Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: tributes

The body of an off-duty garda who was swept away by floodwater in Co Wicklow during Monday's torrential rain has been recovered.
The Irish Times reports that 25-year-old Garda Ciaran Jones was pulled into the River Liffey at the Ballysmuttan Bridge around 7pm on Monday while warning motorists not to cross the bridge.
A search and rescue operation was immediately launched involving the Irish Coast Guard, the Garda helicopter and mountain and river rescue teams, according to the Irish Examiner.
His body was eventually found at 9am yesterday morning some 4km downstream.
Supt Eamon Keogh of Blessington Garda Station noted that Garda Jones had been crossing the bridge to warn an oncoming car when he was swept into the swollen river by a sudden surge of water.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny led tributes to the young garda as well as a woman who died at her home in Dublin during the flooding that caused chaos across the east of Ireland on Monday evening, with several inland waterways bursting their banks.

The body of an off-duty garda who was swept away by floodwater in Co Wicklow during Monday's torrential rain has been recovered.

The Irish Times reports that 25-year-old Garda Ciaran Jones was pulled into the River Liffey at the Ballysmuttan Bridge around 7pm on Monday while warning motorists not to cross the bridge.

A search and rescue operation was immediately launched involving the Irish Coast Guard, the Garda helicopter and mountain and river rescue teams, according to the Irish Examiner.

His body was eventually found at 9am yesterday morning some 4km downstream of the incident.

Supt Eamon Keogh of Blessington Garda Station noted that Garda Jones had been crossing the bridge to warn an oncoming car when he was swept into the swollen river by a sudden surge of water.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny led tributes to the young garda as well as a woman who died at her home in Dublin during the flooding that caused chaos across the east of Ireland on Monday evening, with several inland waterways bursting their banks.

Published in News Update

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).