Notices by Infoseepage (infoseepage@mastodon.social)

@GossiTheDog Great "tight messaging" there.

Breakfast in front of one castle, lunch in front of a second. Dinner in front of a third? I am the (Burger) King.

Ate my breakfast in front of Carrigafoyle Castle again and then got a lift into the nearby town of Tarbert. I've been to several places named Tarbert in Scotland and this Irish Tarbert is a Tarbert for the same reason. In Gaelic languages, An Tairbert means something like Isthmus. There are a lot of Tarberts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarbert

I'm now on a bus from this particular Tarbert to Limerick, to catch a further bus onward to Bunratty and it's spectacular castle.

#Ireland #gaeilge #gaelic

@dougiec3 My dad read them, but I haven't. I watched some of the Sean Bean series with him.

@anti_disease That is particularly accurate for the last image. The Romans were very fond of penis graffiti.

This is what my lens was able to capture from 2 miles distance, significantly cropped. The blockhouse is to the left of the lighthouse.

Would have liked to have visited Scattery. It's got some interesting history to it, including the burial places of two saints and it's also the island where Brian Baru killed Ivar, the last Viking king of Norse Limerick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_of_Limerick#Death,_sons_and_descendants

#Ireland #Kerry #Limerick #Vikings

Visiting the shore battery, I also got a good look at Scattery island, across the water to the north, through my Nikon's telescopic lens. Wish I could visit the island, as in addition to the battery there, which from satellite imagery, appears to be in much better shape, there is also a number of religious sites including a Irish round tower. Sadly, they don't run tours this time of year.

Still, having grown up reading Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's naval adventure novels, many set during the Napoleonic era, I pretty much eat up anything connected to those time periods.

The wooden floor has collapsed, dangerously so, but it is apparent from a dangling rope that some idiots have in the past scrambled up the fallen beams and use the rope to access the roof via a stair built into the blockhouse's back wall. I definitely wasn't up for that challenge, preferring not to die from being impaled on a 200 year old splinter.

I was able to walk along the shoreline, skirting the more direct route on clearly marked road marked private property, and eventually came to the battery. The earthworks aren't very appreciable, just lumps and mounds, but I was able to find one of the stone gun emplacement and poke my nose inside the blockhouse for a minute.

That distance is important, as there was an identical battery set up on Scattery Island, north across the island, about 2 miles distance. So, in theory, an enemy ship trying to pass through the estuary and up the Shannon river would have been subject to fire from one or the other. There were at least six such batteries positioned along the Shannon to provide for it's defense.

#Ireland #Kerry #Shannon #Limerick #Forts

Martello towers were set up around the Great Britain and Ireland both, but the Shannon and Limerick were considered important enough to warrant a higher degree of protection, and so each battery mounted six 68 pounders and had heavily fortified blockhouses with a furnace for heating cannonballs red hot. The blockhouses also had two rooftop howitzers, which could fire about a mile.

After seeing the castle and the church nearby, I took a long walk around the edge of Carrig Island (Stone Island) which is adjacent to castle. I walked to large D shaped battery dating to the Napoleonic wars (early 1800's). The Irish had rebelled in the 1790's with assistance and occasional landings of troops from the French and the Shannon estuary was considered a prime target for invasion.

The castle was being used to store many of the Earl's most precious possessions, which got sent onward to Queen Elizabeth as spoils.

Other lesser castles quickly fell or were surrendered in short order, with the rebellion turning into a guerilla war which lasted until 1583, when the Earl of Desmond was killed in the mountains near Tralee, twenty someodd miles from here.

#Ireland #Kerry #Castles

Eventually, the besieging army was able to concentrate fire and much of the western wall of the tower fell down, killing many of the defenders inside in the process. Ultimately, all who had defended the castle were killed or executed after, including the Italian officer, Captain Julian, who was hung a few days later.

A diagram of the siege can be on site and it makes you appreciate how much more substantial the castle was at one time.

Ships sometimes mounted a few guns at their front "chasers" and stern which could be fired if chasing another ship or being chased. These were often long guns of highest quality and often had better range/accuracy than guns mounted for broadsides.

The castle was taken in a siege lasting three days. While initial attacks were repulsed with much loss of life on the part of the attackers, eventually guns were brought off the ships and set up on a low rise to the west of the castle, about where an old church can be seen today. One of the ships was also able to range the castle with a gun mounted on the rear of the ship.

The castle was famously besieged in 1580 by Sir William Pelham as part of the Earl of Desmond's rebellion. He brought with him some 600 mens and 3 boats and most importantly, and assortment of cannon. On the opposite side was a mix of Irish, Spanish and Italian troops, including an Italian engineer, Captain Julian who had been given the task of improving the castles defenses.

I imagine the family grew quite rich from doing so, and the castle has a lot of niceties, including a "solar" at the top with larger windows of very high quality. They also apparently had a dovecot built into one turret to provide a regular supply of eggs. This is about as nice as living in such towers got.