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LESSON 6

Ireland and the Sea

INTRODUCTION

CELTIC MYTHOLOGY

SEAFARING MONKS

INVADERS CAME IN SHIPS

Famous Irish Sailors

Saint Brendan the Navigator

Little is known about St. Brendan’s early life. He was born at Annagh, near Tralee, in 484. In the year 512 he was ordained by Bishop Saint Erc.
Eventually he established his own monastic settlement on the side of Mount Brandan, the famous Kerry mountain which is associated with his name. His love for the sea was strong and his skill with the coracle was well-known. On hearing from his good friend St. Finbarr of a wonderful island of peace and happiness Brendan resolved to search for it.

The first voyage of St. Brendan took him northwards to the Hebrides, Faroes, Shetlands and probably to Iceland.

The first voyage of St. Brendan took five years but he failed to find his dream island of Hy Brasail or Isle of the Blessed, and he resolved to make a further effort to discover it.

Brendan's second voyage started from the Galway coast and took two years to complete. It was on this voyage that some historians claim Brendan reached America, almost 1,000 years before Columbus.


	He made a third voyage to Brittany and it is claimed that he also sailed to the coast of Africa and through the Mediterranean to Greece.

He died on 16th May 577 at the age of 93 and his body was buried at Clonfert, the great school he had founded and which remained a fitting monument to his monastic work.
St. Brendan wrote a manuscript Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. In this, he says that he made a voyage to the Promised Land. Some people think that this means North America.
He apparently did this by sailing on a stepping stone process reaching Newfoundland via Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland.
Brendan established several monasteries. Clonfert is the most famous of them. He died at Annaghdown probably while visiting his sister Briga, who was abbess of a convent there.

Did you know?

Before sailing, Brendan ordered his crew to kneel and pray and dedicated his voyage to the Holy Trinity.
It is said that he also named his ship The Trinity and that this was the first recorded naming ceremony for a ship.
Brendan was advised to build a wooden ship for his second voyage and not to sail in a hide-covered coracle which was the usual type of craft then in use.
Saint Brendan is the patron of all seafarers and travellers.
Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis means The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot.
Tim Severin, an English explorer in the 1970s read St. Brendan’s manuscript and decided he would follow the directions in the book and make the exact voyage that Brendan had described.
Tim Severin has had many adventures but he says ‘There's no question that the Brendan voyage was my most dangerous journey.’ Read about it in his book called The Brendan Voyage.

Commodore John Barry

Commodore John Barry is a famous Irishman of naval legend, who made a name for himself in the American Revolution. John Barry was born in Tacumshane, Co. Wexford in 1745. His father was a poor tenant farmer and their landlord evicted his family, they were then forced to move to the village of Rosslare. This was where John developed his love for the sea. His uncle was a captain of a fishing skiff and John wanted to follow in his footsteps.

In 1760 he emigrated to America and settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Back in Ireland, he had started out working as a ship’s cabin boy and, just a few years before his death, he had become the commander of the entire United States fleet. His war successes are incomparable: he was the first to conquer a British war ship on the high seas. He captured two British vessels after being badly injured in a sea battle. In total, he captured over 20 ships. He wrote a Signal Book which introduced ‘A set of signals used for effective communication between ships’ and he fought in the last maritime battle of the American Revolution in 1783. In 1794 the President elected him Senior Captain of the Federal Navy. To his contemporaries Barry was known as Father of the American Navy. He died in 1803.

Did you know?

The American Revolution is the period during the last half of the 18th century when the Thirteen Colonies gained independence from the British Empire and became the United States of America. The American War of Independence (1775-1783) took place during this period.
A tenant farmer is someone who farms land owned by someone else.
A landlord is the person who owns the land.
A commander is a military rank. The commander could be in charge of a warship or submarine.
The title Master and Commander was previously used to describe a military person in charge of a ship.
The film Master and Commander is based on a novel by Patrick O'Brian. His series of naval stories is about the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.
A Signal Book contained the signals, often made with flags, that were used for ships to communicate visually.
These types of signals still exist but were very important before the age of radio.

Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort

Francis Beaufort known for inventing the Wind Force Scale was born in 1774, in County Meath. His father was the Rector of Navan. Francis was virtually self educated. He left school when he was thirteen and began his sea career by joining the British Navy in 1787. He won admiration and promotion for his conduct in the French Wars. By the age of twenty-two he had progressed to being a lieutenant.
At one stage he was wounded nineteen times and returned home in 1800. He always kept a meteorological journal, which contained just short notes on the weather. In 1805 he was required to carry out a hydrographic survey of a region of South America. He produced the first versions of his Wind Force Scale.
Francis was also a member of the Arctic Council in a period of the most dramatic polar voyages in history. In 1811 he attempted to carry out a hydrographic study off Asia. However, he and his party encountered a hostile tribe and had to flee. Beaufort led the rescue but he fractured his hip in the process when he was hit by sniper fire.

He never returned to sea duty again. He became the Hydrographer for the Admiralty in 1829 and he planned many hydrographic studies for British expeditions.

When he died in 1857 he was still in the British Navy.

Find out about the Wind Force Scale in the Weather section on this site.

Did you know?

Throughout history there were many wars between England and France.
The French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) were a series of conflicts between the French and several European countries.
These were closely followed by the Napoleonic Wars also involving France and other European countries.
The Arctic is the area around the North Pole.
The Antarctic region around the South Pole is the world’s most southerly continent. It is called Antarctica.