An On-line Journal of Research on Irish Maritime History.
Our objective, click to expand
The objective of this site is to support and promote research into Irish Maritime History. We include some general maritime history and general Irish history.
Here we will publish articles, as well as identifying articles on other sites. We will provide some material which may be of assistance to researchers suggest libraries, museums and other locations
We will review books, list lecture programs and make other announcements
Encourage education and school programs, such as Comenius and ‘Follow the fleet‘
Participate in other like-minded projects, such as Wikipedia’s WikiProject Irish Maritime.
The overall objective is to promote an appreciation of our maritime history.
A Showcase of Articles, published here
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A Riddle of Sand – The Kish Bank
A Riddle of Sand – The Kish Bank
Click here for full article It is often said that there is too much ‘rubbish’ information on the web. To be sure, there is rubbish but there’s rubbish everywhere. There is certainly not so much that the internet should not be used for research. This would of course be foolish. Like all libraries of information, one must discriminate and discard and hone, until you arrive at what you believe to be the nearest to accurate you can reasonably achieve.
Apostleship of the Sea (Stella Maris)
Apostleship of the Sea (Stella Maris)
Click here for full article The Apostleship of the Sea (affectionately known as Stella Maris to seafarers in approximately 60 countries (many with multiple ports) by Rose Kearney
Captain Hutchison
Captain Hutchison
Click here for full article Captain William Hutchison (1793-1881), from County Kildare was the first harbour master of Kingstown. He also acted as coxswain of the Dublin port lifeboat based at Sandycove. Born 1793 died 1881 Ex Lieutenant in RN Inspector of Bulloch Quarries Pilot…
Coastguard Lifesaving Carts
Coastguard Lifesaving Carts
Click here for full article The Coastguard 1800-1922 and coast lifesaving service 1923-c1992 maintained rocket rescue apparatus at strategic locations around the coast. They rescued hundreds of sailors over the period of their existence. The last service using rocket apparatus was when the Ranga ran…
Concrete Ships
Concrete Ships
Click here for full article Irish shipyards Warrenpoint – Concrete ships Cretefield During the First world war a shortage of steel developed as replacements were being built for the huge tonnage sunk by submarines. Steel was prioritised for construction of warships. Late in the war…
Crescent City – Mexican Silver Dollars
Crescent City – Mexican Silver Dollars
Click here for full article Mexican Silver Dollars at Galley Head, recovered from the cargo of the Crescent City
Demeray: Treasure Ship
Demeray: Treasure Ship
Click here for full article “The two barren islets are best remembered as the scene of the several shipwrecks. Here in 1819 the Demerary carrying gold bullion was wrecked and sank. One of her passengers, a Scotsman named Hugh Monro Robertson and sixteen members of the crew were washed ashore at Cullenstown and buried in the ancient graveyard in the Cill Park near Cullenstown Castle. Monroe’s is the only tombstone there now as one of the pillars from the memorial over the sailors’ grave was used as a weight on a harrow by a local farmer. To this day it is said that traces of gold dust from the Demerary’s strong room are found on the sand of the Keeraghs”
Diving on the Lusitania
Diving on the Lusitania
Click here for full article Diving on the Lusitania from Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast
Dublin Port Diving Bell
Dublin Port Diving Bell
Click here for full article Engineering by Cormac F. Lowth This article was first published in The International Journal of Diving History, Volume 3, Number 1, July 2010 The restored bell In the nineteenth century, several factors combined, which both facilitated and necessitated the expansion…
Dublin Shipyards
Dublin Shipyards
Click here for full article Irish Shipbuilding Miscellaneous Dublin yards While the main shipbuilding in Dublin Involved the Liffey yard, later Vickers, and Ross & Walpole several early years have disappeared without trace.
Early Irish Free State Naval Activity
Early Irish Free State Naval Activity
Click here for full article Eddie Bourke Dainty The early years of the Irish Free State from January 1922 were a time of turmoil after the war of Independence ceased with the Truce in July 1921. The British army commenced their withdrawal and the Free…
Fethard Lifeboat Disaster.
Fethard Lifeboat Disaster.
Click here for full article need to transcribe ?
Francis Beaufort (Wind Scale)
Francis Beaufort (Wind Scale)
Click here for full article 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?
From Havana to Skibereen (Piet Hein)
From Havana to Skibereen (Piet Hein)
Click here for full article "The bones of the treasure ship Santa Anna Maria lie strewn in forty feet of water on a rocky headland off Reen point in Castlehaven. Her oak keel and planking are largely intact" - read the story from the age of discovery and colonization of kingdoms of the new world.
G2, the coast-watching service and the Battle of the Atlantic
G2, the coast-watching service and the Battle of the Atlantic
Click here for full article This paper is an early version of the introduction to the Guarding Neutral Ireland: the coastwatching service and military intelligence 1939-45 (Four Courts Press, 2008)
Guardships at Kingstown
Guardships at Kingstown
Click here for full article GUARD-SHIPS AT KINGSTOWN By Cormac F. Lowth Shortly after the completion of Kingstown Harbour in the early 1820s, it became a convenient and preferred haven for elements of the British Royal Navy. It was a regular port of call for…
Historical Diving in Ireland
Historical Diving in Ireland
Click here for full article While there were few diving inventors or innovators in Ireland, it is remarkable that many of the early diving pioneers worked around the Irish coast. Local entrepreneurs and salvors were quick to exploit the invention of the helmet in the early 19th century and rapidly took on salvage work on their own account.
HMS A5 (Forgotten Submariners) Lost at Cobh
HMS A5 (Forgotten Submariners) Lost at Cobh
Click here for full article Early in 1999, Chief Petty Officer Owen O'Keeffe of the Irish Naval Service was visiting Old Church Cemetery near Cobh, County Cork. The purpose of his visit was to do some research on U S Navy graves dating back to the First World War. In the course of his search for the American graves, Owen O'Keeffe came across five particular graves which had like headstones. The graves were very neglected and overgrown and the headstones which were in the form of crosses were moss covered.
Hobblers – who were they?
Hobblers – who were they?
Click here for full article 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.
Irish Poplar
Irish Poplar
Click here for full article The story of the fist ship acquired by Irish Shipping
Irish WWII Losses
Irish WWII Losses
Click here for full article How Ireland´s Mercantile Marine fared during WWII by Frank Forde, author of "The Long Watch", the standard work on this subject
Italian Salvage Ships at the Galley Head
Italian Salvage Ships at the Galley Head
Click here for full article Paddy O’Sullivan traces the history of the Italian salvage company, Sorima, and describes its successful Ludgate operation off the Galley Head in 1934-35 On 19 May 1922, the ageing P&O liner, Egypt, departed from Tilbury, bound for Marseille and Bombay,…
John DeLap – Imperial Russian Navy
John DeLap – Imperial Russian Navy
Click here for full article John DeLap of the Imperial Russian Navy, credited with saving the life of Peter the Great
John Philip Holland (Submarines)
John Richardson Wigham
John Richardson Wigham
Click here for full article A great inventor and businessman. Actually born in Scotland, he was accused of being Irish, which he never denied. When he was 15 years old he left Scotland for Dublin to start his apprenticeship. Despite prejudice he was very successful
Legends of the Lusitania
Legends of the Lusitania
Click here for full article LEGENDS OF THE LUSITANIA The sinking of the Lusitania by a torpedo from U20 off the Old Head of Kinsale on Friday 7 May 1915 was the single greatest shipwreck tragedy in Irish waters. Some 1200 men, women and children…
Leinster
Leinster
Click here for full article U-boats sink the Mail-Boat and Many More in the Irish Channel The Atlantic Gateway Jim Phelan 1941 When ships crossed the channel between Ireland and England during WW1, they were attacked and sunk by German submarines. The loss of ships,…
Look-Out-Post 6 Howth Head
Look-Out-Post 6 Howth Head
Click here for full article Firstly I’d like to look at Howth Head LOP in the general context of the Coast Watching Service and talk about what the service was and how the Howth post operated within that structure. Then I’d like to focus on the post in day-to-day operation during a particular period of the Second World War, a period usually ignored by historians of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Lord Cloncurry and the Aid
Lord Cloncurry and the Aid
Click here for full article The AID with a cargo of Roman sculptures sank at Killiney. This tells of Lord Cloncurry, his life and the loss of the AID
Lost to Time and Tide
Lost to Time and Tide
Click here for full article This article offers no conclusions or answers, and is only designed to record some unusual archaeological features within a beautiful bay, which seem to have been forgotten and their use gone unrecorded. One wonders, just how old they are? Suggestions please.
M.V. Kilkenny Shipwrecked
M.V. Kilkenny Shipwrecked
Click here for full article Austin's own account of his experience of being ship-wrecked
M.V. Plassy: Rescue
M.V. Plassy: Rescue
Click here for full article The Plassy is the wreck shown in the opening sequence of Fr Ted. Behind it is a real story of a heroic rescue.
Maritime Art and Dún Laoghaire
Maritime Art and Dún Laoghaire
Click here for full article Illustrated talk given to the Dún Laoghaire Borough Historical Society on Feb. 21st. 2007.
Morven Disaster. December, 1906.
Morven Disaster. December, 1906.
Click here for full article The Morven was bound from Portland, Oregon to Liverpool with a cargo of about three thousand tons of grain for the Messrs Bannatyne. The place where the wreck occurred is a little promontory locally known as “Horse Island”.
Moyalla Salvaged
Moyalla Salvaged
Click here for full article The salvage of the valuable cargo of the Moyalla is the tale of triumph of a skilled first time salvor over the might of a large professional salvage company. It is a remarkable story of early scuba diving in Ireland…
MV Kerlogue
MV Kerlogue
Click here for full article Irish ships were neutral during the war. The Kerlogue story is interesting as she was attacked by both sides and she rescued both sides
One-Legged Sailor stoned the King
One-Legged Sailor stoned the King
Click here for full article 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…
Pirates at Muglins
Pirates at Muglins
Click here for full article Original Newspaper Report PETER M’KINLIE, GEORGE GIDLEY, ANDREW ZEKERMAN, AND RICHARD ST. QUINTIN Executed for Piracy and Murder, December 19th, 1765 Original Newspaper Report BEFORE we enter upon the bloody deeds of these inhuman monsters, we shall present our…
Pomona, emigrant ship, 389 died
Pomona, emigrant ship, 389 died
Click here for full article it is out pitiful duty to record. The United States ship Pomona , Captain Merrihew with a crew of thirty five men and three hundred and seventy three passengers, principally Irish left Liverpool on Wednesday 27th instant, bound for New York, she struck the Blackwater Bank, at four o’clock a.m. on the following day. all on board , amounting to 389 souls – the crew and passengers making in the aggregate 408, out of whom only twenty three were saved. We have the above melancholy particulars of this dreadful disaster from the active and efficient agent of the Shipwrecked Mariners society
Rival
Rival
Click here for full article The troopship Rival was lost off Connemara. 432 drowned. A forgotten wreck, no folk memory survives, probably because this happened in 1832 shortly before the Famine. The famine was so great a disaster that this disaster, the loss of the Rival, was erased from memory
Robert Gibbings, Underwater Artist
Robert Gibbings, Underwater Artist
Click here for full article 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…
Rochdale and Prince of Wales
Rochdale and Prince of Wales
Click here for full article These troop ships were lost on their way to the Napoleonic Wars. Over 400 bodies washed up on an urban shore. Allegations that they were trapped below while the crew escaped. This sad incident was an impetus to the construction of Dún Laoghaire Harbour
Roman wrecks of Lake Nemi
Roman wrecks of Lake Nemi
Click here for full article There is a small lake called Nemi in the Alban Hills, about 30 kilometers southeast of Rome. Between 1927 and 1933, two enormous wooden ships, which once belonged to the Emperor Caligula, and had lain on the bottom of the Lake for over nineteen hundred years, were salvaged in what was perhaps the greatest underwater archaeological recovery ever accomplished.Saint-Malo
Saint-Malo
Click here for full article by Eric Duhan Once you touch ground in Saint-Malo you are entering a place steeped in history from the very first time when man set foot in Western Europe. In the earlier centuries the visitors first view of the city…
Salvage Tradition, Law and Lore
Salvage Tradition, Law and Lore
Click here for full article The fury with which primitive communities descended upon a stricken vessel can only be regarded with a sense of awe. Tales abound of the ferocity of wreckers and their cruel deeds. Many tales are related which must be apocryphal.
Sibe Gorman & Co
Sibe Gorman & Co
Click here for full article From early in the nineteenth century until the present time, the image of a copper and brass diver's helmet or hard-hat has been an easily recognisable icon which most people could associate with what has always been referred to as "deep-sea diving".. This is the story of the company responsible for that image: Sibe Gorman & Co
Simon Bolivar – Liberator of Venezuela
Simon Bolivar – Liberator of Venezuela
Click here for full article One thousand men of the Irish Legion landed on Venezuela's Margarita Island in August 1819, after a 4,500-mile sea voyage from Dublin. These soldiers of fortune, many of them recently demobilized veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, now sought fame and adventure in the armies of South America's Liberator, Simon Bolivar. In the years 1819 and 1820, more than 2,100 Irish soldiers reached Venezuela as members of organized Irish regiments.
Slave Ship Amity (1701)
Slave Ship Amity (1701)
Click here for full article The history of slavery is probably as old as that of mankind itself. Hundreds of thousands of slaves built such classical civilisations as Greece, Egypt and Rome. Viking Dublin was a major slave trading port in its heyday. However, for the purposes of this story I will deal only with the transatlantic slave trade whereby from twelve to twenty million African slaves were transported to the Americas over a span of four hundred years.
Smuggling in the eighteenth and early nineteenth Century
Smuggling in the eighteenth and early nineteenth Century
Click here for full article Joe Varley The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are described as the golden age of smuggling. From the perspective of the present time, a slightly romantic and rather innocent appraisal has been made of that period. Richard Platt examines this…
SS Lochgarry
SS Lochgarry
Click here for full article History of the SS Lochgarry One of Ireland’s most Popular Recreational Diving Wrecks
Tayleur Fund Medal Awards
Tayleur Fund Medal Awards
Click here for full article The sailing ship Tayleur was wrecked in January 1854 at Lambay with the loss of 220 of the 670 aboard. A fund was established in both Liverpool and Dublin to assist the victims. The fund was used to award medals for heroism in the Irish Sea.
Tayleur was lost at Lambay
Tayleur was lost at Lambay
Click here for full article The sailing ship Tayleur was lost at Lambay just north of Dublin on 21 January 1854. Of the 650 aboard only 290 survived, merely three of the hundred women survived and only three of fifty children reached shore. Known as the "First Titanic"
The Argentine Republic Emigration Scheme
The Argentine Republic Emigration Scheme
Click here for full article This marked the end of Irish emigration to South America. It was badly planned and many died