By Diarmaid Doherty
Ruby McCloy still remembers looking out the window of her Mulroy family home and seeing the strange car, with three young men inside, pulling into the street outside.
Little did the 18 year old Ruby McElhinney realise, but her visitors were on a mission.
“There weren’t many people with cars back then, so when I went to the front door, I remember wondering who these boys were,” she recalls.
“They said they were looking for Ruby McElhinney. I told them they were talking to her.
“It turns out, they’d come all the way from Moville and wanted to know if I’d go and compete in the Moville Regatta.”
It was 1949, and Ruby’s name, and her talents as an oarswoman, were well known around Mulroy and Carrigart, and across the bay in Fanad. But the fact that word of her boating skills had reached far off Inishowen was quite amazing.
Unfortunately, Ruby never got to compete in the Moville Regatta. Just two days before the event, her father Robert died of a sudden heart attack.
Up until then, he’d rowed the Mulroy Ferry back and forth the bay to Fanad. From that day, Ruby took over.
Now aged 92 (she was born on April 8, 1931), Ruby McCloy is blessed with an engaging personality, a smile that oozes warmth, and a wonderful memory.
Ruby McCloy with her daughter Alice Moore. Photos: Brian McDaid.
Sitting in the cozy kitchen of her Ramelton home along with her daughter Alice Moore, Ruby points to a painting on the wall which features the McElhinney homestead. The home still sits on the Mulroy Estate.
She’s been living in the same house in New Mill, Ramelton since she married Samuel McCloy in 1958, but even 65 years later, Ruby still considers Mulroy as home.
Rebecca (Ruby) Mary Ann McElhinney was the youngest of ten children born to Robert and Alice.
Living on Mulroy Bay, close to where the Harry Blaney Bridge now crosses the water, the family ran the ferry – a rowing boat – providing a vital service for residents on both sides of the bay when life was so very different.
Ruby looks back on her younger days with fondness, remembering how families lived and worked on the Mulroy Estate.
“Life was hard, but it was good,” she points out.
“And it was busy. It was a great place to live and there was work for everyone who wanted it.”
A painting in Ruby’s Ramelton home of the old sheds and pier which lie close to her homestead on the banks of Mulroy Bay.
The sea also played a big part in the lives of local families and Ruby can still recall the war years when so much food and supplies were rationed.
“Everything was scarce. I was only eight when the war started, but I remember we were okay in our house. We managed to get flour and we got paraffin oil to have on the ferry.
“The sailors would come in and they were like family to us. Mammy was a great baker and she’d have scones for them and dinner.
“Three sister ships would come in, I think they were from Coleraine. They came in with coal and when they left, they’d have a load of potatoes with them.”
Over the years, the sailors got to know Mulroy and nearby Carrigart.
Ruby reckons the steamer would blow its horn down at Mevagh and the families would hear the sound further up at Mulroy.
“You knew they were on their way and mammy would have the scone bread baked for them when they landed.”
Diarmaid Doherty from the Donegal News interviews Ruby McCloy.
There were dances in the parochial hall in Carrigart on Friday nights and sometimes the men on the boats would be there too.
“The boat might be set to go back out on a Friday, but they’d a way of stalling the winch so that they’d get to Carrigart that night,” Ruby said.
“They always managed to sort out the problem with the winch the next morning and off they’d go.”
Back in those days, many families’ livelihoods were made from the water and the land. Ruby recalls the fishermen from Downings bringing catches of herring by donkey and creel to Mulroy and across in her boat to sell around Fanad.
The post would be delivered too, and live animals, including cattle and pigs, were also brought across.
“We swam the cattle,” Ruby explained. “You just put ‘halters’ on the cattle, and off they’d go.”
A painting of the ferry boat that a young Ruby McElhinney rowed across the bay every day from Mulroy to Fanad and back.
Romance also blossomed thanks to Ruby and the Mulroy Ferry. She recalls how the boys from Fanad would come across to meet their girlfriends on her side of the bay.
Even when the Stations of the Cross were being celebrated in Carrigart, the Fanad contingent would use it as an excuse to meet up with their sweethearts across the water.
Thankfully, Ruby doesn’t recall any incidents of tragedy, despite the fact that the currents at Mulroy Bay are the second fastest in all of Europe.
She did have a few close escapes however, including on one occasion when herself and her brother rowed across to Fanad to attend a local wake.
“By the time we were going back home, the fog had come down. It was terrible,” she said.
“Two men came down with us and lit two bales of straw.
“But we were no time out on the water until we didn’t know where we were.
“It was half two in the morning when we came in. Eventually we ran up on the ground just below our house.”
She remembers meeting her future husband Samuel at a church social in Kerrykeel.
“Everybody went to the church socials,” she said.
“Samuel had a car. There weren’t many cars in those days.”
Ruby McCloy with a picture of her old home in Mulroy in the background, alongside a photo of the Harry Blaney Bridge on the wall of her Ramelton home.
The couple hit it off straight away and Sam would visit Ruby in Mulroy on Wednesdays and Sundays.
He would head off from Ramelton with his good friend Paddy Sweeney who caught a life to go meet his girlfriend Noreen in Milford.
The two couples would eventually get married and they remained firm friends living in Ramelton, although sadly both Sam and Paddy are since deceased.
Ruby and Sam were married in the Church of Ireland in Carrigart and their wedding reception was held across the road in the Carrigart Hotel.
The guests would later make their way to Lifford for high tea in a local establishment where the music was provided by the Ponsonby band.
“It was the wedding of the year,” Ruby pointed out.
Ruby made Ramelton her home, living with Sam and his parents on the family farm at New Mill.
She has happy memories of married life and beams as she recalls her late husband working hard, and his love of all things agricultural, as well as his passion for his local team, Swilly Rovers FC.
Just like her own father, Sam left this life suddenly.
“He never stopped working,” she said.
“Even the day that he died, he was busy. I remember Alice saying ‘there’s some steer on him today’. He died that evening.”
An old photo of Ruby’s home on the shores of Carrigart where the ferry made the crossing.
Ruby and Sam McCloy had two children, Alice and Bert and both children live beside the family home. Bert is married to Helen and they have four daughters, Emma, Julie, Sarah and Hannah.
Alice and her husband Carl Moore have three children, two sons Alan and David who both live in Australia, and one daughter Rachel.
Ruby has nine great-grandchildren too, with two more on the way.
She says she loves having her family close by and while she’s keeping well, she has slowed up a little.
A fall in her kitchen earlier this year saw her spend a number of weeks in hospital between Letterkenny and Ramelton.
She’s had other serious ailments in recent years but she’s always managed to bounce back to good health. Maybe days spent rowing a boat across Mulroy Bay have built up an inner strength that is bearing fruit all these years later.
“I was strong alright,” she said.
“I carried no weight either because everyday I cycled from home in and out to Carrigart.
“That was life back then. They were great times.”
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