![]() ![]() My book, The Cleggan Bay Disaster, contains the history of the incident and beautiful photos of the time, including the area and the children of the fishermen who were drowned. ![]() Over five hundred people attended and participated. Remembrance masses and ceremonies were held in County Mayo, Inishbofin, and Cleggan which were organised with the assistance of the local community councils. In 2017, on the ninetieth anniversary, many of the relatives of the disaster victims revisited the area for the weekend where there were different events, Masses, and ceremonies in remembrance of the fishermen. It will evoke particular memories in the inhabitants of Inishkea and Lacken Bay in County Mayo, for whom the night was also one of horror and tragedy.Īs the granddaughter of Festy Feeney, the only survivor of the crew that came from Cleggan that night, I published a book in 2001 called The Cleggan Bay Disaster, which contains the full story regarding this freak storm that came all the way across the coastal area now known as the Wild Atlantic Way. Although it is the story of one specific maritime tragedy in the west of Ireland, it is one that strikes familiar chords in small fishing communities, not only around the coast of Ireland but anywhere that people pit their wits against the weather and the ocean. It was a night that changed the course of local history. ![]() Sixteen men were lost from a village in Cleggan called Rossadilisk and nine from the island of Inishbofin twenty others from two communities in County Mayo also perished. It is a story of one fateful night in the life of two neighbouring communities in Cleggan and Inishbofin. The Cleggan Bay Disaster, which occurred on 28 October 1927, is known nationally and all over the world. This cemetery is where some of the fishermen who were drowned in an unfortunate fishing disaster are buried. Simms says that the species went extinct in Ireland about 10,500 years ago but managed to hold on in Siberia until about 6,500 years ago.Ĭurrently, the plans for the antlers are unclear, and McElroy is keeping the massive skull in his garage.The old graveyard on the island is called Saint Brendan’s Altar ( Ula Bhreandáin). Environmental change is what caused their extinction.” “Giant antlers aren’t great in the forest. “They came in when the weather was great on the grass plains, but then the trees started to grow,” he says. Mike Simms at the Ulster Museum tells Shauna Corr at Belfast Live that the Great Elk was well-suited to the early Pleistocene when Europe was full of grassy plains, but when the last glaciers receded and the habitat changed, the elk couldn’t cope. The remains of the Great Elk was one of the animals used by French scientist Georges Cuvier to show that extinction did in fact take place. Fossils, they believed, were just the remains of animals that explorers would eventually find somewhere hidden on Earth. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many scientists believed that the extinction of animals was impossible. The reason it is associated with Ireland is because intact fossils of the giant beast are sometimes found in lake beds and bogs on the island, which are especially good at preserving the bones. And it’s not Irish according to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, the species actually roamed all of Europe, north Africa, northern Asia and a related species lived in China. It’s not an elk, but a huge deer species-some individuals had antlers up to 12 feet wide. Lynch is bringing The Irish Times out to the Irish Sea border between what will be European Union and UK waters after. The Great Elk, also known as the Irish Elk, has a misleading name. Our destination is a border, not a hard or soft border but a watery frontier. Luckily, however, McElroy knew just what the skull was since a huge jawbone from one of the elk-and possibly from the same animal-was fished up from the area in 2014, also making the local news. “I thought it was the devil himself,” Coyle tells McGreevy. More impressive, however, are its antlers, which in this case were also over 6 feet wide. This attraction is most notable for politically-minded visitors - it is home to the Houses of the Oireachtas, the seat of government in the Republic of Ireland. This particular great elk probably stood 6.5 feet tall at the shoulders. Built between 17 as the city residence of the Duke of Leinster and Earl of Kildare, James Fitzgerald. The fisherman landed the massive skull of a Great Elk ( Megaloceros giganteus ), the largest deer species to ever exist which died out in Ireland about 10,500 years ago. But Ronan McGreevy at The Irish Times reports what they pulled up wasn’t wood, it was bone. It would barely budge, so they assumed it was caught on a piece of driftwood. Last week, fishermen Raymond McElroy and Charlie Coyle were out on Lough Neagh, a lake near the town of Ardboe in northern Ireland, when they tried to pull up one of their nets. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |