Kathleen Curran

Kathleen Curran (27 February 1912 – 1995) was secretary, collector and harbour master (acting) of the Port of Galway from 1951 to 1953, the “only woman in Ireland” to have filled these roles. She has been credited with being the first female harbour master in Ireland. She worked first as an assistant and then as pilot, guiding ships into harbour. When the remains of WB Yeats were repatriated from France in 1948, Curran coordinated the event from the Galway end. At the time she was the only woman in Ireland to have done so.

“A woman with a man’s job, which she carries out exceptionally well is Kathleen B Curran, Harbour Master and Secretary to the Port Authority and Galway Port…Her present responsible job includes arranging berthing accommodation for ships and attending to enquiries of ship’s masters ... She also on occasions takes the helm of the pilot boat, going out to ships to take off the pilot, and has many times been complimented on her excellent seamanship”. the appointment was temporary and the Port Authority continued to seek men to fill the roles. She was employed by the Limerick Harbour Board from 1918 until her retirement in 1952. When she died in 1959, her obituary claimed that “Ireland loses its only woman harbour master” and she was described as “probably the world’s oldest harbour master, and certainly the world’s only woman to hold such a position”. The village of Glin erected a statue commemorating “Ireland’s only harbour mistress” in 2000.

Ellen Fitzell's husband George was harbour master in Saleen Quay, Ballylongford, County Kerry and she took on the role after his death. She was harbour mistress from 1911 until her own death in 1918. Mary Corrigan in Antrim was harbour mistress of the Lower Bann Waterway from at least 1901 (when it was recorded in the census) until her death in 1907, when her sister Elizabeth took on the role. These harbours would have been significantly smaller than the port of Galway.

More recently, Capt Catríona Dowling was hailed as the “first female harbour master in the history of the island of Ireland and one of only two in the United Kingdom” after her appointment as harbour master of Warrenpoint Harbour, Northern Ireland’s second commercial port, in 2016.

Later life Curran was on the committee organising the building of Galway Cathedral in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Curran retired in the 1970s after 45 years of service to the port of Galway. It was her habit to walk by the docks every day. She died in 1995.