Well-known Cork scribe Tom MacSweeney was honoured this past week at the annual Maritime Ball in Galway, a worthy fundraising event for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, when he was named Maritime Person of the Year.

The award, it could be said, is 19 years in the making. For that is the precise amount of time Tom has been at the helm of his much loved Seascapes radio show on RTÉ, a magazine programme of sorts that centres around maritime events, happenings, news and human interest stories.

As an island nation we are inextricably linked to the sea, even if that link isn’t always direct. But it’s there, surrounding us at all times, for both pleasure and livelihoods. Seascapes not only invites but actively encourages listener participation, thus giving the nationally aired programme a distinctly communal feel, one that is inclusive rather then exclusive. It is perhaps the reason the show has continued to thrive throughout its lengthy life-span, and the aspect which makes Tom most proud.

The Montenotte native lived with his grandfather before moving to Wilton with his parents as a young boy. A PRES student, Tom left school to join the Examiner in 1962 as a junior. It was to be the start of a long, eventful career in journalism for the Cork man that would take him from deep within the heart of the Belfast troubles to his current role as maritime correspondent for RTÉ.

“I originally wanted to be an engineer,” he says, “but my maths wasn’t up to it. In fact, one of my teachers used to say to me that if I was to ever build a bridge, that he himself would become known as a mass-murder. So it was journalism for me.”

After starting out in the Examiner, Tom moved to the Southern Star in Skibbereen in 1963. He would spend five years there before taking up a position in Dublin with the Irish Press in 1968. The troubles in the North were in the infantile stages and Tom was to soon find himself right in the middle of the war. “There were two significant learning curves for me as a journalist in a short space of time. The first was the culture shock of moving from Cork, where I worked in a local weekly paper, to Dublin, where I was then working with a big national and a great newspaper that expected to have the news first. At the time the only real competition was from the RTÉ news, who only had three bulletins a day. The pressure and deadlines took some getting used to, but it was a valuable learning experience. Then there was Belfast.”

As anyone who was there will attest, the war in the north attained a level of brutality and hostility at a rapid pace. For Tom, those times was a mix of frightening violent encounters and exciting journalistic opportunities. “It was very frightening at times. The loyalists didn’t think much of the Irish Press because they saw it as a republican paper first and foremost. I remember so clearly the first RUC person ever shot dead. His name was Constable Arbuckle and it was 1969 on the Shankill Road during serious rioting, with the UVF firing shots upon us. But there was also a desire to get to Belfast as a journalist, because that’s where the news was happening on a day to day basis. There was a great excitement too.”

In 1970 Tom moved to the RTÉ News department and back to Dublin. But with everything happening in the north, it wasn’t long before he found himself back in Belfast amongst the violence. “RTÉ were building up their offices in Belfast at the time and with me having already been there previously with the Irish Press, they decided to send me back. I have two mementos from my time there. One is a bit of a Volkswagon car that came in through our window after it was blown up outside our office. I also have a rubber bullet that was fired at me. There often used to be scrambles between kids to get these bullets, but on this occasion I got it.”

In 1973 Tom was moved from the troubles back to his hometown, when he became the first regional correspondent for Munster, a position he remained in until 1979 when he joined NET, a fertilizer manufacturer, as their Public Affairs Manager. “They were building a factory in Cork at the time,” he says. “To be honest they offered me a lot more money than I was making as a journalist. What interested me most in the position was the opportunity to work on the other side of the media – working inside a company as opposed to getting the story from outside. I spent two years there and it was another great learning experience.”

Tom once again returned to RTÉ as their southern correspondent in 1981, where he worked for a further eight years, until, in 1989, he suggested to RTÉ that as a public broadcaster, the station had a responsibility to cover marine issues. The idea was accepted and Seascapes was born, beginning initially as a 15-minute three-month trial run. It hasn’t been off the air since. Tom took to the new role so well (like a duck to water, if you can forgive the poor pun) that in 1997 he was made Marine Correspondent for RTÉ. He was given two years to prove himself, and, in his own words “I think I did, seeing as I’m still doing it”.

“I think late night radio is coming back. Radio is like a companion, it’s not something you have to continuously sit down and watch and give all your attention to. With Seascapes we really try to create pictures of the mind. It’s easy broadcasting and easy listening. I’ve gotten texts and emails from people who say they know nothing about the sea, but they always love listening to the show. I see it almost as knitting a family of the sea together over the radio. That to me is what public broadcasting is all about.”