On St. Patrick’s Day, a post about another Irish saint, St. Brendan the Navigator, and the adventurer who sought to replicate his epic voyage.

Who was the first European to sail to North America? According to Irish tradition, it was St. Brendan the Navigator in the 6th century, who is said to have set off with a small group of monks in a currach, an open boat built with a wooden frame covered with hides, on a 7-year voyage around the North Atlantic, that may have reached North America. If the story is true, St. Brendan reached the “New World” hundreds of years before the Norse and almost 900 years before Columbus.

There is no absolute evidence that St. Brendan ever reached North America, although many of the islands visited in the medieval accounts appear to be similar to features of the Hebrides, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. In the 1970s, inveterate explorer Tim Severin decided to mount an expedition to see whether St. Brendan’s voyage was possible.

In 1976, Severin built a replica of Brendan’s currach. Handcrafted using traditional tools, the 36-foot, two-masted boat was built of Irish ash and oak, hand-lashed together with nearly two miles (3 km) of leather thong, wrapped with 49 traditionally tanned ox hides, and sealed with wool grease. The finished currach was appropriately named Brendan.

Severin and his crew sailed from Tralee in Ireland’s County Kerry on the Brendan, and, over more than 13 months, traveled 4,500 miles, arriving at Canada on June 24, 1977, near Peckford Island, Newfoundland. Severin told reporters, “We’ve proved that a leather boat can cross the North Atlantic by a route that few modern yachtsmen would attempt.”

Severin’s book about the voyage, The Brendan Voyage: Sailing to America in a Leather Boat to Prove the Legend of the Irish Sailor Saints, was an international bestseller. The boat Brendan is now on display at the Craggaunowen open-air museum in County Clare, Ireland.

Tim Severin died on December 18, 2020, at 80, at home in Timoleague, West Cork, Ireland.  To read Joan Druett’s tribute to Tim Severin, click here.