A tough, tight community, well it was once, now half way through a ‘re-generation’ project where the angular structures of new apartments elbow stone churches and brick terraces, not that anyone has cash to buy them for the foreseeable future. “Welcome to Sailortown” proclaims the razorwire adorned wall in a pre-view of what once was real-life and is destined to be a Disneyfication of History.
Now that looked like a closed-shop, heartland of the Maritime Union, Hard men and good commies all I bet ~ but not to worry, my own father had been a ship yard worker on Tyneside. A riviter, his back a palimpsest of lunar pock-mark scars delivered by stray white-hot rivets ~ so I go in. Dead friendly, informal and warm, I’m taken up into the boxing Gym (funny my dad trained boxers too) and shown around the Dockers Club photo archive ~ lots of these blokes are dead I’m told, some industrial accidents, but more shot during the troubles. Later in the bar a warm working class glow of beer, Sunday best and a band bashing out C&W standards ~ think I’ve discovered the original workers paradise!
Sailors don’t always have good reputations, Whalers never do, so even getting into church was a difficult feat (in a ‘lock up your daughters’ reflex I imagine!). Mr Sinclair rose to the challenge by establishing a unique church just for Sailors, in Corporation Street, Sailortown, Belfast. Ironically it’s still hard to get into church, The Sinclair Seamans Church is a closely guarded secret it seems, but we did get lucky on one of out four attempted visits. It was worth it, the Church contains a planoply of maritime artifacts, a ships prow as a pulpit with matching post and starbord navigation lamps to keep the nautical congregation ‘on course’. The old gaffers who man the deck of the church are frail but sharp as tacks and have an ocean of knowledge under their grey pates! As Wilde said “Youth is wasted on the young” ~ why do we habitually ignore the elderly?
Tags: marine life, residency