At one stage in Dublin Port, roughly as many ships were worked outside the dock gates as inside. Ships were worked on the North Wall and along the South Quays. Cranes would lower their gibs into the ship's hatches, where cargo would be put on…

Dublin port during the early twentieth century was a place of great business trade and work. Having been refurbished in the 1800s to give way for more shipping of trades and goods, the port had become a huge employment area for most of Dublin.…

The British Admiralty had several factors to consider when they thought about escorting the mail and rail steamers. For example, the steamers were capable of 21 knots, which was fast, and they could maintain a reasonable speed even in bad weather.…

Prime Minister David Lloyd George was aware that Britain’s manpower resources were dwindling. He had prioritised shipbuilding, tanks and aircraft production before army demands. The army wanted 1.25 million new entrants. Lloyd George was only…

The London North Western Railway Company (LNWR) maintained their Holyhead to Dublin express service by switching the two Greenore ships to the Dublin service. An older ship was on standby. The potential of U-boats to destroy shipping had hardly…

After the introduction of the uniform penny post in the United Kingdom in 1840, postal volumes grew rapidly and were an increasingly important part of goods traffic between Great Britain and Ireland. In 1849, the Post Office invited tenders for a…

The Dublin Dockers started by collecting old photographs and are delighted to report that our collection has broken through the 4,000 mark. In addition, people have donated over 6,000 documents which we have passed on to Dublin City Council. Most of…

From the first manned hot air balloon flight in Paris in November 1783, balloons exerted a powerful force on the public imagination. Early observers of hot air balloons were not sure exactly what they were for, but ballooning’s capacity for setting…