PART
TWO
We have long been aware of the importance of Irishtown in
the history of the southeast area along the River Liffey and Dublin Bay, but it’s
pivotal role in Irish history and the history of warfare and space exploration
is probably less appreciated. In our next two posts we will explore that unique
and important history. Firstly, we will look at how Irishtown was at the heart
of the creation of Republicanism, how its salt water was a source of medicinal
cures and secondly while Space X launches the heaviest rocket into the space,
the first firing of a rocket anywhere in Europe took place on Irishtown strand.
The goal of the Ringsend & Districts Historical Society is the preserve and
protect this great history, to research and educate and to bring our proud
history to a wider audience. One small step for man, one giant leap for
Irishtown.
Wolfe Tone great comrade Thomas Russell, even after the failure of the 1798 rebellion continued with his revolutionary plans and became involved in the planning of the Robert Emmet 1803 Rebellion. Irishtown was once again at the heart of the action. With his knowledge of Irishtown strand from his time with Tone, it was here that with Thomas Brangan, they tested for the first time, armed rockets they intended to use against the British once the rising began. Brangan, a timber merchant lived in Irishtown following a falling out with his brother Michael in October 1785. The Branagan’s had lived on High Street near Christchurch before Thomas moved to Irishtown. Brangan stored weapons in Irishtown in advance of Emmet’s rebellion. He was married to Mary[1] and they had four children.
While
most scholars identify China as the first country to use rocket technology in
warfare, the first use of recognisable rockets as we know today built inside a
metal tube was during the war between Kingdom of Mysore (modern day Southern
India) and the East India Company. The Mysorean rocket had a range of over one
kilometre. The first test firing of a rocket in Europe took place at Irishtown strand
in 1802 and was later described,
‘Johnstone who was making the rockets, brought one of them, so we all went, that is Mr. Emmet, Russell, Dowdall, Hamilton etc. The rocket was made fast to a pole with wire and rested on a trestle, the match being put to it and it went off like a thunderbolt, carrying the pole along with it and throwing flames and fire behind as it advanced, and when it fell it went on tearing up the ground till the last matter with which it was filled was completely consumed. Mr. Emmet and Johnstone were quite satisfied with the effect it produced, and they decided that all the rockets and tubes should be prepared and filled in the same manner.’
William
Dowdall it is said became alarmed when the rocket launched and disappeared.
Panicked, he immediately made his way out of Ireland seeking sanctuary in
France. One of the men who worked with Emmet at the time on the rockets was Pat
Finerty whom the British later employed at the munitions works at Woolwich to replicate
and improve on the rocket technology, this creating the foundation of rocketry
and missiles of today. According to Simon Webbert writing in the Oxford
handbook, William Congreve, who expanded rocketry technology in the first
decade of the 19th century, was thought to have developed his rockets
based on Indian designs used in wars between Mysore and the East India Company.
But Webbert observed,
‘There is some evidence that Congreve
did not learn of war rockets from India but from Ireland, where Irish
nationalists and Republicans used their own version of the Indian war rocket to
revolt against the British in 1803.’
He
stated that William Johnstone, a former pyrotechnist with the East India
Company was designing and preparing rockets in their arms depot off Thomas
Street in advance of the Emmet Rising. Finerty was a carpenter but was a
regular visitor to the arms depot and to avoid prison or execution to turned
approver and was taken by naval frigate from Dublin to Woolwich where Congreve
was based.
According to Emmet’s first biographer, his brother Thomas Addis Emmet and the more modern biographer Professor Patrick Geoghegan of Trinity College, they are ‘positively of the opening that the British Government decided that under no circumstances should the name Robert Emmet be associated with the rocket as an inventor. To this end they both believe that Congreve was employed nominally in the manufacturing of the ‘new’ weapon until his name became permanently associated with it.
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It
was Brangan who suggested that Emmet’s plans include an attack on the Pigeon
House Fort that had recently been opened to protect the port against any
possible attack from Napoleon’s French forces. Branagan’s plan was that two hundred
rebels would gather on the beach at Irishtown at low tide with the forces to
divide into to groups. One would travel across the sandbank while the others
would attack from what was known as The Devonshire Wharf, now the Pigeon House
Road. Once the objective was seized, a rocket was to be fired to alert the
other rebels to attack the other two main objectives, Dublin Castle and the
army barracks at Island Bridge. In the lead up to the failed rebellion, Russell
often visited Brangan’s house in Irishtown where they walked across the strand
to the Pigeon House Fort to make observations.[2]
An
Irish Independent article in 1915 looking back at Emmet’s rebellion wrote of
Brangan,
‘A determined man, whose energies to
forward and serve the sacred cause of freedom and independence of this country,
and whose daring resolute designs for this purpose could not be surpassed, was
Mr Brangan of Irishtown, he possessed all the qualities. He had a wife and
several children whom he tenderly loved, yet to consideration could prevent him
from sharing the dangers of our struggle. He requested me to introduce him to
some of the counties of Wexford and Wicklow men who resided in his neighbourhood,
he wished particularly to know who were employed at Mr. Haig’s Distillery. In a
short time, he had those intrepid refuges organised and ready for action. In
consequence he made a proposal to Mr. emmet to surprise and take the Pigeon House.
Mr Emmet cheerfully accepted Mr. Brangan’s bold offer and promised him to have
small depots of arms placed at his disposition as soon as possible.
Mr. Brangan’s conduct and services
as an officer of the Irish Legion could often incited to prove that he was ever
ready to undertake the most perilous missions, I could mention many instances
myself when he was unhappy because it was the turn of the other officers and
not his to be ordered to attack a strong position or mount a breach. When
Robert Emmet appointed him to the position of general, he immediately bough
general epaulets, determined to prove he was worthy of wearing them.”
When the rebellion failed, the British sought out Brangan, who was using the alias Williamson. According to his daughter, he initially was hidden by Mrs Cuffe on Pill Lane before moving to Mr Butler’s house on Fishamble Street. While there and on the run, he fell ill and when he was examined by a friendly doctor, little hope was given that he would survive. A priest was summoned to provide comfort but even in such severe illness he refused the efforts of the cleric to reveal that crypts of St. Mary’s church on Mary Street was being used as an arms depot for Emmet’s weapons. His place at Mrs Cuffe’s had been taken by Thomas Russell but the house was raided and Russell arrested. When Brangan eventually recovered, he made his way back to Irishtown and from Ringsend he was taken by boat to a ship in Dublin Bay and escaped to Portugal. He wrote to his family from Oporto but shortly afterwards he made his way into France and joined the military. He served with distinction in the so-called Peninsula Wars. According to documents in the hands of his daughter, Thomas Brangan died in a duel in France in 1811.
The
importance of Tone’s stay at Irishtown is illustrated when playwright Brendan
Behan wrote a play based on their stay in the cottage in Irishtown. ‘An Ghaoth
Bui’ (The Big Wind) opened in the kitchen of the cottage as the three main characters
Alas while he hoped the play would win a drama competition at the Abbey
Theatre, the play fell foul of the new censorship laws which would later ban
his work the Borstal Boy.
