Cork Harbour

Cork Harbour’s association with infamous ships like Titanic and Lusitania ensure its place in world maritime history. While such tragedies are heavily documented, the story of the modern evolution of the second-largest natural harbour in the world and its trade has received less attention. The Royal Navy’s long and extensive association with Cork makes it unique among Irish harbours, an association born of the necessity to protect trade in a growing world of ever-expanding ships and increasingly global enterprise. The trade of the world’s most powerful empire instigated the development of Cork harbour as a military hub, and the intensity of that development ebbed and flowed for centuries. The commercial development of the harbour proceeded in tandem with its military evolution, and each was driven and facilitated by the other. Cork’s overall development was greatly impacted by the political and military consequences of Britain’s increasing prominence on the global stage. The expansion of the British empire, and Britain’s periodically turbulent interaction with Ireland, also left their mark on the harbour we know today. Beautifully illustrated with new and archival images, Cork Harbour examines all these interacting themes to outline not only the events that shaped the harbour’s rich history, but the complex context in which those events occurred.

Cal McCarthy studied history and economics at University College Cork before going on to work as a civil servant. Cal is the author, or co-author, of Cumann na mBan and the Irish Revolution, Green Blue and Grey, The Wreck of the Neva, and A History of the Victorian Prison on Spike Island.