Cobh
Watercolour and crayon
©2017 Charlene Brown
After Blarney Castle, our Irish RailTour
took us to the picturesque port of Cobh on the south coast of County Cork.
This relatively small town was key to the
maritime and emigration legacy of Ireland. In the eighteenth century, the port,
then known as Cove, had become an important centre for merchant shipping (and shipping-adjacent activities like piracy), and in the nineteenth century became a tactical naval
military base, especially during the Napoleonic Wars between France and Britain
(of which Ireland was still a part). The name of the port was changed to
Queenstown in 1848 to commemorate a visit by Queen Victoria and was a major
point of embarkation for the transportation of ‘criminals’ to Van Diemen’s Land
(Tasmania) as well as the massive migration to North America at the time of the
Famine. The name was officially changed to Cobh, a Gaelicisation of Cove, in
1920 around the time of the formation of the Irish Free State.
A ‘Victorian’
garden and many international flags line what is now a major cruise ship terminal.
