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Displaying items by tag: Joseph Pierce Murphy

#DublinPort - A plaque commemorating the first Irishman to die in the First World War has been unveiled in his home neighbourhood of Ringsend in Dublin's south Docklands, where many of his descendants still live.

As The Irish Times reports, Joseph Pierce Murphy died among 151 sailors who perished when the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Amphion was sunk by a mine in the North Sea on the morning of 6 August 1914.

Seven sailors from Cork were also killed that morning, and three of them were remembered at a Mass at the Naval Service base on Haulbowline in Cork Harbour last weekend.

The plaque unveiling on Wedneday 6 August behind St Patrick's Church on Thorncastle Street – just around the corner from Muphy's home at 2 Thorncastle Place – was presided over by Lord Mayor of Dublin Christy Burke and British Ambassador to Ireland Dominick Chilcott.

Also in attendance was Dublin Port Company chief Eamonn O’Reilly, who said: “It is appropriate and important that his family and the local community can pay tribute to the life of this young Navy sailor in his hometown of Ringsend, and I would encourage people to see the plaque in his honour.”

The Irish Times has much more on the story HERE.

Published in Dublin Port

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.