seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Monthly Archives: September 2017


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Commissioning of the USS The Sullivans

The United States Navy commissions the Fletcher-class destroyer USS The Sullivans (DD-537), on September 30, 1943. The ship commemorates the tragedy of the five Sullivan brothers (George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert), descendants of an Irish immigrant, who are killed November 13, 1942 after their ship, USS Juneau (CL-52), is hit by a Japanese torpedo at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Only ten of the almost 700 crew survive. This is the greatest military loss by any one American family during World War II. The ship is also the first ship commissioned in the Navy that honors more than one person.

The Sullivans is originally laid down as Putnam on October 10, 1942 at San Francisco by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation. She is initially renamed Sullivan until President Franklin D. Roosevelt changes the name to The Sullivans to clarify that the name honors all five Sullivan brothers. The name is made official on February 6, 1943 and launches on April 4, 1943. The ship is sponsored by Mrs. Thomas F. Sullivan, the mother of the five Sullivan brothers. The Sullivans is commissioned on September 30, 1943 with Commander Kenneth M. Gentry in command.

Following a shakedown cruise, The Sullivans gets underway with USS Dortch (DD-670) and USS Gatling (DD-671) on December 23, 1943, arriving at Pearl Harbor five days later. After service in both World War II and the Korean War, USS The Sullivans is assigned to the United States 6th Fleet and is a training ship until she is decommissioned in 1965.

The Sullivans receives nine service stars for World War II service and two for Korean service. On January 7, 1965, The Sullivans is decommissioned at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard and she remains in reserve into the 1970s. In 1977, she and cruiser USS Little Rock (CL-92) are processed for donation to the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park in Buffalo, New York. The ship now serves as a memorial and is open for public tours. The ship is declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986.


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Fourth Art Theft at Russborough House

The priceless art collection at stately Russborough House in County Wicklow is the target of thieves for a fourth time on September 29, 2002. The thieves use a jeep to smash their way into the property and make off with a haul of art treasures.

The raid happens shortly before dawn, when the gang drives across the fields from a back road leading from Blessington to Ballymore Eustace in a four wheel drive Mitsubishi. The thieves mount the steps at the back of the house and smash a window leading to a room known as the salon. They take less than five minutes to snatch five paintings from the wall of the drawing room of the home. They speed away from the scene using the same route as the alarm alerts gardai in local stations to which the system is linked. The noise also wakes an elderly caretaker who also contacts the gardai.

The gang abandons the jeep on the side of the Ballymore Eustace road and switch to a waiting vehicle. They are on their way back to Dublin before the gardai reach the house.

Two paintings by the renowned artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens are stolen, including Portrait of a Dominican Monk, which had previously been stolen in 1986 by the notorious Dublin crime boss Martin Cahill, known as The General, but was subsequently recovered. Also missing is The Cornfield by Jacob van Ruisdael.

The heist at Russborough comes just days after two paintings, by Thomas Gainsborough and Belotto, are recovered from the last haul snatched from the house in June 2001. Detectives from the arts and antiques section of the national bureau of criminal investigation recover the two paintings in south Dublin.

There is widespread speculation that the latest heist is masterminded by a major Dublin criminal and former close associate of The General, who is responsible for the 1986 theft from the house. It is suggested that the latest robbery might be an act of revenge for the recovery of the earlier paintings two days earlier, although Gardai involved in this case say that is “pure speculation.” Another theory is that it is a copycat burglary inspired by publicity surrounding the previous thefts. Gardai believe that whoever is involved in the theft knew the layout of the house and the surrounding countryside as well as the value of the contents.

(Pictured: Russborough House in County Wicklow | Glanville, Lynn. “Fourth Robbery in 30 Years Art Heist from Russborough.” Independent.ie. 4 October 2002)


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U2 & New Voices of Freedom at Madison Square Garden

Irish rock band U2 is joined by the New Voices of Freedom choir onstage at Madison Square Garden in New York City for a performance of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” on September 28, 1987.

Dennis Bell, director of New York gospel choir The New Voices of Freedom, records a demo of a gospel version of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” While in Glasgow, Scotland in late July during U2’s Joshua Tree Tour, Rob Partridge of Island Records plays the demo for the band. In late September, U2 rehearses with Bell’s choir in a Harlem church, and a few days later they perform the song together at U2’s Madison Square Garden concert.

Footage of the rehearsal is featured in the rockumentary Rattle and Hum, while the Madison Square Garden performance appears on the Rattle and Hum album, the band’s sixth studio album. After the church rehearsal, U2 walks around the Harlem neighbourhood where they come across blues duo Satan and Adam playing on the street. A 40-second clip of them playing their composition “Freedom for My People” appears on both the movie and the album.


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Opening of the Tipperary Rural & Business Development Institute in Thurles

The Tipperary Rural & Business Development Institute (TRBDI), a college of higher education, development agency and research centre founded by the Irish Government in 1998, opens in Thurles, County Tipperary on September 27, 1999. It is one of the five constituent schools of Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT).

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern officially inaugurates the institute on April 7, 2000. The college uses Tipperary Institute as its trading name. In 2010 the Irish government introduces rationalization measures to cut costs of third level bodies, and commences a merger between Tipperary Institute and Limerick Institute of Technology. The formal integration of Tipperary Institute into LIT on September 1, 2011, sees the two campuses become LIT Tipperary.

The college has two academic departments: Business, Education and Social Science and Technology, Media and Science. It is fully accredited by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council (HETAC) and offers National Framework of Qualifications Level 7 and Level 8 full-time degree courses, as well as a number of part-time and evening courses. The college also facilitates the joint-run BSc (Hons) in Strength & Conditioning (level 8) in conjunction with online sports college Setanta College.


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First Irish Convict Ship Arrives in Botany Bay

The Queen, the first ship delivering Irish convicts, arrives at the penal settlement of Botany Bay in New South Wales, Australia on September 26, 1791. About 30% of all Australians are of Irish birth or descent. Many emigrated freely but many are descended from convicts transported there in the early years of the colony.

Britain has a policy of transportation. Up until the American Revolution most are sent to the American colonies or the West Indies. By the 1780s, Britain badly needs prison space. Petty criminals are housed on overcrowded prison ships anchored on the River Thames. In 1786, the government decides to start a prison settlement in the new colony at Botany Bay.

The transportation is arranged by a private company and those convicts who arrive there are actually the lucky ones, as conditions on the journey are horrendous and many die en route. The organisers of the transportation ships operate on a contract basis. They are paid a certain amount per head and the less provisions they give the prisoners the more profit they make.

The first two fleets of convict ships sail from England. The first ship to sail directly from Ireland is the Queen, which leaves Cork in April 1791 and joins the third fleet sailing from England. On board are 133 male convicts, 22 females and three children. The youngest on the ship is two-week-old Margaret, daughter of convict Sarah Brennan. The youngest convicts are 11-year-old David Fay and 12-year-old James Blake, convicted for stealing a pair of buckles. The oldest convict is 64-year-old Patrick Fitzgerald from Dublin, who is sentenced to seven years for stealing clothes. Seven men and one woman die on the voyage and within a year, half the men who had sailed on the Queen are dead. Young James Blake dies within a few months of landing.

The last convict ship sails from Ireland to Australia in 1853 and over the course of 60 years, 30,000 men and 9,000 women are transported for a minimum of seven years. While a good number of them are patriots and rebels – United Irishmen and Young Irelanders – the majority are transported for petty crimes.

Transportation continues for more than 60 years and is followed by assisted emigration. More than 100,000 travel on assisted passage during the 1850s alone. Some are assisted on their journey by charitable organisations in an effort to relieve distress. The last transportation ship, the Phoebe Dunbar, sails from Dun Laoghaire in 1853, bound for Perth.


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Death of Hunger Striker Thomas Patrick Ashe

Thomas Patrick Ashe, a member of the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers, dies on September 25, 1917, at Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin following a hunger strike.

Ashe is born in Lispole, County Kerry, on January 12, 1885. He enters De La Salle Training College, Waterford in 1905 and begins a teaching career as principal of Corduff National School, Lusk, County Dublin, in 1908.

Ashe plays a major part in the 1916 Easter Rising outside the capital city commanding the Fingal battalion of the Irish Volunteers. He is commandant of the 5th battalion of the Dublin brigade, a force of 60–70 men engaging British forces around north County Dublin during the rising. They are armed only with a few rounds, about a dozen service rifles, a dozen Mausers, and a dozen Martini carbines. Some of Ashe’s men are armed only with a shotgun against the well-equipped army regulars.

Ashe’s battalion wins a major victory in Ashbourne, County Meath, where they engage a much larger force. They capture a significant quantity of arms and up to twenty Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) vehicles. Eleven RIC members, including County Inspector Alexander Gray, and two volunteers are killed during the 5-1/2-hour battle. Twenty-four hours after the rising collapses, Ashe’s battalion surrenders on the orders of Patrick Pearse. On May 8, 1916, Ashe and Éamon de Valera are court-martialled and sentenced to death. The sentences are commuted to penal servitude for life. Ashe is imprisoned in Frongoch internment camp and Lewes Prison in Lewes, East Sussex, England.

De Valera, Ashe, and Thomas Hunter lead a prisoner hunger strike on May 28, 1917. With accounts of prison mistreatment appearing in the Irish press and mounting protests in Ireland, Ashe and the remaining prisoners are freed on June 18, 1917, by David Lloyd George as part of a general amnesty.

Upon his release, Ashe returns to Ireland and begins a series of speaking engagements. In August 1917, he is arrested and charged with sedition for a speech that he makes in Ballinalee, County Longford, where Michael Collins is also speaking. He is detained at the Curragh but is then transferred to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. He is convicted and sentenced to two years hard labour. Ashe and other prisoners, including Fionán Lynch and Austin Stack, demand prisoner of war status.

On September 20, 1917, Ashe again goes on hunger strike. He dies at Mater Misericordiae Hospital on September 25, 1917, after being force fed by prison authorities. At the inquest into his death, the jury condemns the staff at the prison for the “inhuman and dangerous operation performed on the prisoner, and other acts of unfeeling and barbaric conduct.” His body lies in state at Dublin City Hall and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

The Ashe Memorial Hall built in 1928, housing the Kerry County Museum, in Tralee is named after him while Nelson Street, also in Tralee, is renamed Ashe Street. Ashe is a relative of Catherine Ashe, the paternal grandmother of American actor Gregory Peck, who emigrates to the United States in the 19th century.


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Birth of Eavan Boland, Irish Poet, Author & Professor

Eavan Boland, Irish poet, author and professor who has been active since the 1960s and helped develop feminist publishing company Arlen House, is born in Dublin on September 24, 1944. She is currently a professor at Stanford University, where she has taught since 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity and the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland’s poetry career are studied by Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate.

Boland’s father, Frederick Boland, is a career diplomat and her mother, Frances Kelly, is a noted post-expressionist painter. When she is six, her father is appointed Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The family follows him to London, where she has her first experiences of anti-Irish sentiment. Her dealing with this hostility strengthens her identification with her Irish heritage. She speaks of this time in her poem “An Irish Childhood in England: 1951.”

At 14, she returns to Dublin to attend Holy Child School in Killiney. She publishes a pamphlet of poetry, 23 Poems, in her first year at Trinity College, Dublin in 1962. She earns a BA with First Class Honors in English Literature and Language from Trinity in 1966. Since then, she has held numerous teaching positions and published poetry, prose criticism and essays. She marries the novelist Kevin Casey in 1969 and has two daughters. Her experiences as a wife and mother influence her to write about the centrality of the ordinary, as well as provide a frame for more political and historical themes.

Boland has taught at Trinity College, Dublin, University College Dublin, and Bowdoin College, and was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. She was also writer in residence at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin. In the late 1970s and 1980s, she teaches at the School of Irish Studies in Dublin. Since 1996 she has been a tenured Professor of English at Stanford University where she is currently Bella Mabury and Eloise Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities and Melvin and Bill Lane Professor for Director of the Creative Writing program. She divides her time between Palo Alto, California and her home in Dublin.

In 2015, Boland says that Trinity College, Dublin not only “influenced her career,” but “determined her career.”


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The Battle of Ardnaree

The Battle of Ardnaree, a battle in the Tudor conquest of Ireland, is fought at Ardnaree, now a suburb of Ballina, County Mayo, on September 23, 1586. The result is a victory for the English over the Mac Philbins and Burkes. The conflict is a part of the political and military struggle, involving the English and occasionally the Scots, for control of northern Ireland. The anglicised version of the name Ardnaree can be translated to Árd na ríogh, meaning the hill of the kings.

The Mac Philbins and Mayo Burkes are in rebellion against the brutal English rule. An Irish-Scottish mercenary army, led by Donnell Gorm MacDonnell of Carey and Alexander Carragh MacDonnell of Glenarm, sons of the deceased James MacDonald, 6th of Dunnyveg, are invited into Connacht by the Burkes to attack English settlements and forces. The mercenary army is fronted at Sligo, Coolony and Ballingafad by English forces for over fourteen days.

Sir Richard Bingham, governor of Connacht, follows the mercenary force to Ardnaree, where the mercenary force has camped on the east bank of the River Moy. Bingham’s forces surround the camp at night and attack the occupants. During the battle 1,000 mercenaries are killed, including Donnell Gorm MacDonnell of Carey and Alexander Carragh MacDonnell of Glenarm. Also slaughtered are some 1,000 men, women and children in the camp.

Richard Bingham goes on to hang the leaders of the Burkes, with the former lands of Mac Philbins and Mayo Burkes given to English settlers.

(Pictured: Sir Richard Bingham, governor of Connacht)


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Birth of Robert Ballagh, Artist, Painter & Designer

Robert “Bobby” Ballagh, artist, painter and designer, is born in Dublin on September 22, 1943. His painting style is strongly influenced by pop art. He is particularly well known for his hyperealistic renderings of well-known Irish literary, historical or establishment figures.

Ballagh grows up in a ground-floor flat on Elgin Road in Ballsbridge, the only child of a Presbyterian father and a Catholic mother. He studies at Bolton Street College of Technology and becomes an atheist while attending Blackrock College. Before turning to art as a profession, he is a professional musician with the Irish showband Chessmen. He meets artist Michael Farrell during this period, and Farrell recruits him to assist with a large mural commission, which is painted at Ardmore Studios.

Ballagh represents Ireland at the 1969 Biennale de Paris. Among the theatre sets he has designed are sets for Riverdance, I’ll Go On, Gate Theatre (1985), Samuel Beckett‘s Endgame (1991) and Oscar Wilde‘s Salomé (1998). He also designs over 70 Irish postage stamps and the last series of Irish banknotes, “Series C,” before the introduction of the euro. He is a member of Aosdána and his paintings are held in several public collections of Irish painting including the National Gallery of Ireland, the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Ulster Museum, Trinity College, Dublin, and Nuremberg‘s Albrecht Dürer House.

In 1991, he co-ordinates the 75th anniversary commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising, during which he claims he is harassed by the Special Branch of the Garda Síochána.

He is the president of the Ireland Institute for Historical and Cultural Studies, which promotes international republicanism. It is based at the new Pearse centre at 27 Pearse Street, Dublin, which is the birthplace of Pádraig Pearse in 1879.

In July 2011 it is reported that he might consider running for the 2011 Irish Presidential election with the backing of Sinn Féin and the United Left Alliance. A Sinn Féin source confirms there has been “very informal discussions” and that Ballagh’s nomination is “a possibility” but “very loose at this stage.” However, on July 25 Ballagh rules out running in the election, saying that he has never considered being a candidate. His discussions with the parties had been about the election “in general” and he has no ambitions to run for political office.

That same month, Ballagh breaks ranks with his colleagues in the travelling production of Riverdance in their decision to perform in Israel. He is an active member of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which insists that artists and academics participate in boycotts of Israeli businesses and cultural institutions.

In July 2012, Ballagh says he is “ashamed and profoundly depressed” at the en masse closure of Irish galleries and museums. He cites an example of some Americans and Canadians on holiday in Ireland. “They described most of the National Gallery as being closed along with several rooms in the Hugh Lane Gallery. I’m glad they didn’t bother going out to the Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham because that’s closed too. At the point I met them, they were returning from Galway where they had found the Nora Barnacle Museum closed too.” He condemns the hypocrisy of political leaders, saying, “I know arts funding is not a big issue for people struggling to put food on the table, but we are talking about the soul of the nation.”


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Birth of Artist Thomas James Carr

Thomas James Carr, British artist who is associated with the Euston Road School in the 1930s and has a long career as a painter of domestic scenes and landscapes, is born in Belfast to a well-to-do family on September 21, 1909.

Carr attends Oundle School where his art masters include E.M.O’R. Dickey and Christopher Perkins. In 1927 Carr moves to London where he studies at the Slade School of Fine Art. After two years at the Slade, he moves to Italy and spends six months in Florence. Upon returning to London, he establishes himself as a well-regarded painter of domestic scenes.

Although essentially a realist painter, Carr is included in the 1934 Objective Abstractionists exhibition at Zwemmer’s Gallery. In 1937, he shares an exhibition with Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers at the Storran Gallery and subsequently becomes associated with the representational style of the Euston Road School. Starting in 1940, at Georges Wildenstein‘s gallery, he holds a series of one-man exhibitions at various galleries including at the Leicester Galleries, The Redfern Gallery and also at Thomas Agnew & Sons.

In 1939, Carr returns to Northern Ireland and settles in Newcastle, County Down. During the World War II, he receives a small number of commissions from the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to depict parachute manufacture and the Short Sunderland flying boats being built at the Short Brothers factory in Belfast.

After the war, Carr teaches at the Belfast College of Art and moves to Belfast in 1955. After the death of his wife in 1995, he moves to Norfolk, England to be nearer one of his three daughters and her family. He continues to paint into old age and tends to concentrate on landscape painting.

Carr is a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy of Arts and is a member of the Royal Ulster Academy, the New English Art Club, the Royal Watercolour Society and is an honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. Queen’s University awards him an honorary doctorate in 1991. For his services to art in Northern Ireland, he is awarded the MBE in 1974 and receives an OBE in 1993.

Thomas Carr dies at the age of 89 in Norwich, England on February 17, 1999.

(Pictured: “Making Coloured Parachutes” by Thomas James Carr (http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/4674) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)