THOSE of us brought up on the wild Atlantic coast of Ireland may sometimes be inclined to dismiss the rough seas and gales of Dublin Bay by comparison as timid stuff. But the bay can be a fearsome place at times, and its treachery was brought, home to me recently when, I came across a stone in the old graveyard adjacent to the Tara Towers Hotel on the Merrion Road. It poignantly commemorates those who lost their lives 189 years ago when the Prince of Wales was wrecked on the nearby shore, just off Blackrock.
The Prince of Wales was one of two ships, the other being the Rochdale, that had left the port of Dublin early on the morning of November 18, 1807 bound for Holyhead. They had on board a large number of newly recruited soldiers and their officers, but had only succeeded in sailing a short distance out to sea before a blizzard of unprecedented fury developed, and they were forced back by the raging gale.
The ships anchored in the bay, but the storm force winds dragged them inexorably towards the rocky shore, and on the evening of November 19th, shrouded in thick snow, both ships ran, aground near Blackrock with horrendous loss of life. The tragedy was all the more appalling when was realised that it might well have been avoided because of the very heavy snow, those aboard both vessels had no idea they were so close to land.
Even in living memory, November storms have left their mark in Dublin Bay, one of the worst, perhaps, being the so called Inveresk storm of November, 1915. Inveresk was a three masted barque from Aberdeen that had arrived in Dublin from Portland Oregon, with a cargo of grain in early October of that year. As the ship left port again in ballast, a severe gale developed and Inveresk was driven aground on the Ring Rock at Sandycove. As a contemporary newspaper account has it: "Great numbers of the Sandycove residents assembled and witnessed the sailors' long struggle," although on this occasion the human consequences were much less severe than in the case of the Prince of Wales or Rochdale.
Eleven of the crew succeeded in making it to shore in one of the lifeboats. the remaining 12 were eventually rescued by a life line thrown aboard the ship. "In consequence of the Sailors' Home in Kingstown being fully occupied by shipwrecked mariners, many of the residents of Sandycove treated the crew in very hospitable manner and provided them with accommodation." But the barque itself, the Inveresk, became a victim of the storm that bears its name.