BITE-SIZED HISTORY
Published in Issue 4 (July/August 2018), News, Volume 26BY TONY CANAVAN
Raise the Endurance
An international effort to locate the lost ship of Irish Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton will take place next year. Shackleton’s 1914 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition met with disaster when its ship, the Endurance, was crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea in November 1915. Three previous attempts to find the Endurance have failed. Professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute, will lead a 45-day expedition to Antarctica to study the Larsen C Ice Shelf, which last year created one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded. The Endurance was lost so close to this location that the team have decided to try and find it. ‘It would be a shame not to,’ Dowdeswell told the BBC. They plan to send autonomous underwater vehicles to map the sea floor looking for signs of the Endurance.
The Troubles as history
An exhibition exploring the history of the Troubles was opened to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The Troubles and Beyond at the Ulster Museum examines Northern Ireland’s recent past through a range of objects reflecting diverse perspectives and experiences. Many objects were contributed by the public as part of a major collecting initiative, and the Ulster Museum collaborated with other museums, universities, community groups and the public to set up the exhibition. It collected material relating to everyday experiences, music and sports, as well as the experiences of the LGBT community and others, which are being exhibited alongside political posters and ephemera. In a related matter, items including posters, photographs, pamphlets, T-shirts, badges and stickers covering the Troubles era have been donated to Derry’s Tower Museum. Collected by retired architect Peter Moloney, the 48,000-item collection covers a 50-year period, providing insight into Bloody Sunday, the hunger strikes and the Peace Process. It is believed to be the largest private archive of memorabilia charting Ireland’s recent history. Libraries NI has also agreed to take over 2,000 books and 3,000 journals in the Moloney collection, making them accessible to the public.
A unique view of Leinster history
Above: Panel 7 of the Ros Tapestry—the marriage of Isabel de Clare, heir to the kindom of Leinster, and William Marshal.
Many historically significant vessels are among the thousands of shipwrecks that can be found on a new interactive map recently launched. The ‘Wreck Viewer’ features exact locations for c. 4,000 recorded wrecks, while information on an additional 14,000 whose location has not been fully confirmed is also available to download. The oldest wrecks on the map are logboats found in inland lakes and rivers, many dating back to prehistory. Six Spanish Armada wrecks have been identified and plotted. Other noteworthy wrecks include the RMS Leinster (torpedoed by a German U-boat in 1918), the Muirchú (previously the HMY Helga, which shelled rebel positions in the 1916 Rising and became the first ship of the Irish naval service) and the RMS Tayleur (sunk en route to Australia from Liverpool in 1854 with over 300 lives lost). To view the map, go to www.archaeology.ie/underwater-archaeology/wreck-viewer.
A forgotten centenary
A sad centenary occurred recently that seems to have slipped by largely unnoticed. In May 1918, Mrs Emily Ricketts (formerly Mrs Dickenson) died in the South Dublin Union workhouse. What was noteworthy was that she was the sister of Charles Stewart Parnell. She had been living in Wales but had returned to Ireland to visit the Parnell ancestral home of Avondale, Co. Wicklow. There is some mystery as to how she ended up in the workhouse, as she was comparatively well off. Since she was 80 years of age, however, her family speculated that she was suffering from ‘mental trouble’ and was probably admitted for her own safety. Fortunately, the South Dublin Union was able to identify her and to inform the family. She remained in Ireland to be buried in the Parnell plot in Ballintone, near Rathdrum.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.