Ned Kelly
07-10-2008, 11:43
http://m.uk.2mdn.net/viewad/817-grey.gif (http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/3752/0/0/%2a/g;44306;0-0;0;5128753;1-468/60;0/0/0;;%7Esscs=%3f) http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/other.ireland.com;cat1=article;tile=1;sz=468x60;or d=123456789? (http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/other.ireland.com;cat1=article;tile=1;sz=468x60;or d=123456789?)
(http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/)
The QE2 may have departed for the last time, but Cobh is still a busy harbour for luxury cruise liners such as The World
Donal MusgraveFOR local historian John Hennessy of Cobh, who has spent a lifetime watching the comings and goings of transatlantic liners, last Thursday evening was steeped in nostalgia.
"It's the end of an era," he reflected from his vantage point on the East Road high above the harbour, watching the Queen Elizabeth II slip from her deepwater berth for the last time.
Not that her departure signalled the end of Cobh's busy liner trade - far from it, indeed. But for him it closed a chapter because in contrast with modern liners, which resemble vast floating boxes more than than ships, the QE2 was designed on classic lines. She is a "real" ship, as he put it.
As tugs nudged the Cunard flagship out into the main channel, the cathedral bells tolled the Angelus, a welcome sound to generations of Irish crew members, who were well treated by the Catholic founders of the Canadian company.
On a rising tide, and once clear of Roche's Point, the QE2 set course for Liverpool en route to Dubai, to suffer the ignominy of being turned into a floating "hotel, retail and entertainment destination". But at least that will be a less undignified fate than the wrecker's torch on an Indian beach for a ship bearing the name of the current British monarch and which carried most of the crowned heads of Europe in her time.
Amid the onlookers last Thursday stood the bronze sculpture of two small brothers with Annie Moore, the first emigrant to be "processed" at Ellis Island in New York. This effigy is a moving reminder of Cobh's key role in Irish history. A town with a rich past, it is redolent of famine ships and the great liners that bore millions of emigrants hoping for a new life in the New World.
John Hennessy, who is studying pilotage for a master's degree in local history, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the town's intimate links with ships through the ages of sail, steam and diesel. He recites a litany of callers at Cobh in the 1800s - the Manchester, Oceanic, Atlantic, Baltic, Pacific, Adriatic, Celtic, Arcadia and Caledonia . And he describes how the paddle steamer Sirius , which in 1838 became the first ship to cross the Atlantic from Cobh to New York without the aid of sail, would - at just 208 feet long - have fitted inside the ballroom of the QE2 .
Much of Cobh's maritime history is bathed in sadness. A top the hill above the former Queenstown, the windswept old graveyard bears the remains of 193 of the 1,198 passengers lost when the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine off the Old Head of Kinsale in May 1915. Forty-five of the coffins were marked merely with a number: they contained unidentified remains.
The first convict ships bound for Australia left the harbour in 1791 and during the Napoleonic wars, up to 300 naval and commercial ships could be seen at anchor. Packed troop ships sent young men and women to the American War of Independence, the Boer War the Crimea War and the First World War.
And perhaps most famously, Cobh was the last port of call for the New York-bound RMS Titanic , which anchored at the harbour mouth harbour on April 11th, 1912, just two days before she struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of over 1,500 lives.
But Cobh has also known happier times. At the height of its transatlantic traffic in the 1920s and 1930s, between 300 and 400 ships a year called there, fattening the local economy and spawning merchant princes. In those heady days, shipping lines such as Cunard, Holland America, the United States and White Star jostled for office space on the quays.
Local journalists vied for juicy assignments on visiting liners. On one famous occasion, after a brandy and cigar too many, members of the press corps failed to disembark in time and ended up in England.
In today's turbulent economic times, traditional tourism may be suffering, but the cruise liner business is booming. In a town knocked sideways by the closure of Irish Steel at Haulbowline across the harbour, the liners are a godsend.
According to John Mansworth, chairman of Cork Cruise, the business will be worth €54 million to the economy of Munster this year. When the world's biggest liner, the 13-storey Independence of the Seas , drops anchor there, she dwarfs the townscape. Her passengers and crew outnumber the population of 6,500 people within the urban boundary.
When a big liner calls, CIE lays on extra trains for sightseers from Cork and a fleet of 40 excursion buses ferries the cruise tourists to Blarney, Killarney, Waterford, the Rock of Cashel, or simply to sample good whiskey at the distillery in Midleton.
"The liner trade is worth a great deal to the town and the whole region," says Cobh town clerk Paraig Lynch. "The combination of a big ship, fine weather, music, a farmers' market, and crowds on the streets can mean an awful lot of business."
© 2008 The Irish Times
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
http://m.uk.2mdn.net/viewad/817-grey.gif (http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/3752/0/0/%2a/v;44306;0-0;0;5128753;237-250/250;0/0/0;;%7Esscs=%3f) http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/other.ireland.com;cat1=article;tile=2;sz=250x250;o rd=123456789? (http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/other.ireland.com;cat1=article;tile=2;sz=250x250;o rd=123456789?)
(http://www.irishtimes.com/feeds/rss/breaking/index.rss)
(http://www.omniture.com)
(http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/)
The QE2 may have departed for the last time, but Cobh is still a busy harbour for luxury cruise liners such as The World
Donal MusgraveFOR local historian John Hennessy of Cobh, who has spent a lifetime watching the comings and goings of transatlantic liners, last Thursday evening was steeped in nostalgia.
"It's the end of an era," he reflected from his vantage point on the East Road high above the harbour, watching the Queen Elizabeth II slip from her deepwater berth for the last time.
Not that her departure signalled the end of Cobh's busy liner trade - far from it, indeed. But for him it closed a chapter because in contrast with modern liners, which resemble vast floating boxes more than than ships, the QE2 was designed on classic lines. She is a "real" ship, as he put it.
As tugs nudged the Cunard flagship out into the main channel, the cathedral bells tolled the Angelus, a welcome sound to generations of Irish crew members, who were well treated by the Catholic founders of the Canadian company.
On a rising tide, and once clear of Roche's Point, the QE2 set course for Liverpool en route to Dubai, to suffer the ignominy of being turned into a floating "hotel, retail and entertainment destination". But at least that will be a less undignified fate than the wrecker's torch on an Indian beach for a ship bearing the name of the current British monarch and which carried most of the crowned heads of Europe in her time.
Amid the onlookers last Thursday stood the bronze sculpture of two small brothers with Annie Moore, the first emigrant to be "processed" at Ellis Island in New York. This effigy is a moving reminder of Cobh's key role in Irish history. A town with a rich past, it is redolent of famine ships and the great liners that bore millions of emigrants hoping for a new life in the New World.
John Hennessy, who is studying pilotage for a master's degree in local history, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the town's intimate links with ships through the ages of sail, steam and diesel. He recites a litany of callers at Cobh in the 1800s - the Manchester, Oceanic, Atlantic, Baltic, Pacific, Adriatic, Celtic, Arcadia and Caledonia . And he describes how the paddle steamer Sirius , which in 1838 became the first ship to cross the Atlantic from Cobh to New York without the aid of sail, would - at just 208 feet long - have fitted inside the ballroom of the QE2 .
Much of Cobh's maritime history is bathed in sadness. A top the hill above the former Queenstown, the windswept old graveyard bears the remains of 193 of the 1,198 passengers lost when the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine off the Old Head of Kinsale in May 1915. Forty-five of the coffins were marked merely with a number: they contained unidentified remains.
The first convict ships bound for Australia left the harbour in 1791 and during the Napoleonic wars, up to 300 naval and commercial ships could be seen at anchor. Packed troop ships sent young men and women to the American War of Independence, the Boer War the Crimea War and the First World War.
And perhaps most famously, Cobh was the last port of call for the New York-bound RMS Titanic , which anchored at the harbour mouth harbour on April 11th, 1912, just two days before she struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of over 1,500 lives.
But Cobh has also known happier times. At the height of its transatlantic traffic in the 1920s and 1930s, between 300 and 400 ships a year called there, fattening the local economy and spawning merchant princes. In those heady days, shipping lines such as Cunard, Holland America, the United States and White Star jostled for office space on the quays.
Local journalists vied for juicy assignments on visiting liners. On one famous occasion, after a brandy and cigar too many, members of the press corps failed to disembark in time and ended up in England.
In today's turbulent economic times, traditional tourism may be suffering, but the cruise liner business is booming. In a town knocked sideways by the closure of Irish Steel at Haulbowline across the harbour, the liners are a godsend.
According to John Mansworth, chairman of Cork Cruise, the business will be worth €54 million to the economy of Munster this year. When the world's biggest liner, the 13-storey Independence of the Seas , drops anchor there, she dwarfs the townscape. Her passengers and crew outnumber the population of 6,500 people within the urban boundary.
When a big liner calls, CIE lays on extra trains for sightseers from Cork and a fleet of 40 excursion buses ferries the cruise tourists to Blarney, Killarney, Waterford, the Rock of Cashel, or simply to sample good whiskey at the distillery in Midleton.
"The liner trade is worth a great deal to the town and the whole region," says Cobh town clerk Paraig Lynch. "The combination of a big ship, fine weather, music, a farmers' market, and crowds on the streets can mean an awful lot of business."
© 2008 The Irish Times
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
http://m.uk.2mdn.net/viewad/817-grey.gif (http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/click;h=v8/3752/0/0/%2a/v;44306;0-0;0;5128753;237-250/250;0/0/0;;%7Esscs=%3f) http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/ad/other.ireland.com;cat1=article;tile=2;sz=250x250;o rd=123456789? (http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/jump/other.ireland.com;cat1=article;tile=2;sz=250x250;o rd=123456789?)
(http://www.irishtimes.com/feeds/rss/breaking/index.rss)
(http://www.omniture.com)