Conor O'Brien (1) (1880–1952)

Edward Conor Marshall O'Brien, known as Conor, was a son of Edward William O'Brien of Cahermoyle House, Ardagh, County Limerick, Ireland. His grandfather William Smith O'Brien was a Member of Parliament and leader of the literary Young Ireland movement. Conor went to school at Winchester College in England. He spent summers with his family at their home in Derrynane in County Kerry, as well as at their property on the Shannon Estuary, which included a house on Foynes Island. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin and Oxford University, and qualified as an architect. His greatest design work was as a boat builder, and he wrote 14 books on boats and sailing. He became a pioneer in modern maritime theory. He was an Irish nationalist, a fluent Irish speaker, and an early member of Sinn Féin. In 1914, he used his yacht Kelpie to collect a cargo of arms for the Irish Volunteers. He sailed around the world in 1923-1925 in another yacht built to his own design called Saoirse. In 1928, he married Kathleen "Kitty" Clausen, an artist, and in the early 1930s they spent an idyllic time cruising on Saoirse in the Mediterranean, working together on books and articles that he wrote and she illustrated. Although he was too old for active service in World War II, Conor O'Brien served the Allied cause as a skipper for the Small Ships Pool, delivering support vessels across the Atlantic. After the war he returned to Foynes Island.