THE BOYD DISASTER. by Cormac F. Lowth cormaclowth@utvinternet.com January and February have always been the worst months for storms around the east coast of Ireland and the year 1861 was no exception as the customary storms of February proved to be exceptionally severe. One of the worst storms on record began on Friday…
John Delap who served in the Imperial Russian Navy
DUNLEARY AND 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 period of economic depression. An opportunity arose for…
John Richardson Wigham(15 January 1829 – 16 November 1906) was a lighthouse engineer. He was a great inventor and successful businessman. He was born in Scotland into a Quaker family. (Take care not to confuse John Richardson Wigham with his cousin John Wigham Richardson, the shipbuilder, whose company eventually merged into Swan Hunter.) John Richardson Wigham‟s sister married…
More than seven decades after their dangerous enterprise came to an end Dun Laoghaire families with close links to the sea gathered in late September to honour the hobblers.
“The who? ” asked one local teenager when told by a friend that he intended to be present at the dedication in Dun Laoghaire harbour of a compelling monument to the men who years ago guided ships to harbour before the arrival of the Dublin Port pilots.
Francis Beaufort
We are all used to hearing weather forecasts on radio or television predicting ‘Wind Force So-and- So’.How many realise that the inventor of the Wind-Scale was born and brought up in Ireland, and did here some of the scientific experiments which place him among the greatest contributors anywhere at any time to the development of the marine sciences?
Leading Seaman James J. Magennis was the only person from Northern Ireland to be awarded the Victoria Cross during World War II, when he received the highest British decoration, as a diver on the midget-submarine XE-3 for her attack on the Japanese cruiser ‘Takao’, on July 31st. 1945 in the Strait of Jahore, Malaya.
2000 – The Holland Anniversary Year. 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…
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…
THE ONE-LEGGED SAILOR AND THE KING – Dennis Collins 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…
