The cover of the new book and Admiral William Brown himself.
A new narrative nonfiction book by Mayo, Irish Author, Michael Gerard, is ‘The Irish Admiralty’ which pays tribute to Irish sailors’ mastery of the seas.
This true story reads like a novel, as it follows the exploits of two Irish master mariner emigrants who left Ireland in the 1700’s and recounts the profound impact they made in their adopted homelands of North America and South America respectively.
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Commodore John Barry of Wexford is first up. He was born in 1745 and went to sea at the tender age of nine, as a cabin boy on a ship captained by his uncle Nicholas that plied coastal routes from Wexford to various Irish ports like Cork, Limerick and Galway and thence to European ports with agricultural produce.
John learned quickly and grew even quicker. By age fifteen he was six-feet tall, a skilled sailor who had moved on from Uncle Nicholas, and made his first voyage to Philadelphia, the busiest port and largest city of the American Colonies.
In 1776 he joined the fledgling Continental Navy and put his rigging skills to work in refitting merchant ships for battle against the Royal Navy.
It was Captain Barry, as commander of USS Lexington who defeated and captured HMS Edward - the first Continental Navy ship to capture a British warship.
Barry went on to become the ‘Top Gun’ commander, also winning the last naval battle of the war when his USS Alliance defeated HMS Sybil off the Florida coast.
President Washington turned to Barry when the newly independent country of the United States realized that it needed a New American Navy.
Captain Barry was instrumental in devising the plan to build the first six frigates for that Navy, personally organizing the harvesting of the live oak timber from St. Simons Island, Georgia – which led to the construction of ships such as USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) and the flagship USS United States, commanded by Commodore Barry himself.
He was the first flag officer of the US Navy and President George Washington awarded him Commission Number One – anointing him the Father of the American Navy.
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Admiral William Brown was born in Foxford, Co. Mayo in 1777, and managed through obscure connections to gain entry as a Cadet into the Royal Navy at twelve years old.
He excelled there but was bypassed for a commission due to discrimination against the Irish and nepotism – he transferred to the British Merchant Navy when he was twenty.
He later sailed to South America where he and his English wife Eliza Chitty established a merchant business in the vast River Plate estuary between present-day Argentina and Uruguay - until harassment by the Spanish Empire fleet turned him into a revolutionary.
His master sailor skills as a blockade buster attracted the attention of the rising Argentine independence leaders and Brown was tasked with building an Argentine Navy from scratch.
This he achieved quickly and he led his fleet to defeat the Spanish, later also dooming the Brazilian and Uruguayan fleets.
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His mighty deeds secured independence for the Republic of Argentina and ignited similar liberation movements in Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. Almirante William Guillermo Brown is a national hero in Argentina and is revered throughout South America to this day.
His impressive green burial crypt in Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires has been declared a National Monument, as is the replica of his home ‘Casa Amarilla’ and there are numerous monuments honouring him throughout Argentina and South America.
Michael Gerard’s narrative carries the reader along with these remarkable sailors on their extraordinary voyages, through the cannon smoke of their numerous naval battles, as they rise to the pinnacle of success in their adopted countries – including treacherous journeys around Cape Horn to Peru and Ecuador by William Brown, and via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean to Canton in China by John Barry.
The achievements of these two Irishmen have been rightly commemorated in Ireland – with monuments erected in their honour at the port of Wexford, beside the River Moy in Foxford and on the Quays in Dublin.
‘The Irish Admiralty’ by Michael Gerard is available as e-Book online and as a Hardcover edition, and in bookstores worldwide – ISBN 9798992351422.
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