Greenore, Ireland: 1960-1963, part 4 ....

Note that while Weatherwell Ltd was the first customer, the Port has been officially opened by Irish Customs with input by CIÉ, and it has all been brought together politically by Bernard Rafferty. The ship was owned by a British firm based in Liverpool.

Meanwhile, up the coast in Northern Ireland, one of the Pye Group of companies was also complaining about the lack of export services that were available to take Pye products from their factory in Larne, to the mainland of the United Kingdom: 

Cross-border transportation was also an area of concern that CIÉ had inherited from the days of the cross-border rail service from Dublin to Belfast, and it shared those concerns with its opposite number in the Northern Ireland government.

When all of the factors are addressed, it is clear that while Weatherwall Ltd had bought the hotel and railway station at Greenore, and thus the land to the water's edge, it had not bought the port itself, because that could only be controlled by Irish Customs and  CIÉ.

As previously noted, Weatherwell Ltd., was not flush with money and both its purchases of the hotel and former railway station, together with operating costs, had come from government-backed loans for a project that never took off. Consequently this first export shipment from the reopened Port of Greenore, was for Weatherwell products exported to England. The ship taking them there was chartered for that purpose from a company based in Liverpool.

Greenore Ferry Services had become an additional trading name of Weatherwell Ltd.

The most that can be said in praise of this small step to revive the economy of Greenore is that it was a tentative step taken on a financial shoestring. However, it did give Aodogán O'Rahilly cause to wonder if this new activity could also help to revive the now derelict Greenore hotel which Weatherwell Ltd had also bought.

This stumbling start in 1960 almost fizzled before it gained momentum, due to a lackluster economy. Aodogán O'Rahilly needed both cash and customers for his chancy investments at Greenore to turn around.

It was at this moment in time during the following year, that his son Ronan O'Rahilly appeared in London, and he was looking for opportunities. As we shall see, Ronan O'Rahilly had by no means deserted the family business, and this is how he came into contact with a world where money was being made and then reinvested in unconventional ways by unconventional people. It was not a world of hippies but a societal world controlled by layers of aristocratic snobbery; laissez faire business, and a segment of the Establishment.

---

​Unlike Aodogán O'Rahilly who was born in 1904 at Hove, England, Charles Orr Stanley {left) was born in 1899 at Cappoquin, County Waterford, Ireland, and Charles Orr Stanley is the real unsung hero of British broadcasting and offshore radio, as we shall be showing the world in this Blog, and in the book 'Dial 999 for Caroline'.

---