IRELAND’S BEAUFORT WAS WINDSCALE INVENTOR This is the first of a series of articles featuring the great people of Irish maritime history. The author is Dr John deCourcy Ireland, Honorary Research Officer of the Maritime Institute of Ireland, who has been honoured by many countries for his work in maritime history. BEAUFORT Francis Beaufort, born…
from the summer 2000 edition of “The Trident” 2000 The Holland Anniversary Year This millennium year 2000 is the hundredth anniversary of the purchase by the American Government of John Philip Holland’s Underwater Torpedo Boat No. 6, on the 11th. April 1900, and her commissioning on 12th. October that year as the first vessel in…
Robert Gibbings, An Irish Artist Underwater By Cormac F. Lowth First published in SUBSEA, the quarterly journal of the Irish Underwater Council, Autumn 2007. Nowadays we tend to take the imagery produced underwater, mostly by digital photography, very much for granted. The advances in technology and the availability of relatively cheap cameras and waterproof housings…
John DeLap – Imperial Russian Navy Irish Seamen John Delap Apparently born in Kerry most of what we know about Delap comes from Royal Navy and Russian navy records. In September 1714, Delap came to the notice of Peter the Great when he was aboard Peter the Great’s flagship Ekaterina. He volunteered to land Peter in a…
DUNLEARY AND SIMON BOLIVAR Cormac F. Lowth cormaclowth [at] utvinterenet [dot] com Simon Bolivar In Ireland in1819, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, there was an abundance of trained soldiers, who had seen action on the battlefields of Europe, who had been demobbed and had come home to a country facing into a post-war…
THE BOYD DISASTER. by Cormac F. Lowth And such the trust that still were mine, Though stormy winds swept o’er the brine, Or through the tempest’s fiery breath, Raise me from sleep to wreck and death. Emma Hart Willard, Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep. February 1861 will be remembered not only for…
Hobblers – who were they? Dublin Bay’s hobblers recalled at a Dún Laoghaire ceremony first published in the 2002/2003 edition of Inis na Mara More than seven decades after their dangerous enterprise came to an end Dún Laoghaire families with close links to the sea gathered in late September to honour the hobblers. “The who?…
Dennis Collins One-Legged Sailor stoned the King by Cormac F Lowth Throughout the year 1832, debates raged in the British Parliament at Westminster on the subject of Reform. Passions were aroused on the subject and there were heated exchanges which were reported in detail in the newspapers of the day. These reports were often accompanied by lengthy…
John Richardson Wigham on this page, most images will enlarge if clicked. Many if the artifacts are in the National Maritime Museum of Ireland, Dún Laoghaire. Many of the drawings are from Thomas Tag’s book “Brilliance and Prejudice” Here is a YouTube video of a museum guide relating this story John Richardson Wigham(15 January 1829…
Piet Hein Paddy O’Sullivan revision, 27 October 2013 Just after dawn on the morning of October the 12th 1492 Columbus sank his knees in the soft sand on an island in the Caribbean and claimed it for his sponsors the King and Queen of Spain. Columbus thought he had discovered an outlying part of Asia…