British Isles- Day 14- Cork, Eire

Tuesday, July 26,2011- Cobh, Eire (Cork)

The great ship docked in Cobh (pronounced Cove) Eire at 8 :00 A.M. We were up and watched the ship secure her lines. It was cloudy and a cool 58 degrees out. Shore side, we could see the steep hillside, traversed by three local roads and a train track. at sea level. The station lay just beneath us. Off in the distance we could see the spire of the local church and a small business district. Cobh is the port area for Cork.

Since Queen Victoria’s visit in 1849, the area had been known as Queenstown. It is from here that the scores of “coffin ships” had carried the starving hordes of famine-Irish off to Canada, Australia and the United
States. Among them were many of my own. Old Emmanuel Martin had left these shores then. His first wife Annie had died in the passage, one of many thousands who died from the horrendous conditions in steerage on those ill fated ships.

Our walking tour of Cork was not scheduled until this afternoon, so we hit the deck 18 gym for an hour of weights and stationary cycling. Breakfast found us in the Horizons cafe’ afterwards. Then we got ready for the day. Tours were also leaving for Blarney Castle and the Waterford Glass factory but we had visited them on an earlier trip. KInsale, a seaside village South of here is also worth a visit.

After we boarded, the bus made its way into Cork (Corcaigh in Gaelic, which means “Marshy Place.”) We passed one of those Martello towers, as we exited the small island upon which Cobh sits. They are stone, defensive towers, built in centuries past, to stand guard against raiding Vikings and other miscreants.

Cork had been founded in the 606 A.D., by St. Finbar, as a monastic settlement. In the 800’s, Vikings had taken control of the area. It was a small settlement on the banks of the Lee River. The city expanded over the centuries as a commercial port. It became a center for exporting butter in the 1700’s. Today, it is home to some 125,000 souls. The city’s emblem is a ship passing between two towers, designating a safe harbor.
Michael (Mick) Collins, one of the premier leaders in the Irish Rebellion, had hailed from Cork. It was also the place where an ambush had taken his life shortly after Independence in 1922.

The bus dropped us off near St. Finbar’s Anglican Cathedral. It is one of those lovely neo-Gothic masterpieces with roof gargoyles and ornately carved bas relief exteriors. Most of the great churches in Eire have confused histories in changing from Catholic to Protestant, depending upon the sweeping winds of change occurring in nearby London. Henry the VIII’s over-active libido had created a climate of religious turmoil that would last for centuries.

From St. Finbar’s we walked to the small bridge crossing the Lee and over looking the downtown pedestrian area that is called the Grand Parade. It is here, along the banks of the Lee, where the Viking settlement had grown into a modern town. The Beamish and Murphy Breweries had also flourished here and provided much local employment.

On a small section of the Parade, there is a speakers corner where everyday Irishmen can publicly state their case in a thousand arguments, like they do at Hide Park in London. We walked on, enjoying the bustle of this small city in Southern Eire. A very modern, enclosed market area, called the “English market” was bustling with activity. Vendors sold produce, meats,fish, foul and all other fresh food stuffs in the collegial atmosphere of a small country market. In centuries before this, only the well heeled could sho here.The area had served as this type of venue since the early 1700’s. It is still commercially viable, only now everyone can shop here.

I noted several of the names of businesses on the exterior walls, Driscoll, Carberry among them. They are that of my own. I felt the personal connection more and more as I walked these streets of Cork. I walked in the foot steps of those who had come before me and left during and awful time in Eire’s history.

We reassembled on the bus for the next portion of our tour, the Jameson’s distillery in nearby Middleton. The ride through the countryside is bucolic, very green grass, sheep and a pastoral visage that is restful to the eyes. As we drove into the distillery, we espied a very large copper vat in front of an attractive-looking, single-story, wooden building. Several buses were already parked ahead of us in the drive.

The guide led us into a small bar area and waiting room for the distillery. Shortly, a young tour guide took us in hand and walked us through the various stages of Whiskey distilling. The Irish used a closed system of wood heating, in brewing their malt. It is repeated three times, giving the whiskey a smoother taste. It has none of the bouquet of Scotch, whose distillers use an open peat fire to give it the characteristic odor and taste of peat and malt, And, they only distill their whiskey twice.

The tour was of mild interest. Afterwards, we were treated to drams of Jameson’s in the bar area. It was smooth going down and easy on the palate. In the gift store nearby, they had all manner of trinkets and gift sets of Whiskey on display. An 18 year old fifth of Middelton’s, one of Jameson’s premier vintages, would run you $200. Ouch !

The bus loaded us up and drove the 30 minutes back to the ship’s anchorage in Cobh, arriving after 4:00 P.M. In retrospect, we could probably have caught the train into Cork and walked the city on our own.

We wolfed down a slice of pizza on deck 15 and repaired to our cabin to chill out. Dockside, the Pipe Bands were belting out the Irish tunes with abandon. “Danny Boy,” “ Amazing Grace” and the Irish fight song “The Gary Owen” all echoed along the docks. Dozens of local citizens had gathered as well to see the great ship weigh anchor.

165 years ago my own had left this same dock area hungry, cold and frightened at what lay ahead. Some had died on the voyage. Others had made it to the far shores of Lake Erie, in America and founded a clan whose roots still firmly hold in the far away precincts of a Modern America. I was here to remember them. And the descendants of many thousands of others who had left here became my friends, neighbors and colleagues in the tight-knit, Irish-Catholic community of South Buffalo, N.Y. I sipped a glass of Jameson’s on ice and thought of these remarkable men and women, of indomitable will, who had traversed an ocean with nothing but the clothes on their backs to make their way in a strange land far away. God Bless them every one, I thought. The martial music of the pipes stirred the emotions in me as the ship cast off her lines. “We have returned to remember you,” I said and saluted the Pipe bands and the locals cheering and waving to us on this grand ocean liner, leaving from the tiny port of Cobh.

What must those poor people have been thinking as they sailed down the shores towards the ocean and an uncertain future? They saw these very shores, that I looked upon now, for what they knew to be the last time. “The Leaving” sculpting, that we had viewed along the banks of the LIffey in Dublin, came to mind. A smaller statue of Annie Moore and her two children sits on the Cobh dock, commemorating one of the first of the Irish immigrants to pass through the new immigration facility at Ellis Island in New York City.

A we cleared shore, Mary and I settled in to read and then prepped for a “formal night” at dinner. A first stop, at the Captain’s cocktail party, was a bust. These affairs are supposed to be given in appreciation for returning Princess passengers. We couldn’t even cadge a drink. We walked away muttering what a cheap skate the ship’s captain was in this cheesy affair. I suppose in retrospect, as we waited in line for dinner in our formal clothes, I should have remembered that my own didn’t have quite the same experience on their first night at sea when they left Cork.

We were seated next to Steve and Chris Kennedy from Stratford on Avon, in England. We had a lovely conversation about English films and movie memorabilia which their business specialized in. The crab parfait, tomato bisque and lobster tails were all wonderful. A macadamia soufflé
for dessert, with Mondavi cabernet, made for a memorable repast. Jesus, the more I think of the contrast between what my own had experienced in their 1840’s voyage and what I now had, the more uncomfortable I felt.
Well, hopefully they would have been happy to know that one of their own was living a life that they never dreamed of. And one of their own who had come back to remember them.

The day was long and we were tiring with both the day and the voyage. It was nearly time to go home. We returned to our cabin to read and retire early. The great ship made her way across the English Channel, headed for France. We would anchor tomorrow off the picturesque island of Guernsey, an English Crown Possession.