St. Brendan the patron of boatmen, mariners, sailors, travelers, watermen and whales.

Brendan the Navigator, a 6th Century monk, was born in 484 and lived until 577 in Ireland. In 559, Brendan founded Clonfert monastery and monastic school for 3,000 monks. A keen sailor, Brendan traveled the high seas of the Atlantic, evangelizing to the islands, possibly reaching the Americas.

According to legend, he was in his seventies when he and 17 other monks set out on a westward voyage in a curragh, a wood-framed boat covered in sewn ox-hides. The monks sailed about the North Atlantic for seven years, according to details set down in the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis in the tenth century. Eventually, they reached "the Land of Promise of the Saints," which they explored before returning home with fruit and precious stones found there. Had Brendan reached Newfoundland, using the islands of the North Atlantic as stepping-stones?

Four hundred years passed before an account of Brendan's voyages was committed to writing. It is said that Columbus, to whom Brendan's stories would have been familiar, may have been inspired by the epic saga.

In 1976 and 1977, the adventurer Tim Severin demonstrated that such a voyage was possible by building the Brendan, a replica of a curragh, and sailing it to Newfoundland.