Qualla: Irish Sea

Irish Sea: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnCoxon, Public domain. Twelve million passengers cross the Irish Sea every year. The Mabinogion tells of Branwen ferch Llyr crossing it westward to marry the Irish king Matholwch, and her brother Bendigeidfran wading back across it - because, in the legend, the sea was once shallow enough to wade. He was not entirely wrong. Most of the sea between Ireland and Great Britain is less than two hundred metres deep, and large parts of it are less than fifty. Ten thousand years ago, as the last ice retreated, the centre of what is now the Irish Sea was a freshwater lake. The water you fly over is younger than the legends.

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Image: JohnCoxon | Public domain

Irish Sea: The Shape of a Shallow Sea

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulamm (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Irish Sea is bounded by five places that do not always agree on much else: Scotland to the north, England to the east, Wales to the southeast, and Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to the west. Hydrographers draw its northern limit as a line from the Mull of Gallow...

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Image: Ulamm (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Irish Sea: The Sea That Was Walked Across

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jackpollock, CC BY-SA 3.0. Around 20,000 years ago, glaciers covered the Irish Sea basin to a depth of more than a kilometre. As they retreated the basin filled with meltwater - first as a lake, then, when the ice dam broke, as a brackish embayment, finally as the sea you see today. Romans called it Mare H...

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Image: Jackpollock | CC BY-SA 3.0

Irish Sea: Beneath the Water Line

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Well, Bath, England, CC BY-SA 2.0. The seabed is one of Europe's best-known petroleum provinces. In the East Irish Sea Basin, Lower Triassic Sherwood Sandstone reservoirs hold an estimated 7.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 176 million barrels of oil. The five fields of Liverpool Bay - Douglas, Hamilton, Hamilton ...

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Image: Graham Well, Bath, England | CC BY-SA 2.0

Irish Sea: U-boat Alley and the New Forest of Steel

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original: Andy Dingley; Edit: Muhammad, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the First World War the Irish Sea was nicknamed U-boat Alley after the German submarines moved their hunting grounds here in 1917, drawn by the convoys feeding Liverpool. The Second World War added more wrecks: HMS Mercury, lost in 1940 and rediscovered in 2021; LCT 326, found...

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Image: Original: Andy Dingley; Edit: Muhammad | CC BY-SA 3.0

Irish Sea: Sodor and the Shipping Forecast

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cqui, CC BY 3.0. Two things about the Irish Sea live in the British imagination in ways its actual waters never quite do. The first is the Shipping Forecast: "Irish Sea" is one of the BBC's broadcast areas, recited in the small hours since 1925, its coordinates and wind directions becoming a kind...

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Image: Cqui | CC BY 3.0