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Shipwreck archeology, salvage and diving. Lecture at NUIG

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  • 12-10-2012 11:44am
    #1
    jamesdiver
    Registered Users Posts: 372 ✭✭


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    hi all,

    You are all welcome along to this free lecture at NUIG. We will be collecting for St V de P on the night. Heres some more info....

    Further info on www.galwaydiving.com
    While there were few diving inventors or innovators in Ireland it is remarkable that many of the early diving pioneers worked around the Irish coast. Local entrepreneurs and salvors were quick to exploit the invention of the helmet and rapidly took on salvage work on their own account. Even before the helmet the wrecks on the Irish coast were salvaged by bell divers and some accounts of their work survive. The main focus of the salvage was cannon – the scarce nuclear weapons of their age and only second coin. This was for two reasons – good cannon were difficult to forge and very scarce but also because of the troubled and rebellious nature of Ireland cannon had to be recovered to prevent their use by Irish insurgents. Thus it happened that many wrecks of historical importance were explored by early divers in Irish waters and several of the big names in diving development submerged around the Irish coast. This talk looks at some of their exploits over the years and will be of interest to local historians and divers alike. Much of the activity was on the west coast so there is some local maritime interest.

    Edward Bourke is a diver with Viking sub aqua in Dublin for 30 years and has dived in Australia, South Africa, Spain, Croatia, France and UK as well as Ireland. For a period he edited the CFT magazine Subsea. Over the years he has published three volumes on Shipwrecks of the Irish Coast cataloguing some 6,000 wrecks in Irish waters. A book of Irish shipwreck photos and a book on the wreck of the Tayleur at Lambay near Dublin are also published. His most recent publication was a history of Guinness. While history and historical research is an abiding interest, he is a microbiologist by training and did research into microbial enzymes for his PhD. He works as a scientist with Diageo.


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