Galway In Days Gone By
1921
Gold in the water
The wonderful wealth of the waters surrounding the Irish coast has from time immemorial attracted the leading fishing fleets of other countries. This fishing was, for the greater part, in the hands of foreigners. Ireland benefitted little from it.
In 1465 a statute was passed by the Pale Parliament protecting Ireland’s right in the matter of her fishing. Strangers were prohibited from fishing around the Irish shores without a licence.
In 1556 Philip II of Spain paid £1,000 a year to be allowed to fish off the Irish coast, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert reported that 600 Spanish vessels were using Baltimore and the Blaskets as the centres of their fishing.
The greater part of the fishing at this time, however, was in the hands of the Irish fleets, but during the following century, owing to continuous warfare in the country, foreign fleets gathered the fish around the coast, and a Bill was sent to England without success with a view to retrain foreigners from fishing in Irish waters.
Sir Wm. Temple, writing to the Lord Lieutenant in 1673, stated that “the fisheries of Ireland might prove a mine under water as rich as any under ground”.
Dramatic protest
Dramatic scenes beginning with tow outbreaks of fire, the seizure of six warders and their imprisonment with forty political prisoners who barricaded themselves into the northern wing of Galway Prison, and ending in a fierce but brief encounter between a party of police and the prisoners, the extinguishing of the fires and the removal of Mr. Diarmuid Crowley, B.L., to Mountjoy took place on Wednesday.
The first news of the outbreak became known outside when police, military and auxiliaries were seen rushing to the jail. Soon afterwards smoke was seen rising from the building, and the hose could be seen playing upon it over the prison walls.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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