Shackleton's cabin

At midnight tonight a simple ceremony will take place at Letterfrack, Co. Galway. The purpose of the ceremony is to mark, to the hour, the centenary of the death of Ireland’s greatest ever Explorer. And unusually, while this iconic individual did not meet his death in Ireland, the place of their death has been in Ireland since 2015. I write, of course, of Ernest Shackleton, a native of Kilkea and Athy, County Kildare who in the early hours of the morning of the 5th January 1922 died on his ship, the Quest in South Georgia on the far side of the world. As many of my readers will know, the Shackleton Museum on Athy acquired the deck cabin from the Quest in 2016, the cabin in which Shackleton drew his last few breaths. This acquisition by the Shackleton Museum in Athy was the impetus for the planned re-development of the former Heritage Centre and transformation into the Shackleton Museum which we hope to see open in 2023. The cabin itself has been carefully conserved by the specialists at Conservation Letterfrack to return the cabin to how it looked the night Shackleton died. We are fortunate to have a good visual record of the cabin, as it was on Shackleton’s last voyage and also a good detailed description by one of the crew of Quest, a young boy scout called James Marr. Among his daily duties was to scrub out Shackleton’s cabin and he left an evocative description of it, “Don’t, please, carry away from these pages an impression of a sumptuous state room. This sea-bedroom was little better than a glorified packing case; it measured 7 feet by 6, and when you are in it you felt half afraid to draw full breath in case you carried something away or bust the bulkheads apart. The door of this cabin opened on the afterside; and on the port side was the bunk stretching the entire length of the room, with drawers beneath and a single porthole above. A small washstand stood against the forward bulkhead; shelves well filled with books on the starboard side, and a small collapsible chair completed the more elaborate furnishings. In addition, was a small, white enamelled cabinet with an oval mirror in the door, and an emergency oil lamp for use when the electricity supply gave out”. On the day before Shackleton died, he wrote poetically in his diary on his last night on earth. “In the darkening twilight, I saw a lone star hover, gemlike above the bay”. In the early hours of the 5th January he suffered a massive heart attack and died shortly afterwards. The Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, as it was known, would plough on for a few months after Shackleton’s death but ultimately the loss of the leader took much of the direction and impetus out of the voyage for the surviving crew members. One of the members of the crew, Leonard Hussey, accompanied Shackleton’s body back from South Georgia to South America where he was greeted by huge crowds in Uruguay where his body lay in state for a short period of time. His wife Emily, conscious that his heart had always been in the Polar regions directed that he should be buried in South Georgia facing towards the South Pole and he currently lies in a simple grave in the Whalers Cemetery in Grytviken in South Georgia. For many years, his grave was not marked but the ship Discovery on which he had served on his first polar expedition in 1901 to 1904 brought to the Falklands, in 1928, a headstone for erection over his grave. After being engraved there it was brought to South Georgia. Amongst the ships Officers present at this ceremony to mark the installation of the headstone was Francis K. Pease who was born on the Curragh, Co. Kildare and would later write of his impressions of the ceremony in his book ‘To the Ends of the Earth’. The small private ceremony taking place in Letterfrack just after midnight tonight will mark the centenary of Shackleton’s passing with the series of readings from Shackleton’s own publication such as the ‘Heart of the Antarctic’ and ‘South’ with a smattering of the poetry which he so loved. That gemlike star that Shackleton referred to in his last writings is the star Sirius and if you should find yourself awake just after midnight on the 5th January, perhaps you might step outside and cast your eyes skywards and see can you view the same star that the polar explorer and Irishman Ernest Shackleton saw on his last night on earth. I want to thank those generous people who left donations into my office for the Lions Club ‘Cash For Food Appeal’. Happy New Year to you all

Shackleton's Cabin

On the way to work this morning I noticed a colourful sign advertising a concert to be given by the Garda Siochana band and school choirs in the Dominican Church on Tuesday 6^th October commencing at 8.00 p.m.  My thoughts immediately turned to a generation of uniformed Gardai patrolling the streets of Athy at all hours of the day and night.  My father was the local sergeant in the 1950s and he, like his Garda colleagues, was on duty 24 hours 7 days a week. 

My father was also a ‘Dominican Catholic’ in the same sense that today I am a ‘Parish Catholic’, our Mass attendances confirming that particular status.  In his later years he served weekday Mass in the Dominican Church, while in my young days I served Mass in the Parish Church.  The distinction between the Dominican and Parish Catholic was one of geography for as the River Barrow divided the town, so too did it tend to determine local church allegiances.  Those on the west bank of the river usually supported the Dominicans, while for those on the opposite bank church attendance generally was reserved for the Parish Church.

The concert on 6^th October brings together two important elements of our shared history.  The Garda Siochana established soon after the foundation of the State has served us well.  It’s life span to date is less than a century old and much less than that of the Dominican presence in Athy.  When the Garda band performs in the Dominican Church it will be one of the last occasions that the church, opened in 1965, will be used in this way.  The departure of the Dominican friars from Athy will I understand take place on 22^nd November.

The concert, organised by the local Lions Club to raise funds for local charities, affords us an opportunity to begin the process of saying goodbye to the Dominicans.  There will be other events and ceremonies in the Dominican Church to mark the departure of the Friars Preachers in Athy but nevertheless the Garda concert can be viewed as perhaps the start of the goodbye process. 

Let us all, whether ‘Dominican Catholics’, ‘Parish Catholics’, Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian or whatever church or chapel adherents, come to the Dominican Church on Tuesday night to enjoy the concert and join in what can be seen as the beginning of the celebration of the Dominican presence in Athy which stretches back over 750 years. 

There has been much publicity both in the national newspapers and on radio concerning the acquisition by the Heritage Centre of the ship’s cabin in which Ernest Shackleton died in 1922.  Shackleton was leading his last expedition to the Antarctic and his ship, ‘The Quest’ was moored in Grytviken, South Georgia on the 5th January 1922 when he died of a heart attack.  ‘The Quest’ was subsequently sold and taken to Norway when the cabin was removed.  It’s existence was first brought to my attention two years ago by Eugene Furlong, a Cork man who was attending the Shackleton Autumn School here in Athy.  Subsequent contact was made with the Norwegian owner and we brought him as our guest to the Shackleton Autumn School in October 2014.  He was impressed by the Shackleton exhibition in the Centre and earlier this year Joe O’Farrell and Seamus Taaffe, both members of the Shackleton Autumn School Committee, travelled to Norway at their own expense to view the Shackleton cabin.  The Heritage Centre subsequently entered into negotiations to acquire the cabin and Kildare County Council was exceptionally supportive of our efforts in that regard.  The Fram Museum in Oslo was also trying to acquire the cabin, but thankfully Athy Heritage Centre succeeded in closing the deal with it’s owner.

The cabin was transported from Norway to Dublin last week by DFDS Logistics, accompanied on the journey by the earlier mentioned Joe O’Farrell and Joe, as I am writing this piece, is accompanying the cabin on its onward journey to the Letterfrack Conservation Centre in Co. Galway.  There it will undergo some conservation work and it is hoped to have the cabin brought to Athy and positioned in the revamped Heritage Centre in time for the Shackleton Autumn School in October 2016.

You may wonder why it will take so long to bring the cabin to Athy.  There are a lot of ongoing negotiations regarding a possible new library for Athy which if successfully concluded will allow the Heritage Centre to occupy the entire historic Town Hall.  This will allow us to redevelop the Shackleton exhibition to become one of national, if not, of international, importance.  In the meantime we await developments.

Don’t forget the concert in the Dominican Church on Tuesday, 6^th October.  Doors open at 7.30 p.m. and admission is €5.00, with all proceeds going to local charities.