Granduncle William Nolan, Able Seaman

by Patrick J (Paddy) Heneghan, (The Meandering Milesian)

Grandmother Foley of Tralee was the third child of the family of great-grandfather George Knowling, who died in a drowning accident in Waterford Harbour some time in the middle of the 19th century.  There were seven children in his family, five girls and two boys.

The Cruel Sea: Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end (W.Shakespeare).

William was the youngest of the family, which over time changed its name from Knowling to Nolan.  He took to the sea at an early age.  This is what I first saw and remembered about Granduncle William from visits when I was a child to Grandmother Foley’s home.  His photograph was hanging in a prominent place in the Tralee kitchen, a stern figure in the uniform of the British navy.  Grandmother never accepted the fact of his death in a Canadian warship called The Royal Edward, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1917 off the coast of Turkey.  She told us that she spoke to a survivor from the sinking warship who visited her when the war was over.  He told her that there was virtually no chance that William had survived.  Nevertheless grandmother firmly believed that her brother, who had survived thirteen shipwrecks, probably managed to reach the Turkish shore, and could well have settled down there.

Stormy Waters and Strong Gales

Lighthouse on Skellig Michael (off the Co Kerry coast).  Credit: Wikipedia

by Patrick J. (Paddy) Heneghan (The Meandering Milesian)

 

My mother used to tell us about "The Night of the Big Wind" (Oíche na Gaoithe Móire in Irish literature).  It is recorded that on the 6th-7th January 1839 a violent storm hit Ireland, causing massive damage not alone in the town of Tralee where she lived, but all over Ireland. Winds reached a force beyond any others in living memory. It was more than just an “ordinary” storm.  It left trees uprooted and did considerable structural damage. According to meteorologists, speeds up to seventy miles an hour can be expected during such violent storms.  I am not aware that the wind on the occasion in question was scientifically recorded.

Unfortunately I can remember very little of the detail recounted to us by my mother, who had had it from her father. He in turn must have had the details from his own father, whose family were merchants in Tralee at the time of the event. The heavy iron gates of the County Gaol in Ballymullen, my mother said, were lifted by the storm and deposited some distance away.  She had heard a story about an “ass and cart” which had been lifted bodily from one street to another, an occurrence which the animal had apparently survived.

For reasons other than the memory of the January 1839 event, my mother and her family were never very easy when storms were brewing. There was a foreboding about high winds which haunted my mother and grandmother, and “trimmings” were always added to the family Rosary for sailors and others at sea.  My grandmother’s father had drowned in Waterford Harbour late in the 19th century when a sudden squall upset the small craft from which he had been fishing. My mother’s uncle William (grandmother’s brother), while engaged during World War I in an action against Turkish troops, was drowned off the Turkish coast from a Canadian warship, the Prince Edward. 

River Run

by Patrick J. Heneghan (The Meandering Milesian)

The River Dodder in quieter times

What are the chances of seeing all the rivers of the County and City of Dublin simultaneously running overground?  Not just the obvious ones, like the Liffey, the Tolka and the Dodder, but ALL of them.  What are the chances of having two children in a family having the same birth dates, as in our case, August 25th?  What are the chances of these astronomical sets of odds coming together?  Maybe about the same as having a bet on a long-odds winner of the Grand National coupled with a bet on a long-odds winner of the Derby.  Maybe higher!  I leave it to the  mathematicians to supply the answers.

Which brings me to 25th August 1986.  The younger of our two birthday children, Padraic, was celebrating his 21st. We were living in Templeogue in South County Dublin, between the River Dodder and the River Poddle.  Nothing would do “She Whose Word is Law” but to book the eight of us who comprised the family for a meal and a show that very night in a hotel in Portmarnock, where one Anne Bushnell was presenting a cabaret entitled  “A Night with Edith Piaf”.  

One does not like using the “p” word in polite family literature, but that is the word that comes to mind to describe how the rain performed all that particular day, from early morning until after midnight.  The non-stop rain was combined with a hurricane called “Charlie”.  It was a working day in Dublin, so the plan was that we should set off for Portmarnock in two groups of four each, shortly after 6 o’clock that evening.  The male members of our entourage, quite unchivalrously, were to go in the family car, probably because that side of the family would include Padraic, the “Birthday Boy”, who was 21 on that day, as well as his younger brother, who was only 13 at the time.  The female group, the three girls (the eldest of whom, Clare, shared the birth date with the main celebrant) with Mom in charge, were to go downtown on the bus to Sutton, and then go to Portmarnock by the DART (our very efficient electrified rail system, the Dublin Area Rapid Transport service).