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Displaying items by tag: David Snook

The County Museum in Dundalk is running an exhibition, until the end of September, entitled: 'Faces from the Past. Merchant Seamen from Dundalk in the early twentieth century'. The exhibition is based on photographic records identified by David Snook, research officer of the Maritime Institute of Ireland.

The photographic collection feature over 350 identity cards of Dundalk men who served in the merchant navy between 1918-1921. The cards include personal details, foreign voyages and most importantly, a passport style photo of each seaman.

The exhibition also provides an insight into the history and nature of maritime activity in Dundalk, noting the contributions of several families in the area, as well as highlighting the fate of the SS Dundalk sunk by a U-boat in October 1918.

An accompanying 24-page booklet has also been produced. For further information and copies of the booklet are available from the County Museum or may be downloaded from the website www.dundalkmuseum.ie Admission to the exhibition is free.

Published in Ports & Shipping

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.