The Gale of Gaelic

     There was a gale heading our way, announced the captain, and it would be a good idea to secure whatever glass or bottles we may have had laying around our rooms. The swells we would encounter later that night would be in the 15-foot range.  It was Lillian, a gale making its way across the Atlantic (Gale was yet another name you rarely hear these days, but one which was commonly given to young girls back in the day).  Our minds were fresh with the sinking of the mega-yacht, owned by the controversial Autonomy founder, Mike Lynch; but surely such winds wouldn’t be enough to threaten a ship as large as ours, likely the same thoughts of those billionaires on that yacht.  But the harbormaster had already ordered the port of Waterford closed, as a precaution.  That happened at 2 in the afternoon.  It was now 5 PM and we were just leaving Cornwall on our way to the coast of Ireland.  

     The swells would hit while we were asleep, the captain assured us, but just to be safe, put things away, he said.  We asked some of the wait staff if they had encountered other times like this on the ship (we already felt happy to have successfully rocked and rolled our way down the hallways to dinner, thankful for the handrails that lined them).  Oh yes, they told us, much worse, so much so that while they had drawers and lockers to put away dishes and such, the thousands of crystal glasses sometimes didn't fare as well.  As we glanced up from our table and scanned the many tables that lined this particular restaurant (the ship had 7 restaurants overall), we saw nothing BUT glasses (the restaurant we were sitting in could seat nearly 450, and each seat --not table-- had a water glass, and a glass for both red and white wine, each clearly sounding its lovely crystal ring as a spoon or other glass hit it; each of those glasses and dishes would have to be carefully put away once all the guests had retired, or when the ship got too rocky to serve).  Our new city, we were informed, IF the that city's harbor master approved, would be Cork...

     So the swells. Throughout the night our ship would indeed roll, enough to slam doors shut even with their tighter-than-normal hinges (this is a cruise ship so dresser drawers and such are designed to close once you give them a small push; but the bathroom door is a thick door designed to sway back and forth slowly but not slam shut, as guests tend to leave their doors cracked a bit to avoid the loud, purposeful "click" that lets you know that the door is indeed closed; the shower door is basically the same).  I peeked out at the patio door at 3 AM, hoping to glimpse my first big swell and somehow hoping that I wouldn’t be making that classic rookie mistake that sends an old-timer like me sailing over the rail on a slippery patio deck (we oldies tend to make some foolish choices in our advanced years).  The seas were indeed churning, our ship's wake clashing with the swells and sending large curtains of spray into the night sky as they hit one another.   Clearly our ship was filled with enough power, I thought, but one peek at those raging waves made me start to wonder.  We were now just a small blip in this dark and angry-looking sea.  I glanced back around to the dark cabin to ensure that I wouldn't make that other old-timer mistake and bang my head on a cabinet or trip and fall onto the glass coffee table, then waited for the proper momentum of the seasick-inducing waves to rush me back to the bedroom.  It was exhilarating, not that of seeing the ocean in that wild state but to just be safely back under the covers, away from that salt-coated railing and not triggering a man overboard, or make that idiot overboard, alarm (I had taken the true miracle antisemitic drug, Bonine (meclizine) hours earlier so i felt like some sort of salty dog used to riding the high waters).  

Photo of the Cobh funeral for victims of the Lusitania

     Our ship was quite the sensation docked in Cork, as if not many large ships made a stopover here, or so it seemed to our eyes. This port city of Cobh just outside Cork was the home for many of the victims of the Lusitania, the largest ship built at the time and one that was sunk by German U-boats as it made its 202nd crossing from New York to Liverpool, wrote the Lusitania Resource.  Out of 1960 passengers, close to 1200 would perish, although 767 would be saved.  I could only imagine the seas THOSE people would have seen, the icy Atlantic waters not only rough because of the weather, but also from what threatened them from below, a scene well-captured in the Tom Hanks movie, Greyhound. This city of Cobh was also the boarding point for over a hundred of the Titanic's passengers (quick quiz: how many smokestacks did the ship have?; hint #2: same number as the Titanic).  

     Would you be offended if I ordered a Murphy's, I asked the young pub tender.  Not a'tall, he replied in the typical Irish lilt (both Beamish & Murphy's are brewed in Cork).  I had lucked out.  Depending on what part of Ireland you're in, ordering the wrong beer or whisky is frowned upon, the country's fierce Catholic/Protestant loyalties being evident in many places (Guinness is the Catholic beer, as Jameson --once distilled in Dublin but since moved to Cork-- is the preferred whisky, at least here in the southern Republic of Ireland; it's Murphy's & Bemish, and Bushmills in Belfast and such).  Things have mellowed out in recent years as the religious loyalties tend to gain parity, but old family ways can linger a bit longer.  Take but one example: have you ever heard of these names?  Sinn Féin, the Troubles, the IRA, Ulster.   The names pop out as if everyday vocabulary and yet, the more I heard and read, I found that I had had it backwards all along.  So a quick lesson with apologies to those of you well-versed in this region's history.  Ireland was totally united about 50 years ago, which was about when there was a movement to join with Britain and become part of the United Kingdom.  But in the north (re: Belfast), 2/3 of the population were Protestant and didn’t want to be part of what was seen as a Catholic movement (the south of Ireland was mostly Catholic).   Protests soon grew more and more tense at which time Britain sent in the military to quiet things down (remember those scenes of checkpoints and closed off sections of town in Belfast?).  Then a street protest got out of hand and 13 people were shot, à la Kent State.  Britain denied fault saying that their soldiers were being attacked and the crowd went nuts (nearly 40 years would pass before Britain would admit that those shot were indeed innocent).  It was the start of The Troubles.

     But it is at this point that I'm going to do a quick jump and skip over pretty much the entire rest of our England-Ireland segment of this trip, and even a large part of our visit  to Scotland.  Part of this is simply because such lands and histories are well-visited and well-covered by visitors, and who the heck wants to read yet another opinionated view?   Quick summary: Dublin was Dublin except that 40,000 American college football fans were now also jamming the city to attend the Florida State/Georgia Tech College football game (what??, fly all the way to Dublin to watch two American college football teams play, which was exactly our thought).  And Belfast was cool and clean despite our old impressions of the Troubles still lingering in the streets.  On the other side of the Irish Sea, Liverpool was cold and blustery as if it appeared to "need a good wash," as the British like to say (well, maybe not the British in this part of the area).  That made sense because as with Glasgow, Liverpool was primarily an industrial town (and once the main European connector in the slave-trade "triangle") and had only recently shed such roots.  And who would know that on the day of our arrival that it would also be the day of the annual Beatles street festival?   

     So quick quiz: what part of Great Britain takes up a third of the country but has less than 10% of its population?  Question two: what European islands are as far north as Anchorage?  Question three: if you think back to an earlier post where I mentioned New Caledonia, what did Caledonia refer to there and who named it that?  And final question: the English were descendants of what group? (hint: not the Vikings)  If you answered Scotland, and the Shetlands, and the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxons, you've discovered just how easy history can be to remember.  And that’s one thing about a cruise or a trip that quickly takes you to different places, you tend to read and hear about its history and find that because you are THERE, the learning sticks (at least temporarily).  But overall, I'll save you readers the sleep-inducing travelogue (okay, a few more coming about the Orkney Islands' archeological wonders and such) but no "and today we did" Facebook-type stories.  Was that a sigh of relief I just heard??  It was time for one last treat, however, and one not from the ship but from what the local grocery markets offered their customers (and here I thought that I'd put on weight from the ship)...thankfully we only window-shopped at the bakeries...