Glenua Sailing Centre
Aud wreck © John Collins photography
www.glenua.com
Maritime Aspects of The 1916 Rising
by
Dr. Edward Bourke
Thursday 14 April 2016
20:00
at
Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club Ringsend
Entry €5 (in aid of RNLI)
Glenua Sailing Centre
Helga.
Edward Bourke is an industrial microbiologist recently retired from brewery research. He is also maritime historian and has published five books on Irish shipwrecks as well as a history of Guinness. Currently he is working on the role of intelligence during the war of Independence in Ireland.
In his illustrated lecture, Edward will explore several maritime aspects of the 1916 events. Foremost among them being the role played by the Royal Navy in suppressing the Rising by strategic interventions. The role of the Helga is greatly exaggerated as most of the shelling of Dublin was done by field artillery. Import of guns for the Volunteers in 1914 was carefully controlled by the British authorities. The navy had ample forewarning of the intentions of the Volunteers but the 1916 Rising proceeded. While a seminal event in Irish History the rising in Ireland was a sideshow in the Great European war and arguably a pawn in a much greater strategy.