On May 7th we celebrated the centenary of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. We dressed up in costumes from the era, we researched in depth the famous cruise ship. We discovered that a past pupil of Scoil Naisiunta Rae na Scrine, Julia O’Neill, was on board that tragic day, luckily she and her husband survived. Our guest of honour was Denis McCarthy, Julia’s great grandnephew, we read extracts from fictional diaries of passengers. Following the ringing of the bells at 2.10pm, the time the torpedo struck the ship, we held a minutes silence in honour of the 1,198 lives claimed. We received commemorative purple balloons from RNLI, Courtmacsherry, together with 23 names of those drowned. We flew the balloons high, each one tagged with the name of a victim, alongside a lone white balloon remembering Julia.
