Irish adventurers' history honoured

Forgotten Irish adventurers, some of whom were claimed by Britain, are to be recognised by a new association which aims to promote the cultural and historical aspects of exploration.

Irish participants in the discovery of the north-west passage around North America, the Waterford man who identified passes through the Rocky Mountains, and an Irish clergyman who recorded many first ascents in the Selkirk range of the Canadian Rockies are among the many adventurers whose lives are to be recorded by the Irish Mountaineering and Exploration Historical Society.

The achievements of Carlow man John Tyndall, whose distinguished reputation as a scientist almost matched his skill as a climber, and pioneering alpinist Mrs Aubrey Le Blond from Greystones, Co Wicklow, will also be acknowledged by the group.

The society held its first meeting in Kilkenny at the weekend, coincidentally the birthplace of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland.

The group is to be chaired by Mr Kevin Higgins, a mountaineer with a keen interest in Irish explorers in Canada, notably John Pallisser from Waterford, who helped to discover Rocky Mountain passes, and after whom a whiskey was named in Calgary.

At Sunday's inaugural meeting, supported by the Mountaineering Council of Ireland, Mr Higgins also spoke of the Rev William Spotswood Green, an Irishman regarded as Canada's "first recreational mountaineer".

Mr Joss Lynam, himself a pioneer in Irish climbing circles, spoke of Anthony Adams Reilly, a Mullingar man who was a cartographer and made the first accurate map of the Mont Blanc range in 1865.

Mr Lynam said the lives of a number of other mountaineers, including Mrs Le Blond, deserved further research by the society.

Britain's Crown Agent's Stamp Bureau will issue new stamps next year - one to mark the British Antarctic's new research ship, named after Irish adventurer Sir Ernest Shackleton, and one to mark the vessel it will replace, named after Cork man Edward Bransfield, who first sighted Antarctica on January 30th, 1820.

The family of Mr Bransfield, now living in Kent in England, has appealed through maritime historian Dr John de Courcy Ireland for any information on possible sketches or portraits of the explorer still in existence in Ireland.