Search Results for 'John Wilson'

The Basketball Ireland Superleague season is rapidly entering its closing phase. The visit of Griffith College Eanna this Sunday to the University of Galway Sports Arena, will be Maigh Cuilinn’s second-last home game of the 2023/2024 campaign.

The possible introduction of cholera and smallpox from abroad concerned the Government, and so the Cholera Act of 1893 empowered sanitary authorities to enter lands for the construction of isolation hospitals.

There can be no greater horror for passengers and crew than facing death on a burning ship in a heavy sea, that was sinking by its bow. Which death would you choose? Stay on board and be burnt? Or chance your luck in the waves?

During the last week of October 1860 members of the crew of the Connaught began to return to Galway. On October 28 the first to arrive came by train ‘where a large number of people on that afternoon were at the station to welcome them back.’

We get an idea of the perilous position at sea that confronted Captain John Wilson of the Minnie Schiffer, his two-masted brigantine, laden with a full cargo of fruit and wine, as he was sailing from Marseilles to Boston, from this dramatic painting.

There can be no greater horror for passengers and crew than facing death on a burning ship in a heavy sea, that was sinking by its bow. Which death would you choose? Stay on board and be burnt? Or chance your luck in the waves?

Well, last week I began the column by talking about Roscommon and Mayo, so I had better be true to myself and begin this column by talking about the replay at the weekend.

In the Diary of September 22 I asked whether the ‘gallant and humane’ Captain John Wilson of the The Minnie Schiffer, who miraculously snatched from certain death 591 passengers and crew from the burning PS Connaught, ever received the ‘elegant service of plate’ especially commissioned for him from the prestigious Tiffany and Co of Broadway, New York. The plate was paid for by the merchants of New York and Boston ‘in appreciation of his gallant conduct at sea’ on that fateful evening October 8 1860.

There can be no greater horror for passengers and crew than facing death on a burning ship in a heavy sea, that was sinking by its bow. Which death would you choose? Stay on board and be burnt? Or chance your luck in the waves?

The loss of the PS Connaught, October 8 1860, launched to reverse the sliding fortunes of the J Orwell Lever’s Galway Line, was a severe blow to the company. Although the local press tried to make the most of the fact that of the 591 people on board, not one life was lost, the bad publicity soured the public towards the Galway Line, which was also in financial trouble.