Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener’s historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all ‘make’ history.
Programme 1
30 SeptemberÌý2008
Vanessa Collingridge and the team explore themes from Britain’s past thanks to queries raised by listener’s own historical research.
Are the so-called ‘black Irish’ descendants of shipwrecked sailors from the Spanish Armada?
Making History listener Martin Hurley is an Irishman living in Saudi Arabia. Like many listeners from Ireland and the Western Isles of Scotland, he is familiar with the story that many of the sailors from the wrecks of the storm-battered Spanish Armada came ashore and made their homes along the Atlantic coast of Britain and Ireland.
It is this, so the story goes, that accounts for the high rate of Rhesus negative blood in the population there today (some 3%) - comparable to levels found in the population of the Basque region of Spain where many of the Armada mariners would have come from.
Making History consulted Pauline Croft, Professor of Early Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London and Dan Bradley, Professor of Molecular Population Genetics at the Smurfit Institute at Trinity College, Dublin.
Professor Croft explained that the Armada was made up of warships and merchantmen from Spain and countries allied to her. The majority of the sailors were most likely from Spain. The ships had been weakened by Drake’s fire ships off Calais and the Battle of Gravelines in August 1588. Thus they more susceptible to the bad weather they encountered when trying to escape around the north and west of Scotland.
Shipwrecked sailors did come ashore – but the evidence we have is that most were killed by either the Irish or the British. Indeed, John Lynch author of Cambrensis Eversus, in his Vila Kirovani, relates:
"The men who sailed in those ships having in many instances, escaped the dangers of the raging sea, met on their landing a more implacable foe in the person of the viceroy, William Fitzwilliams, by whose order many of them were basely butchered. The Queen of England censured this unjustifiable cruelty. The viceroy was intent on seizing whatever of the Spanish property was cast on shore, and having instituted a rigid search, committed many persons to prison as abettors of the Spaniards, and thus was given occasion to many of the turbulences which afterwards ensued. The Spaniards cast ashore at Galway were doomed to perish; and the Augustinian friars, who served them as chaplains, exhorted them to meet death bravely when they were led out, south of the city, to Saint Augustin's Hill, then surmounted by a monastery, where they were beheaded. The matrons of Galway piously prepared winding sheets for the corpses, and we have heard that two of the Spanish sailors escaped death by lurking a long time in Galway, and afterwards getting back to their own country."
Dan Bradley’s study of genetics also fails to deliver much evidence for the link between Spanish sailors in the sixteenth century and the population today. In a nutshell the numbers coming ashore were too small to influence later populations. There are strong genetic links between the populations of the Atlantic coast in Ireland and Spain and Portugal but this is more likely explained by much earlier mass migrations in pre-historic times.
Further information
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Were there gliding clubs in Britain prior to the First World War?
Stephen Winkworth listens to Making History from his home in the Alps Maritime region of France where he regularly flies paragliders. He has read in a book published in 1910 that: 'The establishment of glider clubs in several parts of the country has created a demand...'
See Ferris, R (Nelson 1910) p. 256.
Can anyone provide anymore information please?
Making History’s Dylan Winter turned to octogenarian pilot Wally Kahn and historian and pilot Noel Whittall to try and answer Stephen’s question. They noted that gliding was important in the development of manned flight and that the Wright brothers had spent three years working with them before the arrival of the internal combustion engine provided them with the power and control they needed for their pioneering flight. The arrival of powered flight left gliding for dead and there was little experimentation done in the years up to and including the First World War.
However, events after the war created a renewed interest in gliding.
Firstly, the Daily Mail sponsored a competition at Itford Hill near Lewes in Sussex to see if anyone could glide for more than half and hour. Secondly, the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany from having a powered air force, so when the Nazi’s came to power they turned to gliding to teach their pilots.
There is, however, little evidence for gliding clubs before 1910 – unless you can prove us wrong. If you have any evidence do contact the programme (see below).
Agnes Harkness, Heroine of Matagorda
Two Making History listeners contacted the programme about the grave of a little-known heroine in the Southern Necropolis in Glasgow. Her name is Agnes Harkness or Agnes Reston as she was to become and her gravestone hints at a remarkable story…
Making History listeners Garry Mitchell and Roger Edwards besides Agnes’s grave.
The story goes that Agnes took her four year old son with her to join her husband who was fighting in the Peninsular war in 1810. There she helped to nurse the wounded soldiers and in one incident fetched water whilst under fire.
However, when they returned to Glasgow after the war life was tough. They found it difficult to survive on an army pension. When James died in 1834, Agnes was thrown into poverty and lived for many years in a Glasgow workhouse.
But, a book by Joseph Donaldson brought the story of her bravery to a new audience and it wasn’t long before newspapers were running a campaign to get her a pension to live on. It’s said that even Queen Victoria contributed to the appeal.
Agnes’s Gravestone in the Southern Necroplois, Glasgow
Making History consulted Eric Gruber von Arni the author of Hospital Care and the British Standing Army 1660 – 1714 ( Ashgate, 2006 – ISBN 075465463X) to find out how typical the story of Agnes Harkness is and whether more women were involved in nursing in the decades before Florence Nightingale.
Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ´óÏó´«Ã½, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý
Contact Making History
Send your comments and questions for future programmes to:
Making History
´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4
PO Box 3096 Brighton
BN1 1PL
Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ´óÏó´«Ã½, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý