Mark Anthony was born in Waterford in 1786 and at fifteen joined the Royal Navy serving for close on twenty years until retiring to take up a post as harbour master at Dunmore East. Mark Anthony was born second in line to Joseph Anthony and his wife Juliet Lambert at...
Waterford’s Neptune Shipyard opened in February 1843 as a repair yard for the growing number of iron hulled steamers of the Malcomson fleet. The quaker family had started out in the milling business in Clonmel before branching out into textiles in Portlaw and...
This months guest blog is brought to us by Pat Nolan. Pat recently republished a piece in the monthly Marine Times magazine with the headline "A Lifetime Fishing, Billy Power Recalls. It was to coincide with Billy's recent retirement. Needless to say I've met Billy...
At 3am on a damp, misty February morning in 1959, Waterford harbour pilot, Pat Rogers was arriving into Dunmore for work when he spotted a ship close to the shore up the harbour. In a fresh SE wind a small ship had run onto the rocks at Ardnamult Head, or the Middle...
On Monday 2nd May 1904, Waterford hosted a royal visit to Ireland's oldest city. The event is very well recorded in history books, but one aspect receives a lot less attention, and that is the naval presence. On a wet Friday evening on the 29th April(1) four Royal...
There is a yarn I was told years ago about a quiet, unassuming man named Christy Doherty (RIP) that speaks to me of the fishermen of Cheekpoint. It concerned an incident at a fishing weir located just below the village close to the Mount Quay and Sheag Rock. The story...
In 1904 a local paper(1) announced that war had been declared from Waterford Harbour. The war was a game, but a serious game, that involved up to 200 ships and extended across the length of the Irish Sea. The Waterford Flotilla stationed in the harbour played a...
In a dramatic few weeks in August 1917 Dunmore became the center of a naval espionage operation that saw the destruction of a U Boat, the rescue and interrogation of her captain and a salvage operation to lift the boat from the depths of Waterford harbour. But...
Catherine Foley is a proud Waterford woman who grew up initially in the city before moving to An Rinn in the Waterford Gaeltacht. Deena and I had known of her before, through her contributions to RTE Radio 1's Sunday Miscellany. However it was her cousin, and a...
This week sees a significant local anniversary, for on the 21st July 1906 the first official train crossed the Barrow railway bridge. The infrastructure was the last significant piece of railway network constructed nationally and it linked the west of Ireland with...
The Waterford Steamship Navigation Company river service commenced in 1837. It ran daily return trips between New Ross-Waterford and Duncannon-Waterford, Monday to Saturday. In the Summer season Sunday trips were also offered. During the week the ships departed the...
Last Saturday I had the good fortune to call over to Waterford Airport to see the materials that were uncovered by Noel McDonagh at Creaden Head, Co Waterford. While there we got into a conversation with Michael Farrell of the Barony of Gaultier Historical Society...
For this latest guest blog, I'm delighted to welcome back David Carroll, who shares more memories of his childhood in Dunmore East in the 1950's & 60's. In a similar vein to his previous blog on the village, and his recollection of the ship wreck of the St...
We often fear what we don't know, have never experienced or what is new and different. As free ranging children of the 1970's one of the more mysterious and fear inducing encounters must have been in what was then called the "Oak Woods" but what is now part of...
Last week I visited Ballyhack Castle in Co Wexford with my wife Deena. It was a bit of a day out, and most enjoyable as the sun shone, entry to the castle was free and neither of us had a care in the world on a welcome day off for us both. Later I posted about it on...
One of the most beautiful views, and quieter walks that you will find in in East Waterford is the Minaun, overlooking the Meeting of the Three Sisters and with panoramas over the counties of the SE, down the harbour and out to the Saltee Islands. My mother told me...
I was often chided for my romantic notions of the Cheekpoint name deriving from the fairy folk, the Sidhe. However in recent months strong, albeit circumstantial, evidence is coming to the surface that those of us with romantic notions may not be totally without...
An astonishing engagement during the Confederate wars in Ireland, saw an unlikely achievement by Irish rebels, when they sunk the flagship of Cromwellian forces at Duncannon. The loss of the Great Lewis must have been a significant boost to the confederate forces at...
In my recent book on growing up in Cheekpoint I devoted a chapter to my uncle Sonny and his operation of the Cheekpoint pilot boat. His role was to embark and disembark pilots coming to and from New Ross. The role of pilot or river guide is probably as old as people...
I was reared on a story about the local weirs. As I heard it, one day the cot fishermen of Carrick and New Ross and areas in between descended en mass on Cheekpoint and proceeded to cut down the fishing weirs in the river. The cot men were bazzed out of it with stone...
April's guest blog comes from a page regular, my cousin, James Doherty. Today he's talking about a topic that was very much part of some recent blogs and presentations I gave on the Paddle Steamer service that ran between the city and Duncannon. In this piece James...
While collecting my daughter from a bus recently I happened across a limestone slab set into the pavement behind the Waterford bus station. It was battered, damaged and out of place, but the inscription was legible. It reads In Memory of Louis C Lee of Aberdeen. ...
There was plenty of drama along the Irish coast in the First World War, some of which was directly played out in the harbour, whilst others eventually washed up, or in this case was towed into, the harbour. One such story is of the SS Hermione, a saga that continued...
Generally, ships in distress receive a welcome in any port, but this was not so with the Liverpool barque Sparkling Wave. For the ship was carrying an explosive cargo, of such a quantity, the city fathers of Waterford could not permit her into their port for fear of...
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