Survey Data
Reg No
22825007
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Artistic, Historical, Social, Technical
Original Use
Monument
In Use As
Monument
Date
1950 - 1960
Coordinates
231204, 89143
Date Recorded
10/09/2003
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Freestanding obelisk-topped monument, designed 1955; dated 1957, on a square plan on battered base. Road fronted.
Appraisal
A monument representing an important component of the mid twentieth-century built heritage of Heilbhic [Helvick]. NOTE: The monument, unveiled (1957) by Kathleen Clarke (née Daly) (1878-1972), commemorates the two-masted "Jacknell", patriotically and symbolically renamed as "Erin's Hope" midway on its voyage from Sandy Hook in New Jersey, which carried a cargo of ammunition and Civil War veterans eager to support the Fenian Rising of 1867. After almost two weeks anchored off the south County Waterford coast the Passage East-born captain, Joseph Benjamin Kavanagh, returned the ship to the United States with 'the men on board half-starved and in rags'. A pair of plaques inscribed in "Cló Gaelach" typescript translate as: "We praise and extol the valorous and brave act of a band of New England Fenians, who landed on the strand below here in the year 1867, despite the pursuit and watchfulness of the British Navy. They came to help the Irish Fenians to deliver a great blow for their native land, but, alas! they failed in their desire to avenge the old enemy, through bad luck and the disorganisation of their friends here, at the time. The majority of them were officers in the American Army. Thirty-two of them were captured and some of them received long prison terms. The ones that were not captured escaped back, without their cargo of arms and armaments, free and safely home".