A maritime trail and garden dedicated to those lost at sea will be officially opened in Kilmore Quay, Co Wexford, this weekend.
It overlooks Ballyteigue Bay, which has earned the grim alias "the graveyard of a thousand ships". The memorial is the culmination of 18 months of work by a local group of volunteers.
It was inspired by a ceremony in 1998 to commemorate the people lost aboard the Ardmore which sank off Kilmore Quay in 1941 on a journey from Cork to Fishguard.
Father Jim Cogley, a local curate who came up with the idea for the garden and trail, says it became clear at the ceremony that a permanent memorial was needed for all those lost at sea, to provide a place to visit for relatives deprived of graves.
"The garden needed to be not just a memorial to the dead but a place to help all who are grieving to come to terms with their loss," he says.
Almost all of the materials for the garden were sourced locally.
An artist from the area, Mr Ciaran O'Brien, was commissioned to create a work symbolising the grieving process. His statue of two people comforting each other is the garden's most prominent feature.
The garden is also the final resting place of a 25-foot rib bone of a fin whale washed ashore last year and the 1.5tonne solid bronze propeller blade of the SS Lennox, lost off the Great Saltee Island in 1918.
The garden and trail, which overlooks the site of the 1968 crash of the Aer Lingus Viscount, St Phelim, in which 61 people died, will be opened by the Minister of State for the Marine, Mr Hugh Byrne, on Sunday at 3 p.m.
The Naval Service, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, the Commissioners of Irish Lights, Aer Lingus and the Coastguard will all participate in the ceremony.
The £70,000 project was funded by the Department of the Marine, Wexford County Council and voluntary subscriptions.
Anyone with a friend or relative who died at sea or elsewhere by drowning can have their name inscribed on a marble stone for a fee of £20. Further information can be obtained from Mr John Power, who designed the garden and trail, at (053-29799).
