Brewery barge
Brewery barge
In Brief
Starting across the river in Lestrygonians, Bloom
notices a ball of smoke rising up beside the stone railings of
the bridge: "As he set foot on O’Connell bridge a puffball of
smoke plumed up from the parapet. Brewery barge with export
stout. England. Sea air sours it, I heard." The barge going
under the bridge is from the
Guinness brewery stores on the south bank of the Liffey at
the western end of Dublin. It is carrying barrels of
stout down to the mouth of the river, where they will be
loaded onto oceangoing ships that cannot pass upstream beyond
the O'Connell Bridge.
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In 1904 these barges were powered by steam, which meant that
they produced large quantities of dirty smoke. In his Ulysses
Guide Robert Nicholson observes that the discrete "ball"
of smoke can be accounted for by an inventive feature of the
barges: "The brewery barges, plying to and from the Guinness
brewery, had hinged funnels which were let down when they
passed under a low bridge, releasing the 'puffball'" (152).
