On 21 September 1601 a Spanish fleet of twenty-eight sail occupied the Irish port at Kinsale with about 3,300 men, disembarking in a badly victualled and furnished condition under the maestro de campo general, Don Juan del Águila. The nightmare spectre that had haunted the Elizabethan state ever since 1585 had come to pass. Earlier … Read more
It is not clear when Basque mariners first began fishing off the coast of Ireland but the ordinances of 1553 of the confraternity of fishermen of the Spanish Basque port of Bermeo indicate that men from there were already fishing in Irish waters by then. Furthermore, in a lawsuit over the fishing voyage of the … Read more
Most of us have heard, at one time or another, that Ireland was peopled in remote times by settlers from Spain. These settlers, the ancestors of the Irish people of today, are often referred to as ‘Milesians’. Archaeologists have found no convincing evidence for any such ancient migration, but the persistence of the idea that … Read more
HM: Was your upbringing distinctively Irish? TK: Yes, an Irish Catholic one. It began roughly three hundred miles up the coast from Sydney in a town called Kempsey. Kempsey was marked by distinction between white and Aboriginal but there were also religious distinctions within the white community. The Catholics were not exclusively Irish as there … Read more