#CorkHarbour - Tom MacSweeney writes on Afloat.ie today about the centenary of the US Navy’s arrival in Cork Harbour during the First World War.

But the event has a living connection, as the Irish Examiner reports, with the great-granddaughter of the flotilla commander attending this morning’s ceremony in Cobh to unveil a commemorative plaque.

Lizzie Helmer, an exchange student at UCC, only learned the week before she left her California home for Cork that her great-grandfather Joseph Taussig was in charge of the fleet that helped secure the southern approaches to Ireland during the Great War.

Helmer’s family paid a visit to Cobh last month to learn more about their connection with the harbour town formerly known as Queenstown.

And they were joined by UCC president Prof Patrick O’Shea, whose own grand-uncle lost his life when the SS Lismore was torpedoed off Le Havre, just three weeks before the Americans arrived in Cork Harbour.

The Irish Examiner has much more on the story HERE.