BYGONE DAYS: Fishing fleet expected to return to Portavogie harbour in March

The Ulster Ministry of Commerce’s £200,000 reconstruction scheme, under which the harbour was being deepened and the quays extended, had been seriously delayed by bad weather, but it was expected to be completed in the coming few weeks’ time, if there were no further delays.

Mr John McMaster. skipper of the fishing boat May McMaster and vice chairman of the Ulster Sea Fishermen’s Association, said this week in February 1955 that every Portavogie fisherman was waiting impatiently for the day when he could return to his own port.

“When Portavogie harbour was closed two and half years ago to let the reconstruction scheme get under way,” he told the News Letter, ‘’most of us took our boats to Ardglass and fished out of there, but others went to Strangford and Portaferry.

“That meant that we only saw our families at weekends, and were put to the additional expense of travelling to our homes and eating aboard the boats.

“The men who went to Ardglass were most inconvenienced. When we went home for the weekend. it meant taking a taxi cab to Strangford, getting a ferry across to Portaferry, and then another taxi-cab for the remainder of the journey.

“On the return trip, we had to leave home on the Monday any time after 1am.”

Mr McMaster added: “After two and a half years of that, we are longing to get back to Portavogie, but the wait will have been worthwhile.

“Previously, we could only get our boats in and out of the harbour during a four hour period - two hours on either side of high tide - but now, boats with a draft up to six feet will be able to use the harbour at any state of the tide.”

Farmers asked to destroy rabbits by Ulster ministry

The Northern Ireland Ministry of Agriculture this week in 1955 issued an appeal to farmers in the province to come together in a drive to exterminate rabbits which have survived the outbreak of myxomatosis in their areas.

“Only by such action,” the Northern Ireland Ministry of Agriculture stated, “can farmers be sure that generation of rabbits resistant to the disease will not arise to make their last state worse than the first.”

“Now is the best time to complete the extermination begun by the disease.

“It may be done either by gassing, trapping or shooting.”

In the interests of hygiene, and for other reasons, it was desirable that the carcases of rabbits which had died should be burled, or disposed of, in some other way.

It was hoped that farmers, landowners and farm workers would co-operate in seeing that this was done.

It was also hoped that local authorities would make arrangements for the disposal of carcases found on land under their control, or on the public roads.

The ministry noted: “All infected rabbits found alive should be speedily put out of pain.”

The Northern Ireland Ministry of Agriculture added: “The disposal of carcases might not seem important in the depths of winter, but if the disease spread, as was expected during the spring and summer, it could assume a much greater significance from the point of view of public health, and the amenities the district, as well the pollution of water used livestock.”