Cook is born on January 25, 1944, to Francis John Granville Cook and Jocelyn McKay (née Stewart) in Leicester, England. As a child, he moves to Northern Ireland with his parents and sisters after his father is appointed headmaster of Campbell College in 1954.
Cook works as a solicitor, eventually becoming a senior partner at Sheldon and Stewart Solicitors.
In 1970, Cook is a founder member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI), a nonsectarian party, while he is elected to the party’s Central Executive in 1971.
Cook is elected to Belfast City Council in 1973, a position he holds until 1985. In 1978, he becomes the first non-Unionist Lord Mayor of Belfast since William James Pirrie, a Home Rule Liberal, in 1896–1898.
In 1994, Cook becomes the Chairman of the Police Authority of Northern Ireland, but he is sacked from this role in 1996 after losing a vote of confidence. After a critical account of his role in an internal row in that authority appears in newspapers in 1998, he undertakes a lengthy libel case which is ultimately settled out of court. He subsequently sits on the Craigavon Health and Social Services Trust.
On September 20, 2020, it is announced that Cook has died after being diagnosed with COVID-19 during the pandemic. According to his family, he dies on September 19, 2020, at Craigavon Area Hospital. He had had a stroke two years before. He is survived by his wife Fionnuala, his sisters Alison and Nora, his daughter Barbary, his sons John, Patrick, Julius, and Dominic, and his granddaughters Romy and Imogen.
Pirrie is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Harland & Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862. Twelve years later he is made a partner in the firm, and on the death of Sir Edward Harland in 1895, he becomes its chairman, a position he holds until his death. As well as overseeing the world’s largest shipyard, he is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and is re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year. He becomes Belfast’s first honorary freeman in 1898, and serves in the same year as High Sheriff of Antrim and subsequently of County Down. In February 1900, he is elected President of the UK Chamber of Shipping, where he had been vice-president the previous year. He helps finance the Liberals in Ulster in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, and that same year, at the height of Harland & Wolff’s success, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast.
In February 1912, after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association at which Winston Churchill defends the government’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Pirrie is jeered on the streets of Belfast, and assaulted as he boards a steamer in Larne: pelted with rotten eggs, herrings, and bags of flour. In 1910, the Ulster Liberal Association, an overwhelmingly Protestant body, with a weekly newspaper, and branch network throughout Ulster, adopts (in opposition to the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association) an explicitly pro-home rule position.
In the months leading up to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Pirrie is questioned about the number of life boats aboard the Olympic-classocean liners. He responds that the great ships are unsinkable and the rafts are to save others. This haunts him for the rest of his life. In April 1912, Pirrie is to travel aboard RMS Titanic, but illness prevents him.
During the war Pirrie is a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 becomes Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising British production of merchant ships.
In 1921, Pirrie is elected to the Senate of Northern Ireland, and that same year is created ViscountPirrie of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. In Belfast he is, on other grounds, already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.
Pirrie dies at sea off Cuba on June 7, 1924. His body is embalmed. On June 13, Ebro reaches Pier 42 on the North River in New York City, where Pirrie’s friend Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth and his wife meet Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. UK ships in the port of New York lower their flags to half-mast, and Pirrie’s body is transferred to Pier 59, where it is embarked on White Star Line‘s RMS Olympic, one of the largest ships Pirrie ever built, to be repatriated to the UK. He is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. The barony and viscountcy die with him. Lady Pirrie dies on June 19, 1935. A memorial to Pirrie in the grounds of Belfast City Hall is unveiled in 2006.
Cook is born to Francis John Granville Cook and Jocelyn McKay (née Stewart) in Leicester, England. As a child, he moves to Northern Ireland with his parents and sisters after his father is appointed headmaster of Campbell College in 1954.
Cook works as a solicitor, eventually becoming a senior partner at Sheldon and Stewart Solicitors.
In 1970, Cook is a founder member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, a nonsectarian party, while he is elected to the party’s Central Executive in 1971.
Cook is elected to Belfast City Council in 1973, a position he holds until 1985. In 1978, he becomes the first non-Unionist Lord Mayor of Belfast since William James Pirrie, a Home RuleLiberal, in 1896–1898.
In 1994, Cook becomes the Chairman of the Police Authority of Northern Ireland, but he is sacked from this role in 1996 after losing a vote of confidence. After a critical account of his role in an internal row in that authority appears in newspapers in 1998, he undertakes a lengthy libel case which is ultimately settled out of court. He subsequently sits on the Craigavon Health and Social Services Trust.
On September 20, 2020, it is announced that Cook has died after being diagnosed with COVID-19 during the pandemic. According to his family, he dies on September 19, 2020, at Craigavon Area Hospital. He had had a stroke two years earlier. He is survived by his wife Fionnuala, his sisters Alison and Nora, his daughter Barbary, his sons John, Patrick, Julius, and Dominic, and his granddaughters Romy and Imogen.
Sinclair’s parents are Thomas (1811–1867), merchant and ship-owner, and Sarah Sinclair (née Archer) (1800–1849). His father goes into business with his brother John (1808–1856), setting up a provisions and general merchant store at 5–11 Tomb Street, Belfast. John marries Eliza Pirrie, a relative of the prominent ship builder William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie. After the death of his father in 1867, Sinclair inherits £35,000 as his mother, brother and sister are all deceased.
In 1876, Sinclair marries Mary Duffin of Strandtown Lodge, Belfast. They have a daughter, Frances Elizabeth Crichton, and a son. She dies in 1879. He marries Elizabeth Richardson in 1882. She is the niece of John Grubb Richardson and the widow of Sinclair’s cousin, John M. Sinclair. They have three sons and two daughters.
Sinclair attends Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Queen’s College Belfast, graduating with a BA with gold medal for mathematics in 1856, and an MA with gold medals in logic, political economy, and English literature in 1859. After his father’s death, he takes over running the family business. He expands and grows it by merging it with another large provisions business with American branches, Kingan & Co. He is related to the Kingans through his cousin Sarah, who is married to the owner, Samuel Kingan.
Despite numerous requests, Sinclair never stands for parliament, instead serving as deputy lieutenant, justice of the peace, president of the Ulsterchamber of commerce in 1876 and 1902, and privy councilor in 1896. Having been a supporter of William Ewart Gladstone, he joins the Ulster Liberal Party in 1868, supporting the land acts of 1870 and 1881. Following the home rule bill of 1886, he convenes a meeting in the Ulster Hall of liberals on April 30, 1886, which passes a resolution in condemnation of the bill. Forming the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association, of which he is chair, he organises the Ulster Convention in Belfast. Held on June 17, 1892, it sees 11,879 Ulster unionists meet to protest home rule. Nine months after the convention, he is appointed to the executive committee of the new unionist clubs, which are founded to protect the union. The defeat of the British Liberal Party in 1895 significantly decreases the threat of home rule, leading to the unionists’ clubs being suspended, and Sinclair returning to his activities in liberal reform. He is the leading Ulster member of the recess committee from 1895, which is founded by Horace Plunkett. He supports Plunkett’s backing of T. P. Gill as secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) in 1899, in the face of strong protest by conservative unionists.
Despite his unionist politics, Sinclair is nonsectarian, and during his time as chairman of the convocation of the Queen’s University he defends the core non-sectarian principles of the institution and refuses to allow any form of denominational teaching. Through his work with the recess committee, he ensures that the new Department of Agriculture’s vocational and technical education will remain secular.
By 1904 and the devolution crisis, Sinclair sides with conservative unionists, being of the 30 members of the standing committee of the Ulster Unionist Council on its foundation in December 1904. He proposes that all suspended unionist clubs be reestablished in January 1911, with the purpose of increasing their membership and responsibilities. This results in the clubs taking up arms, with over 80 groups drilling by April 1911, which goes on to form the core of the Ulster Volunteers. On September 25, 1911, he is appointed to a five-man commission tasked with writing a constitution for a provisional government of Ulster. He is one of the contributors to the 1912 collection of essays from the unionist party, Against home rule. He identifies the six county Ulster, proffering the idea of a two-nation island, warning that Ulster will never form part of an independent Ireland. Later in 1912, he is tasked with drafting Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant, a pledge for signatories to oppose and defeat home rule and never recognise an Irish parliament.
Sinclair dies from kidney failure on February 14, 1914, at his home, Hopefield House, Belfast. His funeral procession on February 18 is headed by 200 UVF officers. The Ulster Museum holds a portrait of Sinclair by Frank McKelvey, and QUB holds one by Henrietta Rae (pictured above). A memorial window at Church House, the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church, is unveiled in his memory on June 8, 1915, and there is a Sinclair Memorial Hall opened in his honour on September 10, 1915. A blue plaque is erected to him on the Duncairn Centre for Arts & Culture.
The Sinclair Ward in the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, is originally funded by Sinclair’s father, in honour of his wife Sarah under the Sinclair Memorial Fund. The surgeon and politician Thomas Sinclair is also a relative.
In April 1943 backbench dissent forces Andrews from office. He is replaced as Prime Minister by Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough. He remains, however, the recognised leader of the UUP for a further three years. Five years later he becomes the Grand Master of the Orange Order. From 1949, he is the last parliamentary survivor of the original 1921 Northern Ireland Parliament, and as such is recognised as the Father of the House. He is the only Prime Minister of Northern Ireland not to have been granted a peerage. His predecessor and successor receive hereditary viscountcies, and later prime ministers are granted life peerages.
Throughout his life Andrews is deeply involved in the Orange Order. He holds the positions of Grand Master of County Down from 1941 and Grand Master of Ireland (1948–1954). In 1949 he is appointed Imperial Grand Master of the Grand Orange Council of the World.
Andrews is a committed and active member of the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland. He regularly attends Sunday worship, in the church built on land donated by his great-grandfather, James Andrews, in his hometown Comber. He serves on the Comber Congregational Committee from 1896 until his death on August 5, 1956, holding the position of Chairman from 1935 onwards. He is buried in the small graveyard adjoining the church.
Andrews is born in Comber, County Down, on July 17, 1871, the eldest child in the family of four sons and one daughter of Thomas Andrews, flax spinner, and his wife Eliza Pirrie, a sister of William Pirrie, 1st Viscount Pirrie, chairman of Harland & Wolff. He is named after his maternal great-uncle, John Miller of Comber (1795–1883). As a young man, with his parents and family, he is a committed and active member of the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland. He regularly attends Sunday worship in the church built on land donated by his great-grandfather James Andrews in his home town Comber.
In 1902 Andrews marries Jessie Ormrod, eldest daughter of Bolton stockbroker Joseph Ormrod at Rivington Unitarian Chapel, Rivington, near Chorley, Lancashire, England. They have one son and two daughters. His younger brother, Sir James, marries Jessie’s sister.
In April 1943 backbench dissent forces him from office. He is replaced as Prime Minister by Sir Basil Brooke. Andrews remains, however, the recognised leader of the UUP for three more years. Five years later he becomes the Grand Master of the Orange Order. Throughout his life he is deeply involved in the Orange Order. He holds the positions of Grand Master of County Down from 1941 and Grand Master of Ireland (1948–1954). In 1949 he is appointed Imperial Grand Master of the Grand Orange Council of the World.
From 1949, he is the last parliamentary survivor of the original 1921 Northern Ireland Parliament, and as such is recognised as the Father of the House. He is the only Prime Minister of Northern Ireland not to have been granted a peerage. His predecessor and successor received hereditary viscountcies, and later prime ministers are granted life peerages.
Andrews serves on the Comber Congregational Committee from 1896 until his death, holding the position of Chairman from 1935 onward. He dies in Comber on August 5, 1956 and is buried in the small graveyard adjoining the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland.
The hull of the RMS Titanic, is launched at 12:15 PM on May 31, 1911 at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Northern Ireland in the presence of Lord William Pirrie, J. Pierpoint Morgan, J. Bruce Ismay and 100,000 onlookers. Twenty-two tons of soap and tallow are spread on the slipway to lubricate the ship’s passage into the River Lagan. In keeping with the White Star Line‘s traditional policy, the ship is not formally named or christened with champagne. The ship is towed to a fitting-out berth where, over the course of the next year, her engines, funnels and superstructure are installed and her interior is fitted out.
The construction of RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic take place virtually in parallel. The sheer size of the RMS Titanic and her sister ships pose a major engineering challenge for Harland and Wolff. No shipbuilder has ever before attempted to construct vessels this size. RMS Titanic‘s keel is laid down on March 31, 1909. The 2,000 hull plates are single pieces of rolled steel plate, mostly up to 6 feet wide and 30 feet long and weigh between 2.5 and 3 tons.
Some of the last items to be fitted on RMS Titanic before the ship’s launch are her two side anchors and one centre anchor. The anchors themselves are a challenge to make with the centre anchor being the largest ever forged by hand and weighing nearly 16 tons. Twenty Clydesdale draught horses are needed to haul the centre anchor by wagon from the N. Hingley & Sons Ltd. forge shop in Netherton, near Dudley, United Kingdom to the Dudley railway station two miles away. From there it is shipped by rail to Fleetwood in Lancashire before being loaded aboard a ship and sent to Belfast.
The work of constructing the ships is difficult and dangerous. For the 15,000 men who work at Harland and Wolff at the time, safety precautions are rudimentary at best. Much of the work is dangerous and is carried out without any safety equipment like hard hats or hand guards on machinery. As a result, deaths and injuries are to be expected. During RMS Titanic‘s construction, 246 injuries are recorded, 28 of them “severe,” such as arms severed by machines or legs crushed under falling pieces of steel. Six people die on the ship herself while she is being constructed and fitted out, and another two die in the shipyard workshops and sheds. Just before the launch a worker is killed when a piece of wood falls on him.
(Pictured: Launch of the hull of the RMS Titanic with an unfinished superstructure in 1911)
seamus dubhghaill 