- NEWS
10% tax on junk food to tackle obesityA 10% tax on fizzy drinks, sweets, biscuits, crisps, and chocolate is to be recommended to the health minister as a way of tackling the country's soaring obesity problem.
Prayer vigil for fine weather as farmers queue for fodderA 24-hour prayer vigil for fine weather has been held on the Kerry-Cork border.
- WORLD
How Star Trek predicted the futureWHEN Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first dreamed up the concept of a television show based in the unexplored universe of Outer Space in 1964, the world was a very different place.
BIG READ: A week in the online terror worldMichael Moynihan on his week in the online terror underworld.
- BUSINESS
IBRC delays loan valuations, saleThe valuation and sale of IBRC loans has been pushed out by six months to November and December of this year.
The smart money is always on SeánFounded four decades ago, its annual turnover is now €2bn.
- SPORT
The Terry Reilly Interview: The Godfather of GalwayOver the course of almost half a century, Liam Sammon has been in service to Galway football. Now he hopes a new generation can restore county pride.
Super Blues keep double in sightsJoe Schmidt's side won their third European trophy in successive years and gave Connacht reason to celebrate also as the Westerners gained entry to next season's Heineken Cup courtesy of their neighbours to the east.
- LIFESTYLE
Perfume for summer: Let in the seasonal lightYOUR wardrobe isn't the only thing that needs updating once the barometer starts to rise.
You’re not gay. You’re in a bromance. Did you cry with your buddy while watching Fergie say farewell at Old Trafford?
14-17C
Breaking stories
Pirate raid’s gory details captured in exhibition
By Sean O’Riordan
Pirates who sacked a West Cork village in 1631 sold more than double the amount of its inhabitants into slavery than was previously thought, new research has found.
And 381 years later, a life-size mannequin of the man who led the North African pirates’ raid on Baltimore has arrived in the seaside village’s Dun na Sead castle.The mannequin of pirateer Murat Reis, a Dutchman who converted to Islam, now takes pride of place in a museum exhibition which has just opened there.
English accounts of the Reis raid show that 107 men, women, and children were loaded on to two ships and taken to North Africa, where they were sold as slaves. However, Bernadette McCarthy, who restored the castle with her husband Patrick, has written a book which details how a French archivist of the time believed 235 slaves were taken.
Ms McCarthy says it is entirely plausible “that the English only recorded the names of their own settlers’ on the list of abducted, ignoring the native Irish”.
Either way, the vast majority were sold at slave markets in Algiers, Morocco, and Tripoli.
Some of the women ended up as concubines in the courts of rich North Africans.
The Barbary pirates’ raid is the only one documented to have occurred in Ireland or Britain.
However, the locals were not adverse to a bit of piracy, pillage, and plunder themselves, as the exhibition recounts.
As far back as 1072, Baltimore had its own resident ‘hard men’ — the O’Driscoll clan — who were very adept at attacking passing vessels.
They grew so bold they even launched attacks on Waterford.
The exhibition recounts how in 1381 English admirals were appointed specifically to prevent the clan looting merchant vessels.
However, little was done to prevent their lucrative activities over the next 150 years.
The clan sealed its own fate after plundering a Portuguese merchantman bound for Waterford in 1537.
The Déise men responded by attacking Baltimore and the O’Driscoll strongholds on the local islands, burning 50 of their 80-strong fleet. That finished them as pirates.
According to Patrick McCarthy the full extent of the village’s piratical history has been kept under wraps until now. He says Baltimore was known all over for centuries as a safe haven for pirates.