The Cong Canal (aka The Dry Canal) in County Mayo, Ireland

Absolutely brilliant. Was expecting a kinda camera on a stick "look at me, me, me, approach", very refreshing indeed.
Also very professional videography and narration. You brought something I had previously no interest in to life.
I hope to get 'home' in the not too distant future with the van.
 
It's a canal that has very little in the way of published material about it.

And certainly no videos. That's the main reason I wanted to document it.

YouTube is a remarkable resource which allows a huge number of people to produce material worthy of viewing that would never make it to TV for example.

I gave up watching TV about 5 years ago. I watch YouTube content every evening from a select number of channels. I think it's fantastic!
 
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Canalsman said:
I gave up watching TV about 5 years ago. I watch YouTube content every evening from a select number of channels. I think it's fantastic!
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If anybody had asked a year ago about YT it would have met with dislike. Generally I can't stand social media and the people that populate it.
I feel the same way about MSM, I'm not a fan of either.
However I have come to the opinion that some of it is worth a look, finding the 'worth a look' stuff is the pain, and frankly, it passes me by, in the same way tv does.
Being honest, I care neither.
 
Tim120 said:
If anybody had asked a year ago about YT it would have met with dislike. Generally I can't stand social media and the people that populate it.
I feel the same way about MSM, I'm not a fan of either.
However I have come to the opinion that some of it is worth a look, finding the 'worth a look' stuff is the pain, and frankly, it passes me by, in the same way tv does.
Being honest, I care neither.
Click to expand...
Agree with you about social media...

I have no interaction with it.
 
Excellent video, very well done, I was completely unaware of this canal project.
I was going to mention the lack of due diligence, but you covered what actually happened at the end. When you consider that relatively speaking this would have been a
Late canal as most were built over a hundred years earlier you would have thought the experience gained would have been brought to place here. Due to the landscape up here we don’t have many canals, the Forth and Clyde canal has a very interesting history. It was never linked to the Union canal until the Falkirk wheel was constructed. It used to be connected to the Monklands canal until it was buried under the M8 running under the motorway in two 6ft wide pipes, emerging eventually in Coatbridge. Canals offer a great insight into our history, and without them the final jigsaw in the Industrial Revolution could not have been fulfilled. I often wonder how hard this work must have been with the tools available in those times. You did remarkably well unearthing this information.

It seems strange that whilst many in Ireland were starving to death in the potato famines that this kind of work was going on. I can’t find the word I am looking for to explain how it makes me feel. But when you consider that possibly one million died, and millions more immigrated whilst this was going on it has a surreal feeling to it. I wonder if the famine played its part in the downfall of the canal, probably not.

Thanks for another very interesting video. (y)
 
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Superb video, beautifully shot and narrated. Seventeen minutes of pleasurable viewing which will be repeated tonight once Izzy returns.

WC has it's very own David Attenborough!

As for YouTube, I binge on it, most of it is crap but there are some real nuggets in there and you do get differing perspectives on a whole variety of things.

P.S. Please don't have collagen lip implants and become an 'influencer' though!
 
Fisherman said:
It seems strange that whilst many in Ireland were starving to death in the potato famines that this kind of work was going on. I can’t find the word I am looking for to explain how it makes me feel. But when you consider that possibly one million died, and millions more immigrated whilst this was going on it has a surreal feeling to it. I wonder if the famine played its part in the downfall of the canal, probably not.
Click to expand...
During the Famine most people could only get relief if they worked. Mainly building roads that went nowhere or follies. Many died whilst working.
The following compliments of Christy Moore:

A list of exports from Cork Harbour, just one of several ports, at the height of the famine…
On a single day, The fourteenth of September, Eighteen Forty-Seven
Ran as follows:
147 barrels of pork, 986 casks of ham, 27 sacks of bacon, 528 boxes of eggs, 1, 397 firkins of butter, 477 sacks of oats, 720 sacks of flour, 380 sacks of barley, 187 head of cattle, 296 head of sheep, and 4, 338 barrels of miscellaneous provisions.
On a single day
The Lady Mayoress held a ball at the Mansion House in Dublin in the presence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Dancing continued until the early hours and refreshments of the most varied and sumptuous nature were supplied with inexhaustible profusion. On a single day.
 
Debroos said:
During the Famine most people could only get relief if they worked. Mainly building roads that went nowhere or follies. Many died whilst working.
The following compliments of Christy Moore:

A list of exports from Cork Harbour, just one of several ports, at the height of the famine…
On a single day, The fourteenth of September, Eighteen Forty-Seven
Ran as follows:
147 barrels of pork, 986 casks of ham, 27 sacks of bacon, 528 boxes of eggs, 1, 397 firkins of butter, 477 sacks of oats, 720 sacks of flour, 380 sacks of barley, 187 head of cattle, 296 head of sheep, and 4, 338 barrels of miscellaneous provisions.
On a single day
The Lady Mayoress held a ball at the Mansion House in Dublin in the presence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Dancing continued until the early hours and refreshments of the most varied and sumptuous nature were supplied with inexhaustible profusion. On a single day.
Click to expand...
I have done a fair amount of reading on this topic.
Many over here are ignorant of what happened.
To some extent it mirrors the highland clearances.
It’s incredible that these horrors happened in historical terms, quite recently.
 
Hotrats13 said:
Great video.It must have been incomers that built it.The Irish would have dug that oot and macadamd that in a week end,hehe. Is this no social media?
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Yes it is social media but I find it way less distracting or indeed threatening than Facebook and X. Aside from anything else there don't appear to be any 'bots' afflicting YouTube.

Interestingly when I posted the video on YouTube last evening in order to enable any links within the video description I had to prove I was human (no laughter please!) by submitting a 30 second video for analysis by Google.
 
Fisherman said:
Excellent video, very well done, I was completely unaware of this canal project.
I was going to mention the lack of due diligence, but you covered what actually happened at the end. When you consider that relatively speaking this would have been a
Late canal as most were built over a hundred years earlier you would have thought the experience gained would have been brought to place here. Due to the landscape up here we don’t have many canals, the Forth and Clyde canal has a very interesting history. It was never linked to the Union canal until the Falkirk wheel was constructed. It used to be connected to the Monklands canal until it was buried under the M8 running under the motorway in two 6ft wide pipes, emerging eventually in Coatbridge. Canals offer a great insight into our history, and without them the final jigsaw in the Industrial Revolution could not have been fulfilled. I often wonder how hard this work must have been with the tools available in those times. You did remarkably well unearthing this information.

It seems strange that whilst many in Ireland were starving to death in the potato famines that this kind of work was going on. I can’t find the word I am looking for to explain how it makes me feel. But when you consider that possibly one million died, and millions more immigrated whilst this was going on it has a surreal feeling to it. I wonder if the famine played its part in the downfall of the canal, probably not.

Thanks for another very interesting video. (y)
Click to expand...
Regarding famine and this project the navvies taken on at the outset were in extremely poor health and probably made ineffective workers.

Their health improved as their length of employment grew so there was certainly a social benefit in this project's initiation if not completion. Apparently the workforce threatened strike action in support of a better wage!

I take no credit for unearthing the majority of the information. The two books referenced, and especially Peter Dillon's tome, provide a wealth of detail about the project. Peter Dillon makes explicit reference to some appalling political decisions by the British government that worsened greatly the plight of those starving to death. It was not a glorious episode in relatively recent British history.

You realise their plight to the full when you discover that many of those who emigrated to the USA walked across Ireland along the route of the Royal Canal.

And visiting a mass grave with thousands of unnamed souls beneath a fairly small grass covered area is a painful reminder.
 
izwozral said:
Superb video, beautifully shot and narrated. Seventeen minutes of pleasurable viewing which will be repeated tonight once Izzy returns.

WC has it's very own David Attenborough!

As for YouTube, I binge on it, most of it is crap but there are some real nuggets in there and you do get differing perspectives on a whole variety of things.

P.S. Please don't have collagen lip implants and become an 'influencer' though!
Click to expand...
Thank you, it took a lot of work to put it together. I have had a love of canals since I was a boy and this particular canal had always nagged away at the back of my mind as something to investigate and to document further.
 
Debroos said:
During the Famine most people could only get relief if they worked. Mainly building roads that went nowhere or follies. Many died whilst working.
The following compliments of Christy Moore:

A list of exports from Cork Harbour, just one of several ports, at the height of the famine…
On a single day, The fourteenth of September, Eighteen Forty-Seven
Ran as follows:
147 barrels of pork, 986 casks of ham, 27 sacks of bacon, 528 boxes of eggs, 1, 397 firkins of butter, 477 sacks of oats, 720 sacks of flour, 380 sacks of barley, 187 head of cattle, 296 head of sheep, and 4, 338 barrels of miscellaneous provisions.
On a single day
The Lady Mayoress held a ball at the Mansion House in Dublin in the presence of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Dancing continued until the early hours and refreshments of the most varied and sumptuous nature were supplied with inexhaustible profusion. On a single day.
Click to expand...
And the British government did little to help, and in some cases just looked the other way.
 
Apologies for coming in at this point, which is fascinating. I in no way want to interrupt the flow of information with regard to the history of Eire.
I mentioned in an earlier post my general lack of interest in television, however, Gone Fishing with Bob Mortimer & Paul Whitehouse, and of course Ted, is a superb watch and a new series has just started.
Carry on!
 
Brilliant video. The research, photography, editing, the whole package superbly done. Going to have to watch it again. (y)
 
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