The Asgard II, seen docked in Dunmore East in the early eighties, was the Irish national sail training vessel until she sank in the Bay of Biscay in September, 2008.

Commissioned on 7 March 1981, the brigantine was purpose-built as a sail training vessel by Jack Tyrrell in Arklow. Launched by Taoiseach Charlie Haughey, she was named (purely coincidentally, C.J. would say) after the Asgard, a yacht that smuggled weapons for the Irish Volunteers in 1914.

The vessel was owned by the Irish state and operated by Coiste an Asgard, a founding member of Sail Training International. For a period of time in the early eighties, she was commissioned by University College Cork for use in marine research.

The day the second Asgard sank, 20 miles off the French coast, five crew and twenty trainees, most of them Irish, took to life-rafts after she collided with a submerged object and started taking on water.

Though the Government received the insurance money (€3.2 million), hopes of raising her from the seabed were dashed after the economic crash put a strain on the public finances.

Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea said there was a chance that the estimated €2m salvage cost might be wasted. “The Board was of the view that vessels that sink are ‘never the same’ after restoration and are likely to have on-going maintenance problems.”

They also reckoned that “parents of potential trainees [particularly those with no sailing experience] may be reluctant to allow their children to sail on a vessel that has sunk.”

The wooden vessel had been an Irish marine icon, representing Ireland around the world at Tall Ships’ Races and was instrumental in bringing the festival to Waterford for the first time in 2005. It had the honour of leading the pre-Race Parade of Sail in the Suir Estuary along with the two other Irish tall ships, the Dunbrody and Jeanie Johnston.

In 1988, Billy Coad from Dunmore East, along with his father, Ken, brother Derek and sister Julie, were among a crew of 20 that sailed to Melbourne on the Asgard II for the Hobart to Sydney Tall Ships Race as part of the Australian Bicentennial celebrations.