In the absence of a fatherhero, I suppose I had to identify with some godlike male. That's how it goes with boys. My maternal grandmother read the Irish Independent, and the drama of The Flying Enterprise was headlined there day after day. A ship was in trouble out in the Atlantic, and had managed to keep afloat despite an increasing list. Thirty–five degrees, forty degrees: I forget the precise angles of inclination that were reported. The bravery of the captain fired my imagination. I don't recall his name, but his despatches from a worsening situation were conveyed to the nation daily and nightly, on newspaper and radio. My grandmother carried her chair over to where her wireless sat on a cabinet, putting her ear right up to it because she was a bit deaf, constantly adjusting the wavelength knob for greater clarity of sound. I listened too, either to the radio itself or my grandmother's summary. It was my first media–orchestrated vicarious adventure; I loved that heroism out on the stormy ocean. I loved it, too, because it was something happening, and I'm sure much of the population of 1950s’ Ireland followed the drama of The Flying Enterprise for the same reason.

In the 1950s, the age of chivalry, or at least of its maritime equivalent, hadn't yet entirely passed. As I remember it, the captain of The Flying Enterprise reluctantly allowed himself to be rescued only just before his ship sank. But there was another drama to follow, on the Irish Sea, where a noble captain actually went down with his ship.

It must have been around this time that my father told me of the art competition. I painted a picture of a ship at sea. In the beginning it was just another ship at sea, and the sea was calm. I was working with real watercolours, in tubes, not the kind of ready–made children's palette that comes in a tin.

My father the photographer was also passionately interested in art. He never practised it, but had obviously intended to, because he had stocked up with boxes and boxes of all kinds of paints, with supplies of art paper and an imposing set of brushes, with volume upon volume of handbooks on How to Draw, How to Paint, Painting with Watercolours, Painting with Poster Colours, Landscape Painting, Portrait Painting and so on.