Post by Administrator on Dec 5, 2021 2:51:10 GMT
Wales' worst ever shipwreck disaster that no one knows about. LINK
There are shipwrecks all around the Welsh coast - but the one that brought enormous loss of life is not well-known.
There are hundreds of shipwrecks off the Welsh coast — you can read about many of them here: LINK
One was recorded by Charles Dickens and later celebrated in song, leading to the development of the first gale warnings by the Met Office. This was the Royal Charter, a steam clipper laden with gold and migrants which was wrecked in Dulas Bay, Anglesey, in 1859. Another dates back a millennium.
But there's one involving a staggering loss of life which has been largely forgotten. No memorials were raised, no churches recorded the calamity and no oral tradition remains. For historians, the erasing from the record of the greatest maritime disaster off the Welsh coast is an utter mystery.
“Perhaps the loss of life was so great, and the embarrassment so acute, that no one wanted to acknowledge it,” said Bangor maritime historian Gareth Cowell.
Thanks to his research, the story of this tragedy can now be told for the first time, as North Wales Live reports: LINK
The origins of the 1625 disaster lay in the Plantation of Ulster. This, the colonisation of the Irish province during the reign of King James I, was fired by anti-Catholicism – whipped up further by the Gunpowder Plot – and a zeal for local accession.
Rebellions were common and the need for military support was routine, notably during the Nine Years War of 1593-1603.
In his book, Studies in Stuart Wales, Bangor historian AH Dodd estimated that, each year in the 1620s, around 1,000 troops were dispatched to Ireland.
There are shipwrecks all around the Welsh coast - but the one that brought enormous loss of life is not well-known.
There are hundreds of shipwrecks off the Welsh coast — you can read about many of them here: LINK
One was recorded by Charles Dickens and later celebrated in song, leading to the development of the first gale warnings by the Met Office. This was the Royal Charter, a steam clipper laden with gold and migrants which was wrecked in Dulas Bay, Anglesey, in 1859. Another dates back a millennium.
But there's one involving a staggering loss of life which has been largely forgotten. No memorials were raised, no churches recorded the calamity and no oral tradition remains. For historians, the erasing from the record of the greatest maritime disaster off the Welsh coast is an utter mystery.
“Perhaps the loss of life was so great, and the embarrassment so acute, that no one wanted to acknowledge it,” said Bangor maritime historian Gareth Cowell.
Thanks to his research, the story of this tragedy can now be told for the first time, as North Wales Live reports: LINK
The origins of the 1625 disaster lay in the Plantation of Ulster. This, the colonisation of the Irish province during the reign of King James I, was fired by anti-Catholicism – whipped up further by the Gunpowder Plot – and a zeal for local accession.
Rebellions were common and the need for military support was routine, notably during the Nine Years War of 1593-1603.
In his book, Studies in Stuart Wales, Bangor historian AH Dodd estimated that, each year in the 1620s, around 1,000 troops were dispatched to Ireland.
