County Museum commissions unique model famine ship

Lisburn man Werner Geyer has been putting his time during lockdown to good use by creating a detailed model famine ship.

Werner is well known for building model ships, which are on display in museums across the country.

It was during a visit last year to the Co Cavan Museum with his wife Evelyn that his latest project came about. "We visited Co Cavan Museum last year to view the WW1 trenches," explained Evelyn. Whilst there we went to the “Famine Gallery” Museum Curator Savina Donohoe thought it would be good to have a model of a ship the type of which would have been used at the time of emigration to add to the Museum’s Famine Exhibition Gallery.

Werner has been building model ships for many years for Museums and private individuals. He has quite a few on display in Dun Laoghaire National Maritime Museum.

This was the type of ship used at the time of the emigration in the mid 1800s when there was a pandemic in Ireland now approximately 173 years later we have another pandemic.

“The yellow flag on the mast is a “quarantine flag” and now again we have a similar situation.