Tim Severin: 40 years on from the Brendan Voyage

RARELY has the old adage that everyone loves a winner been more fitting than when applied to explorer, author, filmmaker and all-round adventurer Tim Severin, whose breakthrough journey The Brendan Voyage is this year celebrating its 40th anniversary.
When Severin and his crew reached Iceland on the first leg of their epic trans-Atlantic crossing following legendary 6th-century Irish monk Brendan the Navigator, they didn’t even have the price of the airfare back home for the winter. Tim had to sell his sailboat to raise funds.
By the time they landed a crew member on the rocky shore of Newfoundland on June 26, 1977, achieving their aim of showing that St Brendan could have made it to America long before Columbus or even the Vikings, they had caught the world’s imagination. National Geographic was on board and Aer Lingus stumped up return tickets back to Ireland. Everybody loves a winner.
When I met Tim recently at the 40th anniversary celebrations at Craggaunowen in Clare, we chatted alongside the actual boat that made that remarkable journey. It’s on permanent display at Craggaunowen and Tim was there to give a talk, not only on the hazardous voyage itself, but on the painstaking process of building an authentic replica of the type of vessel ancient Irish navigators would have set sail in.

Read the full feature in this week's edition