Maritime archaeology in Ireland

Special issue looking at various aspects of maritime archaeology in Ireland from the Early Christian period onward. Papers include

marine survey programs have generated a GIS (geographic information system) distribution of historic wreck sites around the coast of Northern Ireland. These data lead to an understanding of the nature and extent of submerged cultural resources and provide statistical information on the spatial and temporal distribution of historic wrecks, allowing for the reconstruction of past maritime activity. This baseline data is used for the production of integrated research and management plans for the protection of the resources

Taymouth Castle was a fully rigged ship, wrecked off the coast of Northern Ireland in January 1867. The importance of the wreck lies in the preservation of a quantity of its cargo, which provides an insight into the material culture of the trade of northwestern Europe with the Far East in the nineteenth century. It also demonstrates the approach that government in Northern Ireland has towards the documentation and management of the submerged shipwreck resource in its coastal waters

Bantry Bay in southwestern Ireland features a range of martial monuments, ranging from medieval castle sites to nineteenth-century gun emplacements, within a maritime landscape. The monuments display continuity in siting, often at vantage points overlooking sheltered anchorages and bays, reflecting the importance of maritime communication in the region. Their evolution and proliferation show the contemporary military trends as well as the wider political and economic concerns of a society in conflict

an archaeological survey of the maritime cultural landscape of Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland found remains of structures relating to the kelp industry. Adding this information to historical documentation provided insight into the rapid rise of an economic asset in the eighteenth century and its equally rapid decline in the early-nineteenth century. Kelp provided an essential material for major industries of the Industrial Revolution and was a major source of income in coastal Ireland. The paper traces the imprint left on the foreshore and coastal archaeology of an Irish sea lough by the exploitation of seaweed for making kelp

the paper discusses a whaling company in southwestern Donegal, founded by local landed entrepreneurs and merchants on the back of attempts to develop the fisheries of the northwest in general. Although not a longstanding venture, the company pre-dates the later Norwegian-run whaling stations on the West Coast by some 130 years. Documentation consists of generalized accounts, including various petitions to the Irish Parliament for financial aid, as well as accounts in contemporary journals. Documentary data is not captured at the individual site level and, because of this, the location of the shore-based station is not definite. A site in the townland of Port, near Inver, is tentatively suggested as a possible location for a tryworks (the name given to the iron pots used for boiling the oil out of the blubber of whales), or at least a location where the activity of flensing or cutting-in (the process of removing blubber from the whale's carcass) was carried out