Stories tagged "Holyhead": 53
Stories
Transporting the US Army to France, 1918
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…
Dublin Mail and Rail, 1914-18
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…
Dublin Mail and Rail, 1882-1920
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…
Responses to the Sinking of the Leinster
By October 1918, it had become apparent that the First World War was slowly drawing to a close. It was not yet foreseeable whether it would be over by Christmas, a hope annually revived since 1914, but an end to the fighting lay in the near future.…
Dublin Bay’s Martello Towers
There are around 29 martello towers dotted around the bay; coastal, circular buildings with curved, nearly-windowless walls. Some have been taken up as unique seaside homes or museums, but many are unused and inaccessible.
Most were built in…
Brexit and Dublin Port
At 5 o’clock on the morning of 31 January 2020, a handful of reporters and press photographers huddled in the pre-dawn rain at Dublin Port, where a group of senior Fine Gael politicians had donned yellow high-viz vests for a photo op. Then Tánaiste…
The First Irish Sea Balloon Crossing: Success | Croesiad Cyntaf Môr Iwerddon mewn Balŵn: Llwyddiant
The race to be the first to cross the Irish Sea by hot air balloon would turn out to be a family affair. After James Sadler’s high-profile attempt failed in October 1812, the baton was taken up by his 20-year-old aeronaut son, Windham Sadler, in…
The First Irish Sea Balloon Crossing: Failures and Rescues | Croesiad Cyntaf Môr Iwerddon mewn Balŵn: Methiannau ac Achub
The invention of hot air balloon travel in the 1780s was an international sensation, and intrepid individual aeronauts quickly took on the challenge of trying to complete increasingly daring journeys. However, efforts to cross the Irish Sea for the…
The First Irish Sea Balloon Crossing: Beginnings | Croesiad Cyntaf Môr Iwerddon mewn Balŵn: Dechrau arni
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…
Wordsworth on the Holyhead Road | Wordsworth ar y Ffordd i Gaergybi
‘What dreadful weather!’ Dorothy Wordsworth exclaimed on 28 August 1829. She had ‘a hundred fears’ because her brother William was going to cross the Irish Sea from Holyhead the following night.As they would soon find out, ‘three vessels had been…