A guest blog by David Carroll In 2024, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution will be celebrating two hundred years of saving lives of sea. The Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck was founded in London on March 4th, 1824 by Sir...
It comes as a source of pride that Waterford has made such a unique contribution to the Irish national holiday. Ireland's oldest city staged the first parade in 1903, the first year the day became an official holiday. A citizen of the city, TF Meagher, flew the first...
A recent announcement that the Port of Waterford had commissioned a new pilot boat to be called the Portlairge II prompted a flurry of communication to me asking for details and some of the history of the pilots. So this months blog is a journey from 1816 to the...
A guest blog by David Carroll tells the tragic loss of the barque Venus B on Feb 21st 1885 at Ballymacaw and how it lived long in local folklore From 1937 to 1939, the Irish Folklore Commission enlisted more than 50,000 schoolchildren from 5,000 schools in Ireland to...
A guest blog by Conor Donegan Standing at the end of the breakwater in Dunmore East two Sundays ago, I couldn’t help but admire the beauty of the frost covered cliffs and the white roofs all around the village, despite the intense and bitter cold. The estuary was...
A guest post courtesy of Liam Cheasty and Pat Sheridan A centenary is defined as the one hundred anniversary of a significant event and in 2021 there will be many related to the War of Independence and partition of Ireland in 1921. However, while conflict and strife...
Passage East stands at the head of Waterford Harbour, where a spit of sand runs out into the estuary. Because of its location, it has long been of strategic importance. Ships from earliest times could sail with relative ease to the village before the rivers narrowed...
Well, 2020 has been a strange one, to say the least. A year where we saw Irish politics altered in a government formed of consonants and contrarians that was just missing a Big Brother/Love Island narrator. A pandemic that saw us hit pause in our schedules but...
I would like to thank Myles Courtney for passing this along to me for Christmas. I shared it with my facebook followers yesterday so this is just for those blog followers who are not on social media to enjoy. Wishing you a happy Christmas. Andrew via New Ross Street...
The arrival of Dauntless Courage, Celebrating the History of the RNLI Lifeboats, their crews and the Maritime Heritage of the Dunmore East Community was greeted with a wave of conflicting emotions this week. Joy at seeing the book finally in print, tears of relief...
On the week that Dauntless Courage arrives from the publishers to local shops, (December 2020) I asked author David Carroll to whet the appetite with a short guest blog about a rescue that is legendary in Dunmore East due to the skill and bravery shown by the lifeboat...
On a dark tempestuous winter's evening, the brig Glencoe was blown onto the rocks at Ballymacaw to the west of Dunmore East. As the winds howled and the seas crashed and washed over the ship her 13 man crew had little hope of survival but those on shore had seen this...
One of the most intriguing and enduring mysteries we have anywhere in Waterford harbour is the Forty Steps at Creaden Head. Carved into the cliff of this inhospitable headland the purpose and the creators of the stone steps have intrigued and perplexed many. Creaden...
As any blog regular will know, the lifeboats and their actions are a feature of so many of the stories on Tides and Tales. So it is with great anticipation that we look forward to the forthcoming Dauntless Courage, a history of the Dunmore East Lifeboat Station in the...
On Saturday night, 12th Nov 1955 a collision in the River Mersey involving three ships saw one ship sink, 9 crewmen struggle for an hour without lifejackets in freezing water and a dramatic rescue which included three young seamen from the village of Cheekpoint Co...
Something very bizarre showed up on Ryan's Shore earlier this year. Maybe it was lockdown fever or something! My cousin, and neighbour, Maria O Leary was out walking on the strand when she came upon what seemed to be a fish - and she kindly sent me a photo and a...
I remember hearing many years back an account of the body snatchers who resurrected a lady in Kilkenny. The story went that a wealthy lady from Ballinlaw on the River Barrow died and was buried in Slieverue. It was a time when even the dead could not rest...
The highly popular early morning Booze, Blaa’s ‘n’ Banter annual hootananny extravaganza held in Jordan’s American Bar, on Waterford’s Quay’s goes online this year due to the Covid19 pestilence. It’s organised by the Waterford Council of Trade Unions in association...
When the owners of the four-masted iron hulled sailing barque Earl of Beaconsfield (1883) saw their new ship enter the River Clyde, they must have hoped for a handsome return on their investment. But although fate has a large role to play in anything to do with...
I recently spotted a new book online called Words The Sea Gave Us, by Grace Tierney. Now as a maritime blogger I had an instant, professional, interest in the topic. But I have to admit, apart from being a book hoarder and with a weakness of not being able to pass...
A guest post by Conor Donegan One of the most intriguing aspects of the Irish Revolutionary period (1912-1923), is the degree to which counties, and often areas within counties, varied from each other in terms of levels of IRA activity. Waterford is perhaps one of the...
On a recent boating trip in the Suir, I spotted the rotting timbers of what appeared to be an old boat jutting out from under the low hanging branches of a sycamore tree. Further investigation revealed, what for me at least was, an amazing discovery. A once common...
My wife Deena and I have participated and/or coordinated an event for every year of Heritage week since 2005. For this year's event we initiated an online project exploring the placenames along the Three Sister River network of the Barrow, Nore and Suir. The event ran...
Jerry McCarthy (RIP) I got my first glimpse of Carrick Beg in Nov 1974 when my then girlfriend invited me up for the weekend. It didn't take me long to get to know the neighbours as I began to spend more and more time up here after that. Straight away it became very...
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