Category: History Talks

Speaker: Peter Atkinson English interest in North America began with John Cabot, a contemporary of Columbus, who sailed to Newfoundland in 1497 in search of a route to Asia.  The first attempts at settlement came a century later and were unsuccessful.  The most ambitious failure was in the 1580s under Walter Raleigh at Roanoke Island in…

Ally will give a short talk on the fascination History of the first two places to be created in the Gulf of Arabia, formerly the Persian Gulf. Why did Babylon fight to gain control? What is the connection between Pearls, the Garden of Eden, Sinbad the Sailor, Zanzibar, the African slave trade plus Oil, Portsmouth…

Angela Chantry is starting us off with a fascinating tale about a fascinating person! In a life stranger than any fiction, Grace O’Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her command,…