We have written before of the great Ulster Presbyterian migrations from here to America during the eighteenth century. Few Catholics crossed the Atlantic then. Even if they possessed the inclination and the ingenuity to get to America, few Catholic Irish had the means.  Indeed, before the American Revolution (until about 1780) Catholic immigration was officially forbidden in the Americas.

For very good reasons, your editor associates the shore and the public baths of Warrenpoint with his childhood friend Vincent McAllister, with whom he often ‘hitched’ a lift there in the bygone days of yore!