Monument to an event that never actually happened

WITH regard to the recent controversy regarding the 'Drake Sail' sculpture in Carrigaline, apart from the fact that Drake was an English buccaneer who led the expedition to massacre the inhabitants of Rathlin island in 1575 ...

... why was it deemed necessary to commemorate a totally fictitious event?

The 'legend' that Drake entered Cork harbour in 1589 was first mentioned almost two centuries later in 1750 by Charles Smith, a Waterford apothecary who took to compiling local histories of various counties.

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