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Taking a road trip

This is looking like another three-post day. We covered a lot of ground on our day’s adventures, simply too much to digest all at once. So here’s the first segment.

A little shuttle bus picked us up at the hotel this morning and made a bunch of stops. They were all fine and fun and charming and some of them were quite lovely on their own. Taken as a whole, however, they seemed to be taking away from the main feature of the day. But you don’t know that until you know that. Anyway, a few of the things we saw early in the day.

Our first stop was at Bo-Kaap, in Cape Town. This is the old Malay Quarter, formerly racially segregated. It is, today, a multicultural neighborhood, noted for hits brightly colored homes and cobblestone streets, where some 57 percent of the residents are Muslim. It is being gentrified, which is changing the character of the place, but it still maintains the largest concentration of pre-1850 architecture in South Africa.

In 1760 a man started buying up the land in this area and built small homes on it that he leased to his slaves. The indigenous peoples resisted the Dutch, so they brought in Malaysians, Indonesians, and other parts of the continent, which is how it got its nickname. Into the 19th century, more housing was thrown up for a growing population of tradesmen, craftsmen, and artisans. Political exiles moved in. At sometime after emancipation, the story goes, the bright paints were put on the walls as a proud expression of freedom. (There seems to be some debate about this part of the story.)

Apartheid forced some people and communities out of the quarter, which also shrank the footprint. In the 1940s some preservation began, with 15 houses restored, and in 1966 part of Bo-Kaap was designated as a National Monument and a few dozen more houses and streets were restored.

Over-tourism is surely a problem here. We were there for about 15 minutes and you could get a sense of that.

These are the Twelve Apostles, part of the Table Mountain complex overlooking Camps Bay in Cape Town. The mountain range stretches almost four miles, but there are actually 18 peaks, averaging about about 2,460 feet. Also, right here on this bay, on this beautiful sunny day, was just about the windest wind I have ever experienced not in a storm.

I recorded a video, but you can hear nothing I said. Everyone was taking the photos of leaning into the wind in one direction and then turning around and sitting on the wind in the other direction. I found one weather site which told me we had gusts of 40 miles per hour, but that’s well under what we felt.

Anyway, this was a beautiful area, and our guide just dropped us in and out rather quickly because, despite views like this …

We were just getting warmed up. Also, we went a little inland to warm up, and get out of the wind. There’s a little shopping village there, where we spent about 20 minutes, which was just long enough for you to fantasy about the real estate ads in the windows of the realtor’s office. Looked lovely. Great bakery nearby. A coffeeshop where you can get a free cuppa if you ride up on your horse. Quite little merchants and shops. All whitewashed and quaint.

I need a swing wall now, clearly. With a custom-designed tree painting above it. Where do I go to order such a thing? Also, technically, our new custom designed swings should swing.

Anyway. We also made a quick stop to make some friends with some ostriches. Ostriches are here.

They’re also an important part of the cuisine here. We didn’t tell the ostriches that.

We also didn’t tell the precocious child who is on this tour, who is dominating, hilarious, the conversation with our guide. He could scarcely do his job for entertaining Lilly. I think her mom was pleased to have the attention go somewhere else for the part of a day.

Anyway, I have some other ostrich photos and they will wind up as banners here one day. Silly little inquisitive birds.

For the next part of our day, we’ll be exploring the Cape of Good Hope!

adventures / history / maps / South Africa / Thursday — Comments Off
28
May 26

‘My good people’

We took a tour of Johannesburg today. A nice young man in a crisp black wardrobe and a simple gold chain picked us up at our hotel. We climbed into his car and we did the initial small talk of names and nations and how long you’ve been here. He said he was going to show us the good, the bad, and the ugly of Johannesburg. He did just that.

We started with Nelson Mandela Square, near our hotel in Sandton. It’s a shopping center, named in his honor in 2004. It is one of the largest on the continent. It felt like a shopping center, but there’s a giant statue. He’s dancing.

The statue was installed to mark the 10th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections, and the first one honoring Mandela. It weighs some 5,000 pounds, considerably more than the miniature that is located nearby for the seeing impaired.

Along the ground in the square are short quotes of things that Mandela wrote, or said over the years. I took photos of a few of those, of course.

We made a quick stop at the overlook on Munro Drive. We’d done the same last night, but it’s worth seeing earlier in the day. Click to embiggen.

Munro Drive is a road that connects two suburbs (you’re looking on the northern suburbs here) and has a short punchy climb, a U-bend and slices through quartz to connect the neighborhoods. It is named after John Munro, director of Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company. And, somehow, just from the name, you feel like there could be a problem there. You could be right, JCI was a huge 19th century South African company invested in the mining, property and engineering sectors. As we learned from our guide, who called us “My good people,” all day, the land here is rich in everything mineral. We drove by exhausted mines were people are still descending, as trespassers, looking for gold and various other things. We saw them do it. And they’re not doing it if they’re coming up empty. The story of South Africa is one of great riches, and of horrible exploitation. At a macro level, we might be aware of that. But at the JCI level, there were always allegations. The one that helped bring them down was an investigation which seemed to point to almost a half billion dollars (American) worth of fraud. Oh, and also murder.

We drove along the way from here to there to what they tell the Americans is the Beverly Hills of Johannesburg. It’s neighborhoods of high walls obscuring what might be well manicured lawns. Some, our guide told us, were lived in. Others have become generational B&Bs. Others mostly abandoned, and squatters have taken up residence. We drove them some of this yesterday, too, and all you can see are the walls.

Then we dove into some of the recent history of South Africa. “Welcome, my good people, to Constitution Hill.” I do not know how many places in the world have put its aspirations right next to its horrors, but they have done so here. This was originally a fort and repurposed as a prison in 1892. Boer military leaders were housed here. It was a prison for white men. And then, during apartheid, it became a detention center for political prisoners, strikers, anyone “anti-establishment.” Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned here, as was Nelson Mandela, Robert Sobukwe, and others. The site housed prisoners until 1983, when it was closed. We toured the infamous Number Four.

This room was designed to keep 50 prisoners. At times, it held many more. The museum docent talked pointed out there were no windows, told us about the two blankets prisoners received, and the hierarchy within the cell. The cell boss usually got those blankets. There were 16 people in this room when we were there, just enough people to allow you the sense of a fetid crush of humanity you might experience in larger numbers.

When you leave the communal quarters you go into another room which is dominated by this large sign hanging on the far wall.

Along the side walls are smaller signs, one each for the men photographed above. Each sign shares their name, the time of their incarceration, and why they were held here. And, in this way, the museum asks you to make decisions for yourself. Not all of these men were held here for the same reasons, but you bring your same sensibilities, or your own nation’s laws, or your hopes for modernity, with you to each. It is hard for most people to think someone violating a Pass Law should be held in such conditions. It is hard for many, including most Americans, to think there should be such a thing as a Pass Law to begin with.

Pass laws served as an internal passport system designed to racially segregate the population, restrict movement of individuals, and allocate low-wage migrant labor. Also known as the natives’ law, these laws severely restricted the movements of Black South Africans, Indian South Africans and Cape Coloureds by confining them to designated areas. Initially applied to Indigenous African men, attempts to enforce pass laws on women between the 1910s and 1950s sparked significant protests. Pass laws remained a key aspect of the country’s apartheid system until their effective termination in 1986.

For more than 200 years people lived under these rules. Authorities would stop people on the street. And if, like one or two of the men in the large photo above you didn’t have your pass on you, you were sent here. In March of 1960 Nelson Mandela famously burned his pass book in protest after police massacred 69 people protesting the dompas laws. It is easy, in retrospect, to say these things that were so unsavory they don’t exist anymore shouldn’t be something that brings a person to a place like this. Not everyone was held here for the same reasons, and something like 80 percent of the people who were here found themselves here simply because of the color of their skin. It is a lesson of history screaming at us about our future.

And the conditions were brutal. There was a limited, segregated diet, poor medical facilities, one shower a week, no privacy, public humiliation, with prisoners being hired out as cheap labor, and it’s all just as grim as you can possibly imagine, but you’re only getting a quick glimpse.

Mahatma Gandhi came to South Africa, as a young man, to practice a little law. When the case he was originally here for wrapped up he was preparing to return home, but had a change of heart. He wound up spending 21 years in the country, and it was here that he shaped his politics and and his personal ethics, his notion of Satyagraha (a devotion to truth) and the nonviolent protest concepts that come as a defense of dignity and personal autonomy. He was also imprisoned here, in 1906. His is one of the headshots above. And in one room, there are a few displays that talk more about the pass books, and Gandhi’s time here. Also, there’s this typewriter. You’re meant to think that this was in his office. You could infer that he typed upon it. But it’s just sitting on a table in an open air room and I doubt that.

We’re skipping over the shower and toilet facilities. They were limited and almost as humiliating as the personal inspections required when prisoners came back in from their work. All of it was designed to rob a person of their dignity, to remind them of their place, and to make those in power feel a bit better about themselves.

Nelson Mandela, who once stood in the places I stood today, and suffered in the places where I merely felt eerie, famously channeled a Dostoyevsky and said “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”

He was most assuredly thinking of political prisoners when he said that. He was surely thinking about this place.

He stood here, a short walk from the open air plumbing, where there is today an accessibility ramp, but probably three or four steps when this was a prison. He might have been brought down those steps. He might have looked up into the blue or grey sky. This is where prisoners were held in solitary confinement. They had a barbed wire ceiling. And through it, somehow, you could see the sky.

This is one of the rooms where people were held in solitary. The signage explains that there were rules about how long a person could be kept there. The signage also explains that that rule was often ignored.

Here’s a row of those solitary confinement rooms. They go the other direction, as well. I counted 27 of them. One, it was explained, was where they brought people to torture them. In there, people were tortured to death. To stand there, alone, in the quiet. To consider that.

I do not know how many places in the world have put its aspirations right next to its horrors, but they have done so here. Just 450 feet from there sits the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the high court of the land. Established into law in 1993, it the constitutional court held its first session in 1995. The 11 judges have presided here since moving to this complex in 2004.

That photo is from the humble press area. It’s a tiny brick balcony with a few chairs and folding tables. From here the media look down upon all of the issues that the court care to hear. Everything — from the way the light comes into the room, to the hides before the judges, to the orientation of all of the seats, to those windows behind the judges, where the jurists can see the feet of the people they serve — everything you can see from here is steeped in ritual symbolism.

And the exterior walls are made up of the bricks that were a part of the prison.

We left Constitution Hill and did a quick drive by the Calabash. FNB Stadium is primarily for soccer and rugby. It has hosted other big events, like Mandela’s first speech after his prison release in 1990, the 2010 World Cup, and Mandela’s last public appearance. They can put 94,000 people in there for a match, more for concerts.

The design is meant to be evocative of an African pot, hence the nickname, the calabash. The exterior cladding mosaic of fire and earthen colors simulates fire underneath the pot. Inside, all of the views are accessible, and you’re never more than 100 yards from the action.

Then we drove into Soweto, and into the township there. “You are safe, my good people, because I am from there,” our guide said. We stopped to see what looks like a modern standard middle class neighborhood. We drove by some structures which, if I understood correctly, were former company town housing which is basically middle class, but not the way you’d think of it in America. And then we drove by the famous nuclear reactor cooling towers, which are now a sought after advertising canvas. Just up the street we stopped in the dense cluster of structures that were barely-standing buildings. I didn’t take any photos here. This was one of the more exploitive aspects of the day, honestly, but also eye-opening. You can explore it on Google.

We walked through part of it, soberly, quietly. We met a few people that lived there. The only dog we saw all day followed us around. Each of these buildings is perhaps 80 square feet. There’s enough room for a small bed, a countertop, a kerosene stove and a short stack of pots and pans. The floors are dirt. The roofs are also that same tin. When it is cold, it is cold. When it is hot, it is hot. Today was an earlier winter day, but it was still hot. There’s communal running water, communal toilet facilities, a few stores, but probably not anything like you’re imagining.

Throughout the day we’ve been talking about the problems of Johannesburg. The biggest, we were told, is unemployment. Others include abandoned buildings, police corruption, immigration, and so on. Not everything is horrible, there are haves and have nots, there are people that work hard, and people that want more than what opportunity has offered them. If you are in a township, life can be rather hand-to-mouth. Part of the issue in this spot, we were told, is the need for housing. The government is in charge of that, apparently. People sit and wait for the government to get that done. How long can it take, how long could you be here? I asked.

A lifetime, our guide whispered.

We visited one of the Mandela’s former homes. I am standing in Nelson Mandela’s courtyard. He planted this tree.

It is a museum. There are many guests. We had a docent. It is an odd mixture of a living home, but a museum and somehow that makes it seem like it is neither of those things. Or perhaps the Mandela family stuffed their shelves and filled their walls with memorabilia. It is hard to know.

Our guide guess well about his good people. He took us a short drive from that Mandela museum to the Hector Pieterson Museum, and the site where the Soweto Uprising took place in 1976. All three of these places are within 1.3 miles of one another, and they all felt like they were worlds apart.

The street where the uprising began is a busy and bustling two-lane road. There’s an elaborate courtyard where the uprising took place. And then there is the museum. I didn’t take any photos there, for some reason. This is what happened.

In 1976, the government decided they would teach students Afrikaans. The teachers were apparently ill-equipped and untrained to teach the language. And this would have been the third or fourth language some of the students learned, but this one suddenly, and poorly put upon them. Students revolted. They got together, wrote a letter, and were prepared to march it from A to B to deliver their protests. But the police gathered and stood in their way. Eventually, a few shots rang out. One of the kids, a kid, that was killed was Hector Pieterson. He was 12 at the time. He was standing on the street corner on that June day in Soweto, waiting for his sister, so they could walk on home. A police officer squeezed off a round and, standing in that court yard you can see where the officer was, where Pieterson was, and stand on a brick line that marks the ballistic line of the round.

Another boy scooped up Pieterson and tried to hustle him to help. Pieterson’s sister arrived and ran along side him, wailing. A photographer took a photo of this, which was smuggled out of town and horrified the world. Pieterson was proclaimed, by the media, as the first to die. But another student, Hastings Ndlovu was the first murdered in the street by the police. All of this set off a days long massacre, which killed at least 176.

This we learned standing outside of the museum, near this sign.

Our guide walked us in, and into a courtyard, where we pumped into Hector Pieterson’s sister who, 50 years on, is still giving tours about the uprising and the death of her younger brother. (Their mom started this place, and she stayed on for years. Apparently, even after she finally retired she stopped by regularly to make sure things were going well.

In that inner-courtyard there are a bunch of markers, like you would find in a cemetery. On them, in small print, where the names and ages of people that were killed in the larger internal conflict. I’m not sure how much of this is supposed to be a part of the tour, but you know how I can be. I got our guide to tell his good people more than he was prepared to discuss. And if he has it right it sounds for all the world like they were just a bad handful of choices from being in a full on civil war.

Our guide let his guard down in front of his good people, and eventually realized just how much he was telling us. To be fair, I, being me, was pulling it out of him. It was a real and frank conversation, not at all official. I’m not clear if he works for a company or for himself, so I won’t say too much about it, other than to say I was glad for the talk and his perspective and trust. He sent us into the museum, which has a strict no-photographs policy. It’s a great museum, featuring life-sized photos, video and television from the period, plenty of signage and testimonials explaining almost everything else about the Soweto uprising and its aftermath. It’s a fantastic museum and a memorable way to end the day’s tour. Our good guide gave us a tremendous experience.

We had a fine steak dinner at The Bull Run, the restaurant attached to our hotel. Tomorrow we’re getting up early. We’re going on safari.

adventures / history / London / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
26
May 26

A lovely little layover

We’ve landed, which is to be expected, and is the desired conclusion of a long plane ride. We flew overnight, which was the plan. I watched movies, all British things since we were on British Airways, which was the plan. I actually slept bit, which is surprising, since I’m bad at that, and airports are noisy and somewhat uncomfortable, even if you’re flying in the comfortable section, which we were, because that was a long overnight flight and we have tasted how the other half live.

We have come to a place which is not our destination. It has been our destination on previous trips. And it is pleasant enough. Also, they have the second most considerate sets of stairs anywhere — second only to escalators, which have the decency to move me around.

So we are in London. Which is the plan. Not the original plan. This is the secondary plan. Originally we were supposed to fly into Doha, but then the world happened and nothing was happening at the Doha airport, nothing good, anyway. So we re-booked, which made everyone happy. And we’re in London for the better part of a day.

The first idea was we could just stay in the airport, but we went a different route. We got our luggage, and then took it to a place in Heathrow where you can pay people to hold your things for you. We left our things with that business and I wondered how I would answer the old airport question about have my bags been in my control the entire time.

The entire length of time? No. For I am a mortal man with other hopes and dreams and wishes and preoccupations that have meant that, at some times, these things have not been under my careful and watchful eye. All of today? Also no, because there is a storefront downstairs where you can rent a locker for five pounds an hour or something, and who knows what they did to or with my stuff while I was in your beautiful, steamy city.

You don’t get asked those questions much anymore, though. Just as well. My desire to amaze myself with literal answers to rhetorical questions will get me in trouble one day.

So we dumped our bags at this place which has earned the approval of the airport and has, hopefully, carefully vetted their employees. We caught the train away from Heathrow and then caught the hop-on, hop-off bus. We did that after wandering around in the wrong direction two or three times, and then sitting for a while at a bus stop that wasn’t on the bus line. Also, it was quite hot in London. It was 35 C today, which is 95 degrees for American readers. That’s about 30 degrees higher than the seasonal average.

Don’t rush, indeed. Don’t rush, don’t sweat. Those stairs knew some stuff. We are, as they suggested, taking one step at a time.

Here’s the National Gallery, where the banner is enticing you to come in to see some of the works of Francisco de Zurbarán, a Spanish Baroque painter. He painted still-lifes and a lot of religious works.

The exhibition brings together works from major galleries across Europe and the US that span Zurbarán’s career from his first religious commissions to paintings made for private devotion. Stand in front of monumental works that can still move and inspire us today.

In the background is the beautiful St Martin-in-the-Fields. It first shows up in the written records in the 13th century, though they are celebrating the tricentennial of the current building this year. It’s been a proud centerpiece of Westminster for a long time, long before there was a Trafalgar Square, or before Nelson’s Column was installed.

Horatio Nelson’s column was built in the 1840s, made of Dartmoor granite. The statue of Nelson at the top was carved from Craigleith sandstone. It is 17 feet tall. There are four bronze relief panels, each 18 feet square, made from captured French guns. They depict the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, the Battle of the Nile, the Battle of Copenhagen and the death of Nelson at Trafalgar. This is the latter.

The sculptor of this one was John Carew, an Irishman who had a lot of work, but this is his most renowned. It depicts the death of Nelson. He was killed by a Frenchman aboard the Redoubtable as that ship and Nelson’s Victory tangled. Nelson’s unorthodox approach to the battle won the day, despite being outgunned and outnumbered. It ended French invasion plans, but otherwise did little to sway things in that particular war. He was, nevertheless, a hero. The column was refurbished in 2006, and found to be 169 feet and 3 inches tall from the bottom of the pedestal to the top of Nelson’s hat. That was a surprise. They seemed to think it should be some 14 feet taller.

I guess it never occurs to people to measure things.

One man who never forgot to measure was William Slim, who was a World War 2 hero. This statues was installed in the 1980s and it has the unnerving ability to look as if he has a different perspective from different angles.

He was wounded three times, twice in the Great War and again in World War II. He led the Fourteenth Army, the so-called “forgotten army” in the Burma campaign and rose to some considerable fame — beloved by his soldiers, respected by his peers, and duly honored by his country — which all became secondary after allegations of child sexual abuse while he was the governor-general of Australia (in the 1950s) emerged some years after his death.

The London Eye and the River Thames. The Eye is the world’s tallest cantilevered observation wheel, and the UK’s most popular paid tourist attraction. More than three million people a year take a ride. We did it several years ago.

And here’s the Queen Elizabeth Gate, or the Queen Mother’s Gate, guarding the entrance to Hyde Park. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993 to celebrate the 90th birthday of The Queen Mother. The red lion and unicorn represent England and Scotland, respectively.

Still stands out, all these years later.

And so we rode around on the bus, until we decided we must leave the bus and march back to the train station, to ride the train back to Heathrow. We had to collect our bags, check back in, and then went to a lounge with showers. After a long hot day like this, that was the right plan. You get a private little fiberglass room, sink, toilet, shower, and a fold-down seat. It’s all cleaner than you might imagine, and it was necessary after a day in the heat, a night in a plane and so on.

Now we’re boarding another plane. But to where?

adventures / history / Ireland / photo / weekend — Comments Off
21
Mar 26

Fort Dunree

It was a somewhat shorter day — our last day, sadly — touring around Ireland. This week we went west, and then worked our way north. This evening we have to drive back down to Dublin. We’re flying out tomorrow morning. But that’s tomorrow, and there’s still today. And we have a few more sites to see.

When you go to Dunree Head you’re really going to Fort Dunree. There are several old barracks, the view of the water, Lough Swilly, below and the Fanad Peninsula across the way.

There’s a museum, and a few historical pieces outside on display. Your basic fort features, really. Like, for instance, the 90 cm carbon arc searchlight. Their predecessors were put in early in the 20th century, these were installed in 1938. They were intended to light up enemy ships and assisting the Royal Navy steamers.

The light was so bright it lit up the Ballmastocker Beach we saw yesterday and the village across the way. That’s more than three miles as the crow flies. The story they tell is that you could read your newspaper, at night, from the strength of that light.

The light was manually moved. A soldier stood off to the side several feet and steered the thing around. He was stationed to the side because of the heat the light generated.

You send some electricity through carbon rods and the reflection off the concave mirror does the real work. It could be used as a pinpoint light, or in a moveable wider arc, which turned all of night into day on the water. There are two of these on display, at least one of them would still work. They last used it in a 2011 ceremony.

There are also two QF 12 pounder CWT guns, made by the Elswick Ordnance Company in 1893 and installed here in 1925. The idea behind this weapon was harbor defense against small vessels. They were in service until 1956.

The gunner stood to the left of the weapon. He threw his arm over the shoulder piece, trying his best to look cool. The left hand elevated and depressed the barrel. The right hand rested on a pistol grip, and there he fingered the trigger.

It fired a 3-inch shell, and could average a round down range ever four seconds.

Another key element of the fort was the Mark XVII sea mine.

This is a contact mine, the standard British armament. If your ship bumped up against this your ship would go boom. It was an update on World War I British mines, an evolution from their German counterparts.

There were switches in those horns, now painted red, and this was the standard device during World War 2. Here, they were used defensively, meant to deny access to the waterways. (Historians still debate their effectiveness.) Inside of the mine was a mix of ammonium nitrate and TNT which apparently made for a lower quality explosive. The explosive charge could range between 320 and 500 pounds of explosives. I have no frame of reference for what that means.

In the old rooms of the fort there are little displays, highlighting things like the uniforms and tools and the forge that were all fixtures of the place when it was in active service, which was the case between 1798 (We’ve seen multiple references on our trip to the French fleet that came in to support the Irish Rebellion at the turn of the 18th century.) until after World War 2.

The water here is an important geological feature, one of just three glacial fjords on the island. The water is deep, and there is a sheltered, safe harbor to the left as you look at the photo above. If you sailed to the right, you’re quickly in the transatlantic shipping routes. The British used Lough Swilly’s deep water for much of that time. And here, on top of this cliff, close to the mouth of waterway, the fort commands the best views and any traffic that tried to come through. During the Great War, they erected a boom across the water to protect the British Grand Fleet from a U-boat attack. The British gave over the fort over after the Irish gained independence.

This was the last place handed over to the Irish. There was a brief, small ceremony on Oct. 3, 1938. Not a lot of people saw it, but there was romance and pageantry. A major marched 32 men from the 17th Heavy Battery Royal Artillery to the peak of the fort. Waiting there were 26 men from the 5th Coast Defence Battery Artillery Corps of Ireland.

It was a cold and windy day. It was October, over the North Atlantic. They’re all hunched over with a certain sort of military acceptance and proficiency.

The Union flag was lowered, the Irish tricolour was raised. Sergeant Arthur King lowered the British flag. Quartermaster-Sergeant Michael McLaughlin raised the Irish flag. They were brothers-in-law.

King married a local girl. And the way the signage reads, not everyone was in on the moment. He said they were “keeping this fort in the family” and explained that he was related, by marriage to McLaughlin.

McLaughlin had signed up at 19, in 1922. He stayed on here until 1940, when his service took him to Dublin. He stayed in the Irish Army for another decade after that. When the quartermaster sergeant died his coffin was draped in the flag he hoisted here in October, 1938.

After World War 2 the Irish coastal defense forts were reduced in size and then closed. The guns were fired in their last training exercise in 1964. They were never fired in anger.

In 1989 Fort Dunree was considered strategically unnecessary. The next year, it was formally closed as a base. There was a gale blowing over the Atlantic that June day, but the waters here were said to be perfectly calm. The flag was lowered by a man named Captain William Donagh. He gave the flag to his father, Major General Bill Donagh, pictured above, who had been the officer in charge when the Irish took control in 1938, 52 years earlier.

The place was already a museum by then, since 1986 in fact. When they opened the museum, it served as a reunion, of sorts, for the men who’d served here. They gathered together for this photograph.

That photo was taken 40 years ago. They could tell a lot more stories beyond the excellent signs inside, I’m sure. Hopefully someone jotted them all down.

adventures / history / Ireland / photo / weekend — Comments Off
21
Mar 26

Lisfannon Beach

This is our last day on the Wild Atlantic Way, and our last day in Ireland. It is back down to Dublin tonight, and a plane in the morning. We had to make today count, and did we ever. We warmed up with two quick stops.

Lisfannon Beach on Lough Swilly is in a natural heritage area. It is an important wetlands site for birds. Meanwhile, a short walk away is Fahan Wood, noted for oak, hazel and rowan. The beach itself is a big site for vacationers and it offers some lovely views.

Near here you can sail in some of the same seas that Englishman John Newton sailed, and survived. Born in 1725, Newton went to sea at age 11 with his father. In 1743, he was pressed into the Royal Navy. He got involved in the slave trade, became a slave himself in Africa. Rescued and brought home, he eventually captained several slave ships himself. Along the way, he found his faith. The story goes that he encountered a bad storm in the waters near here, and that was part of the personal catalyst. It was a bit of a slow burn for him, but he eventually became an English evangelical Anglican cleric and abolitionist. He stared hard into what had been some moral blind spots, and wrote a tract apologizing for his role in the slave trade that became popular enough to require reprinting. He also wrote hymns, including Amazing Grace.

The British Empire ended their role in the African slave trade in 1807, just months before Newton’s death.