Blessing Of the Boats: Sunday 12th February 2012 at 2.30pm, Island Bay Beach and Esplanade

The blessing of fishing boats is a tradition in Italy that goes back centuries…

In southern Italy, where most of Island Bay’s Italian immigrants are from, the blessing would be undertaken by the local priest at the start of spring. The boats would be decorated in flags and bunting and would file past to have holy water sprinkled on them while the priest recited prayers and made the sign of the cross.

The blessing was part of the religious belief that if the boats received the grace of God, they and the fishermen would be protected from the sea and the weather and would also reap the bounty of the sea.

Island Bay’s Italian immigrants came from the fishing villages at Massalubrense in the Gulf of Naples and the island of Stromboli off Sicily and many of their boats were named after saints, such as San Antonio, San Constanzo and San Liberatore.

The first ceremony in Island Bay was not a blessing of the then thriving fleet anchored in the bay but a commemoration service undertaken by parish priest Father Maloney in 1933 following the loss of the “SANTINA” and her crew of four in a storm off Baring Head. Those fishermen lost were Gennaro Armitrano, Paolo Panozzo, Vincenzo Costa and Ronald Alley.

In later years the blessing of the fleet has been undertaken by Archbishop McKeffrey, Bishop Snedden and the Papal State’s representative in New Zealand, Archbishop Magnoni. They were performed either on the diving platform about 10 metres out or from the beach at Island Bay.