The drama of a sea tragedy and rescue attempts in treacherous conditions off the Wexford coast is recounted in graphic detail in Heroes of the Helen Blake (Hibernia Heritage, €18) by Brendan Power. In 1914 the Norwegian-registered schooner, Mexico, on its way from South America to Liverpool, ran aground on the small islands of Keeragh near Fethard-on-Sea and a rescue mission turned into a harrowing three-day ordeal.
The RNLI lifeboat, Helen Blake, venturing through the worst storm in living memory, was hit by three successive towering waves and wrecked on rocks on the smaller of the two islands. In 180 seconds it was all over and nine of the crew perished. Five survivors managed to scramble on to the island – more of a lump of rock – where the crew from Mexico was also stranded. Lashed by rain and pebble-dashed by sleet, the men were stranded on the rock for three days with no food or water. Surrounded by an unyielding and unforgiving sea, their fate looked bleak, and several times other lifeboats were forced back by the mountainous seas. Eventually they secured a line to the island and rescued the men who were in pain and suffering hypothermia.
Constructed through painstaking research and using notes from the ship’s log, RNLI and coastguard records, newspaper reports and official inquiries, the author ferrets out gripping information. He builds up a slowly terrifying picture of the ordeal and the aftermath on a small community “when Fethard wallowed in the gloom of calamity and struggled to come to terms with their loss”. Pen portraits of the crew reflect a courageous display of seamanship by the rescuers; for every member of Mexico’s crew who was saved, a member of the Helen Blake crew lost his life.
The true account of the violent death of a Leitrim doctor in March 1923 is told in a richly absorbing way in The Murder of Dr Muldoon (Mercier Press, €12.99) jointly authored by Ken Boyle and Tim Desmond. While he was on his way home, the young doctor was shot in Mohill and left dying on the street. The murder suspect was a volatile parish priest, Fr Edward Ryans – an anti-Treaty activist – who also faced charges of attempting to abandon the newborn child of his unmarried housekeeper.
Meshing together letters, interviews and other documents from a range of sources, the authors create an absorbing picture of the murder and its aftermath, as well as the fight for justice by Dr Muldoon’s widow. The book grew out of a RTÉ radio documentary and new archive material has led to dissecting meticulously the circumstances of the murder, revealing how far senior figures in the church, State and the IRA were willing to go to cover up the scandal.
The family pedigree of John Dunne in Portlaoise stretches back more than 200 years making him ideally placed to write A Book About Portlaoise (Purtock Press, €15) and his study embraces four centuries of local events. The history of the town, formerly Maryborough, is interspersed with curious snippets such as the fact that it used to be called Fort Protector. The longest chapter lists the Maryborough Merchants of 1916, providing a glimpse of life more than 100 years ago and brought up to date with the names of the current occupiers of premises. It was a place of hardware stores, saddler and harness-makers, and grocers who assured "straightforward trading and no gimmicks". In some shops, an aroma of ground coffee and freshly-cut Limerick ham enveloped customers, whereas in others the smell came from sacks of meal and tea and snuff canisters.
George Ardill’s shop advertised for sale a purebred Airedale dog, “a splendid ratter and bargain at three guineas”. Ramsbottoms, still happily trading on lower main street as a pub, was a grocery-cum-bar which to this day retains its original bacon-slicing machine, sepia-tinted photographs and other reminders of the past. Like most towns, Portlaoise had its share of characters, including those who haunted Boylan’s Corner with their “oul colloguing”, while Purcell’s Corner was a popular meeting place for GAA fans on match days.
Parts of south Dublin are brought into focus in new reference works in the attractive Little Book hardcover series. With his encyclopaedic knowledge of social history, Hugh Oram has documented many parts of Ireland. His new compendium The Little Book of Blackrock, published in 2019, is closely followed this year by a second volume combining coastal towns The Little Book of Dalkey and Killiney (History Press, both £14.99).
Oram states that Dalkey has been around for some 1,500 years while Killiney is a more recent upstart. Sixteen chapters of micro-stories cover topics such as the built heritage, natural history and remarkable people who have lived or continue to live there, including a who’s who of actors, broadcasters, historians, musicians and writers. The author compares the two towns, deciding that in shopping terms, Killiney lacks the zeitgeist of Dalkey – but he notes that if you wish to buy a decent sized house in either place you will need a cool €5 million in your wallet.
One of the oldest and most vibrant parts of south Dublin is explored by Maurice Curtis in The Little Book of Rathmines (History Press, £14.99). Another prolific chronicler of the city, his book overflows with quirky facts: Ireland's first Olympic medallist, Jack B Yeats who lived in Charleville Road, was awarded the silver medal in the arts and culture section of the 1924 Paris games for his painting The Liffey Swim; the Battle of Rathmines (1649), one of the most important in Irish history, took place in the Bloody Fields, subsequently known as Palmerston Park; the quintessential Rathmines landmark, the prominent clocktower, was often referred to as "the four-faced liar" because, prior to electrification, its four faces often showed slight variations on the time.
