Irish Fleets & Dublin’s Solidarity, a Rovers & Risers series tale
The new commotion was evident from outside your high-rise’s living room window. You make a fresh pot of coffee as the morning grows long, and even without sound, you can sense the stirring of change. You take a glimpse outside with your hot mug of vitamins, while the coffee still steeps, and decide to put your morning playlist of funk and jazz on hold. Instead you spot all the signs that the world is moving on.
There was a TV crew next to your neighboring Irish Naval Ship, the W.B Yeats. All the crew were in their berets and high-seas uniforms, assembled on deck for what looked to be a briefing. On the docks, a news anchor and cameraman were interviewing the elder officiers one at a time, including some emergency response members and An Garda, all in their yellow vests. Alongside them, a bagpipe player looked to be warming up some notes. It’s not unlikely during the past 2 months of this Pandemic, that one ship would change guards for another each week. But as you sweep your eyes down the quays of the mighty River Liffey, you only see empty shores. Most notable, as you rub the sleep from your eyes in disbelief, is that all the emergency unit COVID testing tents, trucks and workers had been packed up and disbanded early this morning. They had been there since the week of St. Patrick’s day, with clockwork efficiency just as Dublin’s quarantine began. And for some reason, when you look at the now vacant sidewalks, without full context or understanding, you can’t help but feel a little sad.
The lockdown is set to end this Monday the 18th, and Ireland seems to have fared better than most countries with strict adherence to the quarantine, and a diligent response to testing and care. The navy had put together a strong show of support with their Operation Fortitude: a 3-port rotation of officer support and testing services across Dublin, Galway and Cork. You’ve seen the ships come and go in their weekly rotation before, but now the departure feels more like the end of the mission.
The smoke starts to billow harder now from the W.B. Yeat’s belly, as the crew stay busy all hands on deck. More and more response team workers start to arrive in yellow jackets, some with fire brigade kevlar, some with helmets, some with garda hats. It becomes clear as they line up along the Quay, that this is a large show of tribute to each of our frontline workers, some pushing off, some staying behind, and all standing together in respect.
The lines of the ship let loose as she marched off, to the blaring of a lone kilted man’s pipes. The crew all stood at attention lined up across the rails, parallel to the local workers on shore, and reverent to the softly waving Irish flag on the aftdeck. When the piper hit his final note, the crowd went silent for one perfect moment before ripping into applause. The crew waved, and you look around to see you’re not alone on the balconies of the self-isolated, peering out and joining the moment. The sirens from the fire engines blaring, the people cheering the departure, all seemed to strike a cord of much needed closure. And as the ship made her way to the opening Tom Clarke bridge, still waving goodbye with green, white and orange, she let out 3 deafening horn bursts. This behemoth was bidding her farewell like a whale off to the open sea, with a firm reassurance to her friends on land. “You’ll be ok now, we’ve all done our part together. You’re in good hands here, but be sure to keep washing yours”.
You track her on your high-zoom camera lens, as she fades into the distant horizon. The crowd disperses, the trucks move on, and we, the self-isolated, wander back into our homes, a little confused, a little lonelier, but with a renewal for hope as we feel the shifting of a season, and with the brightness of summer ahead.
Paul Carreo 