Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
Hi there,
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
There is an issue with role permissions that is being worked on at the moment.
If you are having trouble with access or permissions on regional forums please post here to get access: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058365403/you-do-not-have-permission-for-that#latest
Rum Sodomy & the Lash - Irish Maritime Times & Lore
Comments
-
-
The slave ship Amity that sank off Courtmacsherry in 1701
The only survivor was a black slave boy.Planks from the Amity
Amity planks
In December 1701 Dunworley (a few miles from Courtmacsherry) received a surprise visit from a slave ship of the Royal African Company. The ship was named The Amity and was bound for London having departed the Guinea coast in Africa. The Amity was heavily laden with ivory and camm-wood (a red hardwood from the African Padauk tree.) A beam of camm-wood stills serves the role of lintel in supporting a chimney-beast in a local cottage. However, destiny had other plans for the unsuspecting Amity. A series of Atlantic storms blew the ship hopelessly off course and onto a submerged reef in Dunworley Bay. In no time the ship was pounded to pieces on the rocks and its cargo scattered in all directions. All hands were drowned save a black slave boy who somehow made it ashore under ferocious conditions. Folklore gleaned from the late Donal Hegarty of Lehina near Dunworley tells us that the following morning Dunworley’s beach was littered with dead bodies, some were Africans, the remainder were white-skinned.
We do not know how many lost their lives on that fateful night but we can assume around fifty people including captain Phaxton, the average slave-ship engaged a fifty-man crew to work their vessels, Donal Hegarty’s lore gives us an insight into the sectarian attitudes of the day. The African corpses on Dunworley Strand were presumed to be heathens and therefore buried in shallow graves in the sands where they lay. However, white skinned corpses were presumed to be Christians and carted off to be buried in hallowed ground. The broken remains of the Amity were reported to be in two fathoms of water, which no doubt facilitated the recovery of much of her cargo over the following months. The RAC took active steps to recover their goods from the sunken ship. They engaged local man Robert Travers, and two others, Morgan Bernard, and Peter Renue a Cork merchant. Further accounts of the welfare of the slave boy fade from the record. Unfortunately, all correspondence from Travers to the RAC appears to have been lost. The slave boy does not appear to have made it back to London. Did he die of pneumonia as a result of his long immersion in the storm-tossed Atlantic on that fateful night in December 1701? Could he have died as a result of injuries inflicted on him when his ship broke up on the foaming reef? We do not know! Brief snippets from the original RAC letters to Travers suggest that he was somebody of importance to them. On 23 December 1701 the RAC wrote a letter to Peter Renue urging him to:
We require you to take care of the negroe salved from out of the ship and take such attentions as are for our service, let him be supplied with warm clothes and other necessaries and send him to us by the first ship bound for the river Thames
The letter goes on to instruct Travers and Bernard on arrangements for the recovery and transport of salvaged tusks and camm-wood. Another letter to Peter Renue urges him to put recovered ship papers on boat bound for England. On 23 January 1702 the RAC wrote to Peter Renue to confirm that the Amity’s papers had arrived. We have advice the box of writing has arrived at Bristol but not the black, the Company pray great care be taken of him. Yet another letter of 20 January 1702 to a Captain Watson urges:
be sure to bring home carefully a negroe that was miraculously saved out of the Amity
Throughout the Amity saga, it seems the locals were busy spiriting away tusks and camm wood washed up on the shores. The RAC again wrote to their appointed salvors urging them to recover their [imbezled] cargo from the locals. Another letter by the RAC urges legal action against the [embezollers]. Search warrants were proposed to investigate suspected smugglers. Amity tusks can still be seen in some local gardens near Dunworley.
However, they have long since lost their ivory lustre to be replaced with a chalk-like coating. Shaw’s mill in Cork had two Amity tusks assembled cross-sword like and mounted on a wooden plaque in the main office. The RAC ordered Travers to put a watch on the wreck to counteract the ‘embezollers’ the watch was called off in mid August 1702 as it was believed that any future salvage attempts would not be economically viable. However, winter storms in Dunworley threw up glass beads annually on the beach at Dunworley, especially the Yellow Cove. By mid 1850s these curious beads attracted the attention of the Church of Ireland rector and clergyman for St. Mary’s in Shandon, Doctor Neligan, a graduate to T.C.D. Others like Lord Londesborough, a Mr Akerman, secretary of the Society of Antiquarians in London, and Mr. Vaux of the British Museum were also curious. Neligan was a regular visitor to Dunworley as his wife’s relatives who lived in the area. Whenever the opportunity arose Neligan scoured the beach at Dunworley for glass beads. He was ably assisted by hoards of local children whom he bribed with pennies. Best results were obtained by targeting low spring tides and foraging along the gravel at the waterline. Within one year Neligan, an avid collector had accumulated over six-hundred beads. He subsequently gave a talk on the beads to the Cork Cuverian Society and published a booklet on the matter. In his book he enclosed a lithograph of a few beads he assembled necklace style. Despite Neligan’s death in 1887 the Amity story had not yet closed. The restless slave ship was inadvertently plunged centre stage in 1898 as a result of a freak accident in the bay.
On 5th August 1898 the four-masted ship: Ecclefechan, heavily laden with 4,000 tons of corn, was stranded on the rocks inside Bird Island near Dunworley. Despite being badly holed and taking water, tugs managed to tow her off her rocky bed and ashore to Dunworley strand for beaching and repair. Suddenly the bay was a hive of activity. Two Cork corn merchants, T.R.. Holland and John Mulcahy arrived to supervise the unloading of the corn on the crippled ship. The Cobh salvage company of Ensor arrived with their steam tugs and salvage gear. Two helmet divers, the Collins brothers, formed part of the team. Myriads of small boats swarmed around the crippled grain ship to assist in the operation. The Collins brothers did Trojan work to patch and save the Ecclefechen which was re-floated. However, there was much talk in the air by the locals regarding a fabled chest of gold that went down with the Amity. These stories dangled tantalising bait to the Collins brothers and perhaps the Ensor salvage company; it was decided to investigate the sunken slave ship before departing the area. The divers easily found the shipwreck based on accurate information from local fishermen. Twelve cannons were subsequently raised and brought into Cork; two still decorate the front lawn of a stately home in the Cork area. The Collins duo also recovered glass beads, ivory and English silver crowns. Inscriptions on the crowns linked them to the reign of King William and Mary. The chest of gold story most likely belongs in the realm of fable and fantasy, nothing to indicate its existence was found.
The Amity still attracts sports divers during the summer season. However, three hundred-hundred-and-ten years in the open Atlantic has taken its toll on the remains. Its hull is now reduced to a skeletal keelson with broken ribs protruding from its sides; measurements taken in 2003 would indicate a ship of ninety feet in length. Several cannon scattered about the ship are in an advanced state of decay. Two mounds of admiralty-link chain are situated quite near the wreck. However, the chains were abandoned ground tackle dating back to the Ecclefechan salvage and bear no connection to the Amity.
http://www.mariner.ie/history/articles/ships/dunworley0 -
-
-
-
-
-
-
To add a bit more depth to the thread. I would like to post the link to a site that has records of some Irish seafarers who worked in the British MN (1918-1921). http://www.irishmariners.ie/
If you had any relatives at sea at that time, they may well be listed on this site.
It should also be remembered that Irish men died on unarmed merchant ships in both World Wars. I have been to the memorial in London and saw a number of Irish ships and crew listed there. We also have our own memorial in Dublin
I actually found my grandfather on the Irish Mariners site the other day. Quite a long tradition in Rush of serving in the Maritime Navy. They had two rules- Never serve on a fuel tanker if you could help it, even in peace time.
- Try to get a job on a Quaker run ship, they were treated better and the Quakers were known not to take risks such as putting to sea in storms unlike some owners chasing increased profits.
From The Irish Times, May 17, 1945IRISHMAN'S STORY OF "HORROR" CAMPS
The experiences of thirty-two citizen of Eire, all merchant seamen, in an S.S. camp in Germany, where five of them died from starvation or typhus, were described yesterday to an "Irish Times" reporter by William English, of Arklow, one of the thirty-two, who has just arrived in Dublin after his liberation.
He said the camp was at Bremen Farge, outside Bremen, and that the camp commandant - named Schaubecker - a month ago shot sixteen prisoners after announcing that he knew he would be shot or hanged by the Allied armies, and he "would take as many as he could with him."
Mr English saw a naked Belgian prisoner beaten to death with rubber hose for attempting to escape. A Pole was shot in the thigh while trying to escape, and the S.S. guards rubbed salt into the wound and beat him with electric cable. He walked from the end of the camp to the hospital, but a Russian doctor, also a prisoner, was refused permission to attend him, and gangrene set in. The doctor said it would be more merciful to shoot the man. The guard did so. Next morning a French prisoner who refused information was shot.
A Russian prisoner was thrown into the camp refuse heap and Schaubecker forced some of the muck from the heap into his throat with a wire before throwing him back on the heap. He was struck with a rifle butt on the head and killed. His body was left for three days on the heap.
The five citizens of Eire who died in the camp were:
W.H. KNOX, Dun Laoghaire;
Owen CORR, of Rush, Co. Dublin;
Gerald O'HARA, Ballina, Co. Mayo;
Patrick BREEN, Blackwater, Co. Wexford, and
Thomas MURPHY, of Dublin.
IRISH SEGREGATED
Mr. English said that he was a seaman on the Blue Star liner, s.s. Africa Star, and in January, 1941, while they were bound from South America to London, they were intercepted by the German surface raider, Steinmark, which took the liner's crew aboard and then sank her. The men were taken to Bordeaux and sent to Germany to camp Stalag XB, 10B Sandbostel.
The prisoners whose homes were in Eire were segregated and questioned by German intelligence officers and urged to work for Germany. They all refused.
In September, 1941, about fifty Irishmen, all seamen, were taken to Marlag, Nilag Nord, another camp, and thirty-two of them were sent to Bremen Labour Exchange. They were brought to a factory and again refused to work.
Their guards suggested to them that, being Irish, they ought to work against Britain in the war.
They were taken to Hamburg and asked to work on German ships, but again refused, and they were returned to Bremen Farge.
In the camp they worked 12 hours a day, mostly at carrying rail tracks. Russian girls, aged from 16 to 18, were doing the same kind of work. In Bremen Jewish girls of from 15 to 18 worked in demolition squads.
NO PRIVILEGES
Mr. English said that, apart from the effort to get them to work for German, the prisoners from Eire got no special treatment as citizens of a neutral State. They repeatedly wrote to Mr. Warnock when he was Eire's representative in Berlin, but received no answer and did not know if the letters had reached him. On August 18th last, Mr. C.C. Cremin, the new representative of Eire in Berlin, visited them at the camp, and their treatment improved. He made every effort to get them sent home.
After twenty-six months they were put on a train for Flensburg, but were forced back because Allied planes had destroyed a bridge on the route, and a repatriation ship, which they had expected to meet in a Swedish port, sailed without them. They were sent to the camp at Marlag Nilag Nord, which was captured in April by a Guards armoured regiment.
The names of the 27 men, who came out of the camp alive, are:-
William ENGLISH and C. BYRNE, Arklow;
Valentine HARRIS, Pearse House, Dublin;
J.J. MOFFAT, Rosses Point;
Bernard GOULDING, Skibbereen;
Harry CALLAN, Derry;
Noel J. LACEY, Howth;
Richard FLYNN, Tramore;
Thomas COONEY, Wexford;
Edward CONDON, Passage West, Co. Cork;
William KELLY and J.J. RYAN, Waterford;
Patrick REILLY and Patrick KAVANAGH, Wicklow;
I.C. RYAN, Tramore;
T.C. BRYCE, formerly of Clontarf, Dublin, who lived in Australia before the war broke out;
Thomas KING, formerly of Clifden, now living in Newcastle;
Peter LYDON, Tralee;
P.J. O'Brien, Armagh, now of London;
Michael LOWRY, formerly of Galway, domiciled in Scotland;
J. O'BRIEN, of Kinsale, living in Wales;
James GORMAN, Clogher Head;
P.J. O'CONNOR, Carlingford;
Michael O'DWYER, Cork;
Robert ROSEMAN, Bray;
James FURLONG, Wexford, and
William KNOTT, Ringsend, Dublin.0 -
Advertisement
-
-
-
Advertisement