Tributes paid to all whose lives were claimed by the sea
WEXFORD PAID TRIBUTE to those lost at sea on Sunday, June 19, in a poignant service of remembrance at Kilmore Quay.
This year’s service reflected on the events of 1916. The gunboat Helga, which shelled rebel positions in Dublin during the Easter Rising, ended her days off the Saltee Islands, thankfully with no loss of life, and artefacts from the ship are still to be found in the locality.
The SS Lennox went aground on the south side of the Great Saltee Island and was a total loss. The ship was on passage from Cardiff with a cargo of coal. All of the crew were rescued.
Years later a propeller blade was recovered from the wreck by local divers and is now incorporated in the Memorial Garden fountain.
The Battle of Jutland was the only major naval battle of the First World War and took place between the German High Seas Fleet and the British Grand Fleet.
There were huge sacrifices by the naval personnel of both navies with heavy losses including very many Irish. Those lost include James Kehoe, Bridgetown, and other Wexford men and all were remembered at the service which took place at the village church because of bad weather. The nearby Memorial Garden includes a memorial to the 61 people who lost their lives in the 1968 Tuskar Rock air crash in which 61 people losttheir lives when the Viscount airliner St Phelim plunged into the sea in an area overlooked by the garden. The garden, lying at a pivotal position between Tuskar Rock to the east and Hook Head to the west, is permanent public memorial to thosewho lost their lives in a stretch of sea which earned its grim reputation as ‘ the graveyard of a thousand ships’. The names of the air crash victims have been inscribed on the monument, along with the names of other victims of sea tragedies. The garden’s Vigil sculpture with one figure looking out to sea being comforted by the other and the Ship’s Wheel are the work of sculptor Ciaran O’Brien.