Tenacious

She is beautiful. I can see that even from a distance.

Tall and slender, she glows slightly in the evening light, as though polished. And when I reach out to touch her first, that's how she feels - polished.

Look up, I tell my friend, the one who introduced me to her, and we both do. I have no fear of heights but the crow's nest atop the tapered mast seems impossibly small, a child's toy cradled by a cross-hatch of delicate roping.

One of the crew sees us looking.

Everyone goes up there, he grins. The first day aboard, everyone goes up.

There is wine, and light conversation. The mood is festive, a launch party for the new crew who set sail in a few days time. After some introductions I drift to the far end of the deck, to stand by the railing and look out across the river to the far quays.

Beneath me the ship talks quietly to herself, in sighs and soft knockings, and the rigging clinks a melody out over the still water. It's a place that encourages thought, a place that entices you to be alone with a small corner of it. I stand against her railing and listen to the singing breeze.

Along the far quay wall, a thin path of buttercups has flowered. I look closer, and see they are ducks, rubber ducks, thousands of them, flowing dowstream towards the open mouth of the sea.

A little tugboat motors past, its deck submerged in yellow ducks that have been harvested from the water. The two-man crew wave up to us, and begin tossing their cargo to the crowds milling along the quays. I can hear squeals as people catch them.

I take a sip of wine and turn back to the party.

Later, I notice there's a boy sitting cross-legged on the harbour wall beside the ship, with a plastic bucket he has filled with caught ducks. He is no more than seven or eight. He is passing his treasures out to the couples who walk by, one at a time.

Do you want one? he asks me. I nod.

I catch it, one-handed, and smile back at him. I wonder where he got the bucket, why he is here, why he gave something to me.

Among the wine-glasses and guests there are silver platters of finger food. I skewer some cocktail sausages with a toothpick, and lean far out over the railings with my arm outstretched. For a moment, I think perhaps the distance is too great, a yawning gap between the gently bobbing ship and the quay wall, that perhaps he might fall.

But he reaches out and takes the sausages in his fingers, whole-fisted, hot and crisp. He turns away, hunched over his find, the ducks forgotten.

My friend joins me at the railings. What are you smiling at? he asks.

Nothing, I say. I'm just glad I came.

The party is breaking up, gathering their skirts to negotiate the ladders to the higher deck, clasping hands in goodbyes.

There's just one thing I want to do first, I say to my friend. Come here.

I lead him forwards, towards the bow. I duck under one of the ropes and walk out along the webbing, over the river, to where the ship narrows to a point. The ship lifts, just there at the end, so that she pierces the sky ahead.

I sit on the rope webbing and put my cheek against her polished rail. My friend comes to stand beside me.

What's her name? I ask, into the calm silence.

The Tenacious, he says.

I think about it. Tenacious. Determined. Persistent.

The Tenacious is a tall ship, like the ships that left Ireland. Those that were able gathered at the ports, leaving behind those that fell along the way. They brought with them little, having already sold anything worth selling for food. A country starving slowly, bleeding its people into the sea.

Most of them never made it. None of them ever came back.

But it was hope that brought them to the quays. A sliver of hope in despair. A vessel to a new life.

Yes, tenacious, I think, as I give her a farwell pat.

A good name. A name to pierce the heavens with.