Baltic, North Sea and along the sanddune coasts of the Netherlands and Germany recalled by Childers in his spy novel, The Riddle of the Sands. The couple's most noted voyage was the delivery run of guns to Howth in 1914 for the Irish Volunteers.
Following the execution of Erskine Childers in 1922, the ketch passed through several hands before being purchased by the State in 1961. In 1968, it was given to Coiste an Asgard to be used for sail-training, and was put on display in Kilmainham Jail after it was replaced by the Tyrell-built brigantine, Asgard II.
