Drogheda's Newest Monument

 

Old Drogheda Society

 It's all ahead at the worksite of Drogheda's Newest Monument

It’s been all hands on deck in recent weeks to complete Drogheda’s newest memorial, honouring the inventor of the first workable submarine.

John Philip Holland, born in County Clare in 1841, the son of a Lighthouse keeper, he attended the Christian Brothers School in Limerick and later joined the Christian Brothers in Cork.

1865 saw him arrive at the Christian Brothers Convent Drogheda where he took up the post of mathematics and music teacher. Throughout his time as a Christian Brother, he never abandoned his passion for engineering and applying mathematical solutions to engineering problems.

It was during his residence at the Drogheda Convent, which is today Scholars Townhouse Hotel, that he designed the submersible mechanical Duck (which could walk around the garden and swim, dive and resurface when put in water) he then designed what was to become the world’s first workable submarine; the Fenian Ram.

In 1873 Holland left both the Christian Brothers and Ireland for America, to pursue turning his submarine design into an actual vessel. He secured funding from the Boston based Fenian Organisation to establish the Electric Boat Company which still exists today as the submarine manufacturing division of General Dynamics.

He supplied the US Navy with their first ever submarine which was named the USS Holland. He also supplied the first submarine to The Royal Navy which they named HMS Holland 1. The Emperor of Japan bestowed on him their highest civilian honour ‘The Order of The Rising Sun’ and he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2007.

His first submarine, the ‘Fenian Ram’ is permanently on display at the Paterson Museum, New Jersey, U.S.A.

This memorial is to celebrate his association with Drogheda and commemorate the extraordinary contributions of John Philip Holland to Naval and Maritime engineering worldwide.

The unveiling ceremony is scheduled to take place at 3pm on Saturday 14th. June (Invitation Only) in Scholars Hotel gardens to coincide with the Irish Maritime Festival.

Old Drogheda Society - History, Archaeology & Heritage

Millmount, Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland. Tel. 041-9833097

The Decline and Fall of the Dukes of Leinster

Old Drogheda Society

Event: launch of  The Decline and Fall of the Dukes of Leinster, 1872–1948 Love, War, Debt and Madness by Terence Dooley.

Date: Thursday 5th June @7:00pm.

Venue: The Carton Suite, Carton House, Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

Host: by Conor Mallaghan.

 

In a 70-year period, the dukes of Leinster fell from being Ireland's premier aristocratic family, close friends of the British monarchy, secure within the world's most powerful empire, to relative obscurity in an independent Irish Free State (Irish Republic after 1949) that did not recognize titles. And while in 1872, when this work opens, the 3rd duke of Leinster resided in some grandeur in the Palladian Carton House, the 7th duke would die impoverished in a one-room bedsit flat in St George's Drive, Westminster, London, just over a century later in 1976. The story moves from the small town of Maynooth, Co. Kildare, to London, to Continental Europe, to an asylum in Edinburgh, to the US, before completing the circle and ending back in Maynooth in the 1940s. The narrative of decline and fall unfolds against such historical watersheds as the Land War of the 1880s; the simultaneous rise of the Home Rule movement; the breakup of Irish landed estates after 1903; the Great War of 1914–18; the revolutionary turmoil of 1916–23; and the 1920s global economic depression. The impact of such public has featured prominently in the historiography of the decline of the Irish landed class, both north and south. However, little attempt has been made to combine that history with private lives and experiences. This book sets out to rectify this. In the process, it reveals the tragic personal story of Hermione, 5th duchess of Leinster, and her three sons, gathered from sources heretofore unused by historians of the Leinsters. Terence Dooley is associate professor and director of the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, NUIM. He is the author of several books on country houses and the land question in 19th- and 20th-century Ireland; his most recent is an edited volume with Christopher Ridgway, The Irish country house: its past, present and future (2011). Available Now 304pp colour ills 978-1-84682-533-0 €24.95 Old Drogheda Society - History, Archaeology & Heritage Millmount, Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland. Tel. 041-9833097