THE FLYING ANGEL BY MAURICE HARRON IS DEDICATED TO SEAFARERS
A bronze and stainless steel angel reaches out from the bow of a ship built at the side of the Mission to Seafarers building. The figure is the symbol of the Seafarers’ Mission, a religious charity set up in the 18th Century to provide sailors with shelter and comfort. Find it at Prince’s Dock Street, off Pilot Street and just north of Clarendon Dock.
Harron was born and grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland. He studied sculpture at the Ulster College of Art and Design in Belfast.
Much of his work is public art sculpture and he has works sited in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland. Two of his most acclaimed commissions are Reconcilition/Hands Across the Divide in Carlisle Square, Derry, overlooking the Craigavon Bridge crossing the River Foyle, and the Gaelic Chieftain, arguably his most experimental and impressive piece sited in the Curlew Mountains, County Roscommon. This statue overlooks the site of the Battle of Curlew Pass, fought in August 1599, when a Gaelic Irish force under Hugh Roe O’Donnell defeated an English column during the Nine Years War.
His work Let the Dance Begin, dating from 2000, is sited near the Lifford Bridge in Strabane, County Tyrone and was commissioned by the Strabane Lifford Development Commission. It features 5 semi-abstract figures (a fiddler, a flautist, a drummer and two dancers) on the theme of music and dance, each 4 metres high and is made of stainless steel, bronze and ceramic tile mosaic. It is one of the largest pieces of public art in Ireland.
The Workers is a monument made from stainless steel and stone and is located at The Dry Arch Roundabout in Letterkenny. The monument was created in 2001 and commemorates a generation of men who worked on building the original bridge and train track at the Dry Arch. He also created the The Rabble Children monument in Letterkenny.
He also has work sited in the United Kingdom and the United States, where he created the Irish Famine Memorial on Cambridge Common, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was dedicated on 23 July 1997.
THE CELTIC ISLE TUG BOAT AT ANDERSON QUAY LAPP’S ISLAND CORK PORT
CELTIC ISLE (IMO: 8514693) is a Tug that was built in 1986 and is sailing under the flag of Ireland. Its carrying capacity is 386 t DWT and her current draught is reported to be 5.2 meters. Her length overall (LOA) is 34.19 meters and her width is 10.8 meters.
Lapp’s Island was once an island in the River Lee. It is now joined with the island which forms the center of Cork City, and refers to the eastern tip of that island. The island had probably been reclaimed from swamp.
In the 18th century it was separated from the main island by a canal which roughly followed what is now Parnell Place. It was fully joined to the main island by 1832.
Custom’s House, at the eastern extremity of the island, sits on what was called the tongue of Lapps’s Island, and the modern Lapp’s Quay sits on the southern shore of Lapp’s island.
John Anderson (1747–1820) was a Scottish businessman and entrepreneur. He was a commercial agent in New York and later a business owner in Cork. His business played a pivotal role in creating infrastructure that connected Dublin to Cork. Anderson purchased land in Fermoy that was later used as a military complex.
Anderson was born into a poor family at Portland near Dumfries, Scotland and moved to Glasgow in 1784. He later settled in Cork City, at that time the major provisioning centre on the Atlantic Coast. During the American wars he earned considerable sums as a commercial agent in New York, and made extensive land purchases in the Cork area.
His Cork enterprise was based at Lapp’s Island, and his business acumen was recognised as he grew rapidly in fortune and was appointed to the city’s committee of merchants. He was made a Freeman of the city in 1787. Among his business interests was a malting and warehouse complex at Ballinacurra on Cork Harbour in partnership with John Lapp, in the 1780s. In common with many Cork merchants he was in favour of union with Great Britain in 1800. Anderson’s Quay in Cork is called after him. He married a Miss Semple and had two daughters and two sons, one of whom, James Caleb Anderson (1782–1861), was a noted experimenter with steam-driven road vehicles.
His fortunes suffered a series of reversals with the fall in the value of land after the Napoleonic Wars, and he lost over £30,000 in a Welsh mining venture. He had been conducting banking business and with the economic downturn his bank collapsed in 1816.
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