Ray-dars of the lost arc!
QUESTION
Why is the sky different colours on either side of a rainbow?
WHEN sunlight passes through a triangular glass prism, it separates into the colours of the rainbow. This happens because different colours refract (bend) by different amounts. Blue and violet, which have the shortest wavelengths, refract the most; red light the least.
Raindrops act like miniature prisms. Rainbows appear when the observer has their back to the Sun: the sunlight shines over the shoulders and is reflected in the raindrops of a passing shower.
At a certain angle, the light will enter the raindrop, be refracted, split into the colours of the spectrum, bounce off the back of the raindrop and travel to our eyes. This causes a rainbow. Every rainbow is accompanied by a higher secondary one, caused by the light bouncing twice inside raindrops. Because of the double reflection, the colours in the secondary rainbow are reversed. Since some light is lost out of the raindrop with every reflection, it is much fainter and often can’t be seen.
The area between the primary and secondary rainbows is known as Alexander’s dark band, an optical phenomenon named after Alexander of Aphrodisias, who first described the effect in AD 200. It is due to the fact the light in this area is being reflected at angles that don’t reach our eyes. The sky inside the primary rainbow, known as the cone, is brighter because all the raindrops reflect light back to the observer.
Pat Colburn, St Ives, Cornwall.
QUESTION
What is the history of shipbuilding in Ireland, both North and south?
BOTH parts of Ireland had a long tradition of shipbuilding stretching back hundreds of years, but the last ship built in Ireland was launched in Belfast in 2003.
Shipbuilding in Belfast began in 1636 when some clergymen in the city, anxious to escape furious religious divisions there, had a ship built called Eagle’s Wing that unsuccessfully tried to reach America. The industry really started in Belfast in 1791 when a shipbuilder from Saltcoats in Ayrshire called William Ritchie arrived in the city to start the first shipyard there. The first boat launched was the 200-ton Hibernia, in 1792.
Between 1841 and 1846, Queen’s
Island was built on land reclaimed from the River Lagan and it became home to two of Belfast’s biggest shipbuilders: Harland & Wolff, founded in 1853, and one of its rivals, McIlwaine and Coll.
Harland & Wolff became the major shipbuilder in Belfast, and the world’s leading shipyard for liner construction. The most famous liner it built was the Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912. The First and Second World Wars were boom times for the yard, as it made warships and other armaments. By the time the Second World War had started, Harland & Wolff was the only shipyard left in Belfast.
After that war, the yard was still building lots of liners, but the advent of mass air travel in the 1960s effectively killed off most of the trade. Harland & Wolff launched its last ship in 2003 and since then has been more focused on construction for the offshore renewable energy market.
Derry also had a shipbuilding tradition that started in the 1830s and lasted until the last shipyard there closed in 1924.
The south of Ireland also once had a vibrant shipbuilding tradition. Dublin’s shipbuilding industry lasted for nearly 200 years but the last vessel built at the last shipyard, the Liffey Dockyard, was constructed in 1969. It was a dredger for use on Ireland’s inland waterways, the Coill an Eo, and it’s still used as a maintenance vessel by Waterways Ireland.
Waterford, too, once had a fine shipbuilding tradition, which lasted for most of the 19th century. The three shipyards there, the Neptune, Penrose’s and Whites, were all Quaker-owned. Between them, they employed over 1,000 people. At White’s, the craftsmanship was so good, many English shipowners had their new vessels built at the Waterford yard rather than in English shipyards.
The Neptune shipyard was owned by the Malcolmsons, who at one point in the later 19th century, were the largest fleet owners in the world. But apart from competition, changes in technology also did for Irish shipbuilding. White’s was a classic case: the yard was brilliant at building wooden-hulled sail-powered vessels, but when the transition to iron-clad, steam-propelled vessels started, it couldn’t compete.
Cork city also had a brief spell as a major shipbuilding centre, in the 1820s and 1830s; the industry in there lingered on until the 1860s.
Near Cork, the shipyard at Rushbrooke, Cobh, was founded in 1853 and traded very successfully. Then after Irish Shipping was set up in the early days of the Second World War, as Ireland’s state-owned merchant fleet, it set up a repair dockyard at Rushbrooke. In 1957, a Dutch shipping magnate called Cornelius Verolme was brought in as the new owner of the yard.
Under his ownership, 33 ships were built at the Verolme yard, but in the early 1980s, work at the yard collapsed; it closed in 1984.
These days, small boats, are still sometimes built in Ireland, but the days of building passenger liners and merchant ships are long gone. Most of the shipbuilding for which Ireland was once renowned has passed to other European countries such as Finland and France, and to some Asian countries such as China and Japan.
Name, Place.
QUESTION
What church was used in TV’s Father Dowling Mysteries?
THE show’s 43 episodes ran from 1989 to 1991. The stories were based in Chicago, but the church used for exterior and interior shots was in Denver, Colorado.
The Roman Catholic Church of the Annunciation was consecrated in 1907. The impressive red-brick building is considered a fine example of the Romanesque Revival movement. The traditional Gothic style interior is renowned for its 34 stained-glass windows by Franz Mayer of Munich. The church has a 25 ft-high altar of Carrara marble from Italy, golden oak pews and pillars with florid capitals supporting a vaulted ceiling.
The TV show starred Tom Bosley, who had found fame as Mr Cunningham in Happy Days. He was assisted by Sister Stephanie Orkowski, known as Sister Steve, a nun with a knack for picking locks, which indicated a dodgy past. She was played by Tracy Nelson, daughter of the rock ’n’ roll singer Ricky Nelson.
They solved murders and other crimes in the parish despite being hindered by the bishop’s representative, Father Prestwick (James Stephens). A quirky fact is that several supporting actors had Biblical names: Keith Amos, Mark Moses, William R. Moses, Rainbow Harvest and Eric Christmas.
Danny Darcy, Reading, Berks.
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