15/07/2023
Boarded the Titanic Experience in Cobh today and found out if our assigned passenger survived. We learned a lot about the last port of the famous ship. Also Scoops Gelato was a huge hit!
Garry's Gabs: This afternoon, we visited the harbour town of Cobh (pronounced Cove). Known as Queenston until Irish independence, it has great historical significance. It is the second biggest natural deepwater harbour in the world after Sydney, Australia but, unlike it offers great protection from both enemies and storms with its very narrow entrance which opens up to a huge harbour, in the middle of which lies Ireland’s Alcatraz, an island prison. Because of the natural defence it had great strategic significance for the British Navy. Indeed, during World War 1, German U-Boats laid siege to it and attacked a lot of allied shipping trying to gain entry. In 1915 a U-Boat torpedoed an American civilian passenger liner, the Lusitania causing the loss of over 1100 lives. The victims and survivors were brought to Cobh and there is a beautiful monument to the event in the square in Cobh.
Cobh was also the last part of Ireland that millions of emigrants saw before the left for Canada, the US and Australia and there is lots of evidence of this in the town, including a statue of Annie Murphy and her two brothers, the first immigrants to be processed at the new Ellis Island processing centre in New York harbour.
Cobh was also the last port of call for the ill-fated Titanic. Built in Belfast and launched in Southampton, England, she was on her maiden voyage to New York when she was struck by an iceberg and quickly sank with the loss of hundreds of lives. At the Titanic Experience Centre, we were issued with tickets in the names of actual passengers and after getting a taste of what it was like to be the most luxurious passenger ship on earth, we learned the fate of the people on the tickets.
(July 14th)
